Trifter

Explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes OBE talked to David A Ellis at the Gateway theatre Chester on June 28 2004 about his many expeditions.

As a boy did you want to become an explorer?

When I was little I didn’t have any notions of expeditions, I probably didn’t know what they were. I was brought up in South Africa and did want to be in the British army; in fact I specifically wanted to become the commanding officer of the Royal Scots Greys Cavalry regiment, which my father had been commanding when he got killed in the war, so I was very knowledgeable about what I wanted to do.

How old were you when you went on your first expedition?

It depends what you call expeditions. In Sussex when I was about fourteen, my sister and I followed a river down to the sea by canoe. They got more and more ambitious and when I joined the army we crossed the Pyrenees by mule. Eventually we did the Nile by hovercraft. After that the expeditions did become fairly ambitious and by then we were trying to achieve big challenges, which hadn’t been achieved.

How many expeditions have you been on and which was your toughest?

I’d have to work out how many but it’s certainly more than thirty. I suppose the crossing of the Antarctic continent in the 1990s was probably the most difficult, or one of the most difficult.

During an expedition have you or any of your team ever been injured, bringing an end to the expedition?

In terms of serious injury most of the expeditions have had people suffer injuries of one sort or another. Someone was badly burned on one trip. On several occasions one or more members of the expedition have been badly frost bitten. We have had people break limbs and a young Danish member of our expedition in 1978 died in the engine room of our Polar ship. He was the only one to have died on an expedition.

Have you abandoned any of your expeditions?

Yes, over thirty-two years of doing it we have abandoned prior to the goal more than once.

Which of your expeditions have you enjoyed the most?

I think the ones in Arabia, the archaeological ones, searching for a particular lost city. On the first seven attempts we never found it, this was over twenty-six years. We finally found it in the early 1990s Just about all those searches were very interesting and very enjoyable.

How much training do you require before you set out on an expedition?

Some of them require rigorous fitness training; others don’t require any training at all. It entirely depends on what you are after.

Have you ever feared for your life?

Not overall – overall you plan the expedition so that you hope you will succeed. One of the things that is likely to make the expedition fail is if you run into a big hazard. You try and keep them risk free in order that they don’t get stopped. You can’t always plan for everything and sometimes you do run into trouble. When you run into trouble, for example you fall into a crevasse, the time when you are worried is the actual split second of realising you are falling into a crevasse, at which point you desperately try to do something to stop a bad result. So the period of apprehension and fear is rapidly taken over by some form of action.

Have you any adventures planned?

I have got one or two plans on the board; in fact over the last thirty-two years there have always been some plans on the board. The question usually is whether we can find sponsors for the particular plan. What we don’t like doing is announcing before we are ready to go because that is the most certain way of getting the opposition to get in there first. If it’s an archaeological expedition it’s usually the Germans who hear about it. If it’s Polar it’s very often the Norwegians.

When did you receive your knighthood?

I never got knighted, I got born a Sir because my father was a Sir and he was a Sir because his father was knighted for various services to the crown.

You are in great demand – are you planning to go on giving your motivational talks and other presentations for some time to come?

When you are abroad on expeditions it’s not possible to be hear lecturing about other expeditions, so if you were to say yes to every convention or conference you would never go on expeditions, so you have to be very controlled about that.

I understand you have written sixteen books – are there any more in the planning stage?

I’ve never written a book within two years of having done the last one – so sixteen books, thirty-two years.

Do they take a lot of planning?

Some do and some don’t. The general rule is if you have actually completed the expedition yourself and your writing about it, it’s a lot quicker than it is writing about somebody else.

Have you ever been approached by a film company wanting to film your life story?

I haven’t ever, and I haven’t considered it but there is lots of footage of past expeditions in the can from all over the world.

Have you been to Chester before?

I have been to Chester many times over many years.

Apparently your talk could have been sold three times over – will you be returning to tell us more?

I didn’t know that. If I’m asked again I’ll come again.

Where do you go after the Chester talk?

The day after tomorrow I’m doing one in the morning in Amsterdam and then in the evening in Monaco. Then the following day I will be in Milton Keynes.