30 GOURMET TRAVELLER
Sir Ranulph
Fiennes
The veteran British explorer on confronting fear, the
importance of trust and his next submarine challenge.
TRAVELLING WITH
In 50 years of extreme travel, what are
the most striking environmental changes
you’ve witnessed?In Antarctica the snow
might be melting but there’s still a mile of
it sitting on top of 10,000-foot mountains,
so people like us won’t be able to notice
the changes. In the Arctic Ocean, however,
our group was designing man-hauled
sledges in the ’70s. By the 1990s we had to
design canoes that could be man-hauled.From 30 or so expeditions, what’s your
most memorable journey?Well, apart from
the heart attacks. In 1979 we embarked
on the Transglobe Expedition, the first
and only circumnavigation of the Eartht crossed.” It took seven years to plan and
to raise the money to fund the expedition.Why mount such elaborate expeditions?
Charity and science are huge outcomes
of these expeditions. We’ve raised
£18.9 million for mainly cancer and
heart organisations. And the British
scientific community applauds what the
scientists on our expeditions have done.
The primary reason, though, is to break
world records of a physical and geographic
nature and to do so before our rivals do –
the Canadians and the Norwegians.What kind of scientific research has been
done?Mike Stroud found himself with me
trying to make the first complete crossing
of the Antarctic continent unsupported
in the early ’90s. His medical research
had focused on human survival responses
to extreme conditions, in particular the
effects of starvation. He thought: I’ve
got a controlled environment, I’ve got
a couple of guinea pigs who can eat only
the rations I’ve produced for 97 days. I’ll
stuff the rations with 57 per cent fat for
three months, that’s more calories for less
weight than with protein or carbohydrates.
After that expedition I had a massive heart
attack. But the research was of great value.along its poles using only surface transport.
We sailed south from Greenwich, the basis
of world longitude, and returned three
years later. Whenever we hit land we’d
take the Land Rovers off the ship, drive
south, and the ship would collect us and
take us first to Africa, then Antarctica, the
Yukon, the Northwest Passage and the
North Pole. We travelled about 50,000
miles this way.How do you pack for a three-year journey?
I recently borrowed [fellow expeditioner]
Oliver Shepard’s diary from the ’70s. He
wrote: “Transglobe was almost over by the
time we departed. Every i dotted and every