All language subtitles for Explorer 2022 1080p WEB-DL DD5.1 H264-KDOC-English

This is Transglobe.

Cove Radio. Cove Radio.
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Uh, yes. Go ahead.

Ladies and gentlemen,

the Guinness Book of Records Hall of Fame.

The first man that we're inducting into the Hall of Fame

dedicated his life to danger, adventure and exploration.

Ladies and gentlemen, Sir Ranulph Fiennes.

He's been described

as being something of an eccentric.

A remarkable man

you might call brave, driven, extraordinary,

or just plain crazy.

He's gone further than anyone's gone before,

pushing the boundaries of what humans can do and understand.

It's been a life of adventure.

Parachuting onto a Norwegian glacier.

Fighting a guerrilla war in Arabia and...

He's navigated the White Nile in a hovercraft,

spent three years travelling around the world

through both Poles,

discovered a lost city in Arabia,

and recently nearly perished in Antarctica.

Thrown out of the SAS,

he's walked to the North Pole, run seven marathons.

His level of fitness,

endurance and competitive spirit

puts him way above any sportsman.

He is the greatest explorer this country's ever had.

Frostbitten, half-starved

and more dead than alive,

the polar explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes

tucked into a hearty breakfast.

One question everybody wants to know:

"Why did you do it?"

The number you are calling does not accept unidentified calls.

The number you...

Are you doing it now?

I spoke to him on the telephone occasionally.

See how things were going.

But most of the time, I thought I'd never see him again.

I kept saying, "You can't do it now.

Don't you realise how old you are?"

Anyway, it didn't stop him.

Darling, are you OK for Matt

to use our conversation in his film?

I'm cleaning my teeth.
Sorry.

Just cleaning her teeth.

She said she'll be out in a sec.

Hello? Hi.

There's nothing normal about Ran.

In the context of the contemporary world,

he is not a normal guy.

He is the last great explorer.

The man has become a myth.

You only ever see explorer Ran,

you never see the other side of it.

Hello?

Hello?

Tonight is going to be special.

Ran has always managed to do things

with a certain je ne sais quoi,

a certain flair,

that sets him apart from all of us mere mortals.

Most of us aspire to run a marathon.

They're like penicillin pills.

-What, aren't you feeling good?
-Not confident.

And that is typical of Ran for you.

Always further, always up, always beyond.

Always that little bit better.

To me he has always been the best.

He's always been the leader.

And he's always been my hero.

Ladies and gentlemen, please do a warm welcome

for the legend that is

Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes.

Thank you very much.

I'm gonna be speaking, basically,

on the topic of taking package holidays

to weird areas with no scenery,

with odd bunches of people.

I ought to stress that I've been doing it

for 32 years as a profession

not because it's there, or because it's sort of romantic,

but basically in order to pay the gas bill.

Right, we're going for it, yeah.

Whoops.

Done it.

I drive a hell of a lot, yeah.

You have to lecture.

That is the only way an explorer can get paid

for doing what he does, or she does.

But there is always the worry

that one might no longer be able to make an income.

Hello, police.

Get into gear, will you?

Stop hooting.

When he's got his work head on,

he's very single-minded, he's driven.

Nobody can say, "Ran, don't you think

it'll be better to do it this way?"

One time I said, "Why don't you

just take a gun and shoot yourself

in the middle of a field?

It would be much less expensive

and it would not involve so many people."

I met him for the first time in the Arctic

when we were about to set off.

I'd kind of heard that he was really difficult

in terms of knowing what he wanted and sticking to it.

And he was the leader.

Just as army units have leaders.

Hello.

-Hi. Mike?
-Yeah.

I certainly didn't view it like that.

You know, I just wouldn't even conceive

of an expedition of two having a leader.

It just goes quite beyond me.

The extravagant ambition

of British explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes

is to overcome the last great polar challenge,

a totally unsupported trek to the North Pole.

But once loaded

with the 60 days' provisions for the journey,

his sledge weighed nearly 400 pounds.

And with the temperature below minus 50 centigrade,

this was proving too much even for him to haul.

Honestly, Ran, I can't see

what on earth you can take out of this.

I can take the spare radio battery.

If we do that, what are we doing?

We're compromising on safety.

-That's the way we don't travel.
-It's irresponsible?

It is irresponsible. And we just don't work like that.

With one battery, that's what you're doing.

-What about one saw set?
-One saw set?

Again, what happens when the other one goes?

You're absolutely stuck.

-Yeah.
-It's all compromise.

Well, something has got to go.

Against the advice of his team-mates,

he decides he will cut down his supplies from 60 days to 45.

The thought of failure is impossible.

He cannot fail.

In athletic terms, he was really very special,

and could have been

an Olympic-standard endurance athlete.

Ran's foot got frost bit a couple of days ago now.

When he took his sock off tonight,

part of the little toe came away.

The toe could become infected

and the infection could spread to the foot

which would be serious.

I just keep saying to myself

the old thing from Pilgrim's Progress

which is, um, always a little further,

even if it's only ten yards.

That's what you're thinking of, that ten yards.

We wanted to be first unsupported to the North Pole.

If you got there second,

you might as well not have done it. Simple.

Sixteen days after setting out,

the Britons find that they're finally cut off

from the Pole by open water.

But it's been confirmed

that they have reached closer to the North Pole

than any other unsupported expedition.

To have done the record of the furthest north unsupported,

is nice to know for one's own point of view inside oneself.

But the goal of the Pole, totally unsupported,

must remain, for me, something which is sadly unattainable.

Ran was so disappointed that he hadn't got to the North Pole,

or that we hadn't,

he went into complete decline.

Probably the first time in Ran's mind he thought he had failed.

To me, he's out there for the wrong reason.

He's out there for what he thinks

other people are gonna think of him.

And it shouldn't be competitive.

How insecure do you need to be

to have to go around the fucking world

to beat the rival, to feel good about yourself?

That has to be driven by some sort of metric

that was given to him

by his parents or his peers or something.

Quite peaceful up here, isn't it?

Peaceful?
Yeah, most of the time.

The only thing that breaks the silence is moos or baas.

Are you shaking? Ah.

Got the tremors.

Ginny put our ancestor pictures in this room

going back to the 15th century, some of them.

Try and keep them straight.

Yeah, so that's, um, pretty much that.

That's Dad. And obviously, as I go past my dad,

I say, "Morning, Dad. Love you."

Dad wrote this to my middle sister Celia, um...

"From Lieutenant Colonel R Fiennes, Royal Scots Greys,

Middle East Force, 14th of April, 1942."

And he's done a little cartoon picture of his three daughters.

Big sister Susan.
Middle sister Celia.

Little sister he called Judy but her name is Jill.

He doesn't know that a son is on the way, of course.

Four months before I was born,

he trod on a mine and was killed.

Mum brought me up on stories about him.

My mum I really respected, very much indeed.

She always saw the best side of everything.

Her lovely husband died, was killed, suddenly,

and she's got four children.
Yeah, four children.

And her very strong-minded mother-in-law, South African,

says, "Right, now they're all dead,

I want to go back and die

back with all our relations in Cape Town."

We got put on a ship, the four of us and Mum

under domineering Granny,

went out to South Africa.

That is Granny.

She looks at you, you know, her eyes,

wherever you move around the room.

Mum was bossed by her mother-in-law.

We were out there for ten years.

When Granny died, Mum took all of us back to the UK.

I was brought up with an all-woman household. No men.

I had three older sisters.
No uncle, only aunts.

No grandfathers, only grandmothers.

No father, only Mother.

I was spoilt rotten.

Well, we first met when we were little kids.

We got up to all sorts of things.

The ground, land, was our playground, wasn't it?

We were a couple of monsters, I suppose.

We were known by the village as Tooth and Nail.

We had all sorts of weapons that were handmade.

Spears made from wood

and the tip of the spear was sharpened to a point.

And then we used to cut a tin up so it was metal tipped.

We were always getting hurt.

Me more than him probably, cos he was bigger than me.

Why we're still alive I do not know.

We should have been maimed, really.

We both had that exploration thing in our blood, I suppose.

And he took it all the way through.

Since I was tiny, I thought I'd like to be like Dad.

Commanding Officer of the Royal Scots Greys.

And I really tried hard.

I knew him really from Officer Cadets at Mons.

He was about 19, I suppose.

He wasn't somebody who enjoyed going to pubs and things.

He'd rather be going to impossible places.

It was a very good fun life

because there were no wars going on.

So, it was just the young people

doing as much as they could to try and burn off energy.

Some of the things he did

were a bit unconventional, you could say.

He would always come up with crackpot ideas

of going on expeditions and blowing up things.

Whatever he got up to, it was great fun to follow.

His troops loved him,

but sadly, the Armoured Regiment in Germany

was too boring for him.

So he went off and joined the Special Air Service.

I had just passed

a demolitions course with the SAS.

I had found that I was very good at blowing up the target

with minimal stuff.

And I happened to have a lot of explosives.

I got a phone call from an old school friend.

Castle Combe, the prettiest village in the UK,

was being ruined.

The company, called Twentieth Century Fox,

were making a film in their lovely village,

which involved turning the trout stream into a lake for filming.

We started developing this completely loco idea.

I mean, it was the stupidest idea ever.

The artificial lake was protected by sandbags.

The idea was to remove a sandbag.

Next morning, when they went to start filming,

the lake would have disappeared.

To do this, it needed to have a diversion.

Ran said, "OK, I'll get hold of the thunder flashes."

Ran then came up with this brilliant idea.

He knew a guy, a photographer,

and would be a frightfully good idea

if he got the guy to come along and record this event.

Well, we know what happens next.
The guy does turn up.

And do you know what, invites Plod to come along as well.

And guess what.
Guess what. They are arrested.

What we didn't know

was that he didn't get just thunderflashes,

he went off and got some actual explosives.

How it plays off is terrible.

Old Etonian toffs playing "let's blow up a village".

The punishment that was meted to him was mega.

You know, he was not going to be a colonel of the Greys.

I regret not having been able to do

the thing that I only wished to do for 24 years.

Be what my dad was.

And when I failed, I eventually thought two fingers to life.

I was on probation for six months.

Thrown out of the SAS back to my own regiment

who were still in Germany.

I got fed up with endless moving around

in 60-tonne monsters,

but I had another three years in the army.

And suddenly, at this stage of German boredom,

I heard that volunteers could take on

two-or three-year contracts with the army in Oman.

I volunteered.

So did three or four other officers.

They were described as being too valuable to the regiment,

but my application was taken up immediately with joy.

My particular job

was with 60 Arabs and Baluchis and no Brit.

I would be called either Sahib

or, if there were no other officers around,

they'd call me...

I think it means John.

Long time no driving in this sort of condition.

I have to say that I just love it.

The rougher the roads, the better.

We were finding new roads in countryside like this

and going up ramps, steep, steep ramps.

And 30 of us, with axes and shovels,

were making impossible bits possible.

We were a happy family.

It just was wonderful to be with these guys.

Trusted by them and trusting them.

They were wonderful human beings.

We really just... I think the word is "clicked", just clicked.

I think looking back, it's not popular...

I wanted to fight the enemy, the Communists.

They were out to crush Islam in Dhofar.

The Dhofar rebels are mainly Marxists.

When the rebellion began,

their aim was simply the overthrow

of a mediaeval tyranny in Oman.

Since then, the movement has the wider goal

of sweeping away all the sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf.

Tribal leaders had their backs burnt

and their eyes put out

and pushed over cliffs to make an example of people

who refused to switch from Islam to Marxism.

We were outnumbered.
We were in enemy area.

We were out-weaponed.
It was a frightening affair.

The main change I made when I arrived out here

was to stop them moving by day.

We became experts at night movement.

That is why we were chosen for Operation Snatch.

We had heard an enemy leader was going to come into Dhofar,

and we had very good information where he was going to be.

Ranulph was briefed on what to do and where to go and so on,

but during the approach,

we heard that actually, he was being set up.

The leader wasn't going to be coming in at all

and it was the other way round, they were gonna ambush us.

I was asked to try and contact him because I had radio to him,

and, uh, I couldn't get through.

I settled down just beside the key track

that these people would be coming in by in the morning.

We had an hour left before dawn

and I was looking through the bush like that,

and they came along this way.

I saw their political red stars and I said...

Sorry, um, "Hands up or you're dead."

And the bloke swung his Kalashnikov round really fast,

and I found my finger pressing the trigger.

I'd never killed anybody that close.

I mean, I've shot at lots of people in dust, rifle dust,

along 600 yards away and all that, in ambushes,

but not as close as this.

You know, and seeing your face shot away

and your nose pushed back into your brain and so on.

And I was quite young, really, you know.

And it affected me for a very long time.

Not just in the week afterwards but months later.

At that time, when all this was going on,

I also had a good thing going for me.

I knew that when I got back,

I was gonna marry the girl

who sort of steered me to an alternate.

I had known Ran since I was nine and he was 12.

We grew up together.

We're really like brother and sister.

To me it's, you know, probably the best way

because you're friends as well as everything else.

She had two brothers.

They asked my mother if her son, me, could go round for tea.

We were playing with their electric trains in the attic.

And I felt a pin in the back of my leg.

Looked under the table, and there she was.

I'd never seen a girl as a girl before,

and I felt just wonderful.

The first thing you saw was very piercing blue eyes.

The bluest.

I can remember telling him to get on and meet her

instead of hiding in the bushes,

and let her ride by on her horse, watching.

He worshipped the ground she walked on.

Yeah, he did.
And I think she did him, too.

We'd be sort of in the history class or something

and Ran would suddenly appear at the window.

I don't know how he got up there,

must have been the drainpipe.

He eventually got caught

and was pulled in through the window and sent packing.

Outside her house in Sussex,

we used to leave secret letters in the tree.

When you want to see me,

leave a note hidden here.

It's a tree stump with a gnarled hole in it,

and it's still there.

And you keep it just there?

Oh, no, I keep the bit of wood just there, not the tree.

When he got together with Ginny,

eventually, that was a load of trouble.

Her dad went apeshit.

Her father was not at all keen

on me having anything to do with her.

Ginny's father thought that the explosives

had come from his quarry

and that Ginny had pinched them and given them to me.

And that the police would find this out and send her to prison.

My father was convinced that Ran would be the death of Ginny

because he was, you know, a mad, bad and dangerous-to-know boy.

And little did he realise that she was worse.

It was Ginny who was gonna dream up the wild expeditions.

I don't think Ran could have done anything

that he has done without Ginny.

She certainly played a huge part in his career

and in his happiness too.

A lot of the time they were utterly penniless.

He'd left the army with nothing.
He had no job.

And there was no money.

She was always trying to think up things

that Ran could do to make some money.

Ginny got onto an actors' agency

who wanted me to audition for James Bond.

Got into the last six.
Some other bloke got it.

Roger Moore.

She kept him on track, got him organised

and opened the doors to get a publisher for the first book.

Ginny interpreted the world for him.

She enabled him, and she'd move heaven and earth

to make sure whatever needed to be done got done.

Ginny realised that doing hot expeditions

wasn't ever going to get sponsorship or media coverage.

The media only wanted polar stuff.

She decided that if one's gonna make any sort of income,

we'd have to make a big entry into the polar fraternity

with the most impressive journey she could think of.

-Ah, Sir Ranulph.
-Hello, Admiral.

You all right?

-Come in.
-Good to see you.

-You all right?
-In time for some fodder?

Food, yeah. Are you are you OK?

-So...
-How's the family?

They're all right.
They're fine. Yeah.

Do you want anything with that?
Ketchup or...

Ja?

OK.

There you have it.

-All right?
-Yeah, great.

This is just perfect.
Well worth a five-hour journey.

You haven't lost your touch, cookie.

Very good.

Yeah, now I've got loads of stuff

to show you in my little room,

my archive room.

That is a piece of history, that little globe,

because that red line, your Ginny...

Yeah.

She drew what she thought was the best way

of doing the first journey around Earth, vertically,

with her crayon.

I used to take her out from her school.

That was her school globe of the world. Yeah.

No one had yet journeyed

the Earth's surface along its polar axis.

Encouraged by his wife Ginny, Ran Fiennes would try it.

It took seven years to prepare for

and will take another three years to complete.

When they return,

the team will have walked, sailed,

driven and skied more than 52,000 miles.

It is an extraordinary adventure,

and in my opinion, gloriously and refreshingly mad.

This is a polar expedition

with a difference.

It's called the Transglobe Expedition

because it means to go

both to North and the South Poles in one journey.

An expedition that sounds as if

it's just come straight out of the pages

of Boy's Own magazine.

And for a team that's led

by Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes,

surely nothing is impossible, except perhaps his name.

From a contemporary point of view,

you could say that this is totally white privileged folly.

There is something about him that I think makes a lot of us

want to just hug him

and then grab him by the collar and shake him.

All in all, an incredible journey

and one which is going to be shared by Ran

and the others on the expedition by a dog.

He's Bothie.

And he's a Jack Russell, and just 18 months old.

And he's going to be the expedition's mascot.

Good boy, Bothie.

He didn't have big wealth to fall on.

He had to raise every penny.

Transglobe's, like, a $27-million operation.

The fuel alone is off the chart.

How can you do that?
You can't do that.

Well, he did it.

More than 650 companies around the world

made this possible,

supplying goods and services.

In some ways, Transglobe was like putting men on the moon.

Everything that they got was sponsored or scavenged.

He's the world's best scavenger.

Yeah.

Ginny and I started off with no money at all.

So, as a married couple,

our rule was "never pay anybody for anything at any time".

We, or particularly Ginny,

became very good at convincing people

to give large sums of money

in return for publicity for their company name.

Quite simple, really.

The whole principle of the expedition

was that nobody got paid.

That was the mantra.

It was the thing that held it all together.

Different people all willing to work for nothing

for something they believed in.

This is the first letter that I received from you,

do you remember, when I applied to join the expedition?

Amazing.

"Dear Mr Bowring, thank you for your letter and your interest.

We are looking for a qualified, honest,

non-union, unpaid underlined crew.

We are wanting to complete scientific work from the trawler

during the expedition.

We are not wanting photographers.

Excuse this writing, but I'm on a v shaky train to York.

Yours sincerely, Ranulph Fiennes, Expedition Leader."

-Good heavens.
-Yeah.

-Ready?
-Yeah.

Ran is the hardiest, craziest,

most insane person

I have ever absolutely loved working for.

My boss at the time said,

"Ran's well known. He's a ruthless bastard."

He chews up soldiers and spits them out.

But he's successful because he's so driven.

He never takes no for an answer.

Strong winds and currents,

combined with heavy loads

had put too great a strain

on the inflatable boats and their engines.

What do you think it is, Jack?

Breakdowns had become commonplace.

Obviously you've got to have another sort of boat.

This is what Ginny's, you know, all about.

We're now two or three days behind the schedule

instead of ahead of it.

I asked her to get a Boston whaler,

and that they might cost something like $13,000,

to get big engines for them,

but she mustn't spend any money on doing it,

and she must do it within two weeks.

After that, it was up to her.

Ran has decided to use an 18-foot Boston whaler.

Problem is, we need an 18-foot Boston whaler.

Within a week, Ginny finds a boat and a sponsor.

♪ Bowl of spaghetti

♪ All covered in cheese

♪ I lost my poor meatball

♪ When somebody sneezed

Anton.

Amazing seeing it back on the water again.

Forty years you've looked after it.

I can remember the trouble on the telephone

trying to get them free of charge.

Ginny did. She had a good voice.

Good at what they call wheedling.

Whoops. Come on.

That's more like it.

There's something about Ran that makes people...

put their lives in his hands.

You have that, that feeling that he will, you know,

that he'll never let you down.

He can talk to you in such a way

that, I won't call it hypnosis,

but you're mesmerised by what he's saying

and all of a sudden,

you just want to do these crazy things with him.

Benjamin Bowring, this is Cove Radio.

Do you read me? Over.

This is Benjamin Bowring.

I have you loud and clear, Your Royal Highness.

He wrote asking if I'd be at all interested in helping, and...

I obviously met him after that

because I'm a sucker for those sort of marvellous characters

who are full of, you know, enthusiasm and ingenuity.

The great British eccentrics really.

And indeed he is one of life's great eccentrics.

-Hip hip.
-Hooray!

-Hip hip.
-Hooray!

Are we gonna play Boggle?

Go on then.

-OK.
-Right.

And what are we doing, 60 seconds?

No, three minutes.
Soft-boiled egg.

That's a long time.

No, by the time you've written down 25 words...

Twenty-five?

Who can write down 25 words?

I was thinking about two or three.

Exactly.

Are we ready?

-Three, two, one, go.
-OK.

Oh, Lord.

He cheats dreadfully at card games.

Hates children winning, and is really good fun. Very good fun.

Ooh.

-Gay.
-Yes.

Pan.

Two, one, go.

-Dent.
-Yes.

-Man, M-A-N.
-Yeah, yeah.

And then an umbrella, which is a gamp.

Beg your pardon?

-Mill. Did someone have mill?
-Yes, I had mill.

-Right.
-What's a gamp?

-What is a gamp?
-Look it up on your thing.

We can't.

-We haven't got a signal.
-We haven't got a signal.

Is it an Eton word?

-Is it slang?
-People at Eton use it,

but that doesn't mean no one else does.

I mean, at my school a bicycle was a bincy.

-A bintry?
-A bincy.

We had very strange words in my school.

If you were a sort of slave boy, you were called scum.

Our lot went, "Boy!"

I mean, for a long, long time

and every little boy doing their prep or whatever had to run.

And one got beaten by the senior boys.

You did. I did.

It's always been said of that school,

it gives the students tremendous confidence.

They come out believing they can do whatever they want to.

-That wasn't the case for you?
-I was the opposite.

When I went there, I think I had lots of cocky self-confidence.

I lost all that.

I was apparently a pretty boy aged 11,

and they'd take the mickey.

So-and-so has a crush on that pretty boy

and all the rest of it.

Having had only women who never bullied me,

I didn't get good at being nasty back.

And the boxing

was a direct response to the bullying.

Yeah. It was, to being pretty, um...

Trying to be aggressive and trying to be unpretty and big,

boxing seemed to be the right answer.

And it worked pretty well, I think.

I don't think Ran likes to be put into a set-up

whereby, "Here's a guy who went to Eton,

he was an officer in the cavalry and he was in the military."

Headed by Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes,

Eton, the Royal Scots Greys and Special Air Service, retired.

I remember in the very early days

when we started doing interviews,

Ran said to all of us,

"For heaven's sake, don't mention you went to Eton

or don't mention you went to a public school."

-That one's good.
-Yeah, there's six black.

Six black, eleven blue and four red.

Right, sleeping bags, two.

Someone that's got a title

and a triple-barrelled name,

I mean, it's asking for trouble.

-You're a knight and you...
-Yeah, but I got born that way.

You could have been born that way.

No, we haven't got any money.

The press really were pretty nasty to him

on numerous occasions.

He let it bounce off him

but underneath, you could see the scars,

if I can put it that way.

If people immediately think, "Oh, he's a Sir,"

that puts my hackles up.

I cross it out whenever I possibly can.

I hate it, I really do.

If you take a really good friend like Robin Knox-Johnston,

he uses the Sir and he deserves it cos he earned it.

I didn't earn a Sir at all.

I got born with it cos my dad had been killed,

and he got it because his dad had been killed.

So, if you don't earn it, why use it?

Ran Fiennes is fine by me.

Ran's journeys and exploits

are his way of trying to step out and go beyond.

Come here, Ran.

Ran, in terms of film-making,

you're trying to look for some kind of psychological meaning

behind what's going on,

you're trying to find some kind of conflict.

And there wasn't any.

Because these people,

they won't stoop down to saying, you know,

"That motherfucker isn't holding up his part of the job.

And I hope somebody kicks him in the balls till his nose bleeds."

You know, those are the lines we're looking for,

you're not gonna get 'em.

-Wait second. Hit it.
-Got it.

And that was because Ran never bad-mouthed anybody.

You couldn't make him disagreeable.

He was always positive solving problems.

And then I kept saying, "It's my fault.

I'm doing something wrong.

I'm not getting into these guys."

And these guys, you don't get into 'em.

You know, he's the classic old Brit guy.

This guy is so classy,

you don't know that there's anything even under the skin.

You know, a piece of granite

cut out of the same stuff

from the skin all the way to the heart.

The great thing is that they've achieved the Antarctic crossing.

And that's a marvellous feather in their caps.

I thought it was enough, that alone.

But to go on and do the Arctic is real, uh, bravery, I think.

The Arctic is a real challenge

and they're not in any way

accepting this next challenge lightly.

I think this probably will be the most difficult.

I got brought up with a religion,

but it's not strong enough

to deal with sort of gangrene and crotch rot

and all of that sort of stuff.

So I have to invent my own way of having a mental fight.

And that is to say, people I respected most in my life,

my father and my grandfather, are watching me,

and I must not give in, I must not give in.

I invite the ghosts into my head so that they are there

and I do not want to let them down. Simple.

When they said you shouldn't leave before February 28th

because it's too dark to see properly

and too cold to feel your toes, they were right.

They were all right.

What are we doing?
We're cultivating arthritis.

Hello, Transglobe London.

You're calling from Resolute Bay, yes.

You have, yes.
What is it, please?

"My team has arrived at the North Pole."

Thanks very much.

At last they've done it.
Thank goodness they have.

It's something for the country to be proud of.

It's a wonderful achievement.

They got a lot of guts to go there, innit?

-That's really kind of you.
-Open it now.

It's an egg. An Easter egg.

Fantastic.

I think they're very brave people.

They're brave men, there's no doubt about it.

I'd say they're brave, but they're still idiots.

I had 9,000 miles on the clock.

It's now got 280,000 miles on the clock.

And it's still doing wonderful.

It has got hieroglyphics down both sides

which make it sort of picturesque.

So, we're on the lookout for exit signs,

that is the most important thing.

We call him Mondeo Man.

-Yeah.
-He wears cars out.

I went driving with Ran last year I think it was.

It was terrifying.

He had one hand over one eye for some reason

and was driving like that.

Just went down Earls Court Road the wrong way

and I thought, "Bloody hell!" you know.

It was bum-clenching time.

He used to be sort of honestly, you know,

military in his driving,

but now he's sort of all over the place.

Keeping awake is a problem,

driving for ten hours at a time,

sometimes longer, doing what I do.

So what I do, basically,

is I administer a wake-up, sort of like that,

and it works maybe for half an hour

and then you have to stop.

But the hotels round here cost £300 for bed and breakfast.

So at night time, one would go into a place like that,

get your sleeping bag out, set your alarm clock

and Bob's your uncle.

I use the suits as curtains.

-Hello, mate. How are you doing?
-Hey, Will.

I've worked with Ran now probably about three years.

The first time I met Ran, yeah, it was, uh, interesting.

Whoops.

I don't wanna run over a bicycle.

I'd pulled up at the venue

and I went to try and find where he was.

From across the car park, I saw this half-naked old man

bobbing up and down in between the cars.

And it was right then when I realised,

"Ah, this guy is crazy."

-Hi, Will.
-Afternoon, Sir.

-You know Matt?
-We've met on the phone.

Hi, Matt. How you doing?

-You wanna park up, don't you?
-Yeah.

Actually, the entrance is just there.

There's been times, like,

we'd have quite a serious conversation about money.

And then he says...

-So, Will...
-"Will, what does woke mean?"

What is... what is going on?

What is Ranulph Fiennes asking me what "woke" means?

This looks like solid chocolate.

Mmm.

You notice that I'm avoiding the entire cake.

Why is that?

Well, if I just have the icing and not the rest of the cake,

my total chocolate input is less.

That's it.

Put that in there.

I think Ran is the hero in his own story.

If you find a photograph of a frostbitten hand...

He is also the ringmaster.

The most gory.

Ran and Charlie's final challenge.

To get off the frozen ocean

across the increasingly tenuous ice.

As the summer progressed, the ice got more dangerous.

I decided better to find an ice floe

which was big enough to be fairly safe

whilst there was still a big one.

We wanted our ice floe to head off on a certain degree.

Bloody ice floe went where it wanted.

Ginny was in North Greenland and I flew out to join her.

Go away.

Benjamin Bowring, Benjamin Bowring, Transglobe Nord.

Benjamin Bowring, Benjamin Bowring, Transglobe Nord.

The general consensus amongst the experts

was that it wouldn't be possible to actually go with the ship

to where they were and pick them up.

The experts in London and our committee in London

felt that the aircraft should,

while it could still land on this ice floe,

pick them up, take them out of the Arctic,

and that would be the expedition successfully concluded.

At the very last moment of the three-year expedition,

and seven years' planning,

to have it ruined by being flown out was pretty dreadful.

The decision from the committee to airlift you out

was thwarted because Ginny in her incredible way said,

"I'm awfully sorry, Sir Evan, I can't hear what you're saying.

It's a very, very bad line.

I'm losing you.
I'm sorry, I can't hear

but I think you said 'press on'."

"And we shall, we shall.

We'll get there in the end."

-And she put the receiver down.
-Wonderful.

Ginny used the ski-planes to ask us our opinions.

-Switch it on.
-It's always on.

-It is on.
-I've lost my cigarette.

No, that's your cigarette.
I'm smoking it for you now.

Now I agree to take personal responsibility for my own life

in not hopping onto the aircraft while we have got the chance.

And that's my opinion only,

and so now for Charlie to tell you his.

If I wanted to get onto the plane,

which I don't want to do,

because I think it's so pointless.

Well, the point is, Charlie,

that the committee have advised you.

So they're saying that you're risking

leaving yourself floating out

in the Arctic Ocean forever and ever, amen.

About two months later,

the aircraft wasn't gonna be able to land.

There's no way they can be rescued.

The ship had been trying on occasions

to get into the ice and pick them up.

It was impossible.

We set out on another attempt.

We're still going north-west.
Still going north-west now.

We pushed and shoved and we got stuck.

We waited a day or two.

The ice closed in behind us.
We pushed on again.

We got to a position where the aircraft flew overhead

and it can see Ran and Charlie in their camp,

and it can see us at the same time.

They sent a message,

"We are X miles away from you. Come at once."

We couldn't see the ship.

The two of us were ridiculously weak by then.

We were beginning to despair.

Saw two matchsticks in the white horizon.

The masts.

And, you know, it even now

makes me emotional to think of it.

Failure was so close.

The moment of getting on the ship...

yeah, and seeing Ginny was amazing, yeah.

On a sunny August Sunday,

thousands come to Greenwich

to greet the first men to circumnavigate the Earth

via the South and North Poles.

It was an adventure

which took three years to complete.

The planning began ten years ago.

They've broken records, defied those who said

they had neither the numbers nor the equipment...

I didn't want anything out of it myself.

I haven't really any personal ambitions, so to speak.

I'm really just, you know, a housewife.

Ginny was such an incredible support to him.

She was absolutely crucial.

She did so much of the work with the communications.

She was ceaseless, absolutely ceaseless.

And if it hadn't been for her,

I don't think any of this would have happened, really.

I always wanted what Ginny wanted, which was children.

We had decided one boy and one girl would be ideal.

We worked so hard at having children.

For 17 years, we went to IVF people.

And when that didn't work, we decided that we would adopt.

Helping the chimney sweep.

We were told we were doing expeditions.

We didn't have a dependable income.

Ginny was very, very upset.

-Um, Ran, coffee?
-Yeah.

Right, two coffees.

Gosh, I haven't been here for years.

When they first got the house, we used to come and visit.

It was a very long time ago

cos my girls are all in their thirties

and when we were here, they were tiny little people.

Mummy, look!

We used to have the most amazing Christmases here.

Oh, look, the moment of maximum impact.

A blue flame.

A purple fire.

That's cute.

He called me Miniature.

Ginny was Big Ginny and I was Miniature.

And, you know, they were always, always part of our lives.

The pair of them were like second parents to us.

We were told off by them.

She would bark at anyone,

she would call herself the Witch of Exmoor.

The wickedest, sort of, sense of humour.

Life was just never boring

when you were spending time with the Fienneses.

They were definitely more family

than aunts and uncles and cousins.

He really is just a really big child. Absolutely great fun.

Stupid dog.

The worst thing throughout his life

was that he didn't have children.

The best thing that ever happened to Ran for his career

was that he didn't have children.

At some point,

after we got back from Transglobe, the phone goes.

It was this guy Dr Hammer who'd sponsored our expedition.

Dr Hammer was so impressed, he took me on as his gofer.

When he came into the office, I said to him,

"Ran, you do look a little bit nervous."

He said, "Yeah, well, it's my first office job in 40 years."

I'll call you back.
Call you back next Monday, OK?

Ideally next Friday.

He used to train avidly during his lunch-break

by packing copies of Dr Hammer's biography into a rucksack

and then running up and down the stairs

of his office building.

I worked for him for ten years.

When he took me on, Dr Hammer said,

"Three months every year I'll pay you

and you can go and do an expedition."

What could be luckier?

When we went back towards the North Pole,

it was in the '80s.

The thing that really hit Ran and myself

was how the ice had changed.

There was a lot more open water around.

The ice was not nearly as thick

and the temperatures were a little bit kind of warmer.

They were minus 35 as opposed to minus 50.

And that makes a big difference.

You said last time you were here

that if this one didn't work, never again.

That's correct, yeah.

-What happened?
-I changed my mind.

It must be a tantalising feeling.

You got within a hair's breadth of the Pole.

Tantalising. Very frustrating.

He really wanted to get there first.

There'd be a phone call saying, "What do you think?

What do we do different?

What, where, how do we go?
Let's go again."

Failing on the way to the North Pole

is something you can keep doing

cos the other people are failing too.

Frostbitten, half-starved

and more dead than alive,

the polar explorer, Sir Ranulph Fiennes,

and Dr Michael Stroud tucked into

a hearty breakfast of eggs this morning.

This time I have no reason

for feeling any more confident than previous times

other than a sort of hunch.

Thermos and mug.

OK.

He hates it when other people

do something that he hasn't done.

He likes to be the one in front in almost all circumstances.

Mike and I knew we must avoid always trying to do solos.

But because we were always trying

to break the newest record,

and the Norwegians had beaten us,

well, we didn't believe they had,

unsupported with two people,

the record was nobody had done it unsupported with one person.

I don't like solo expeditions.
I just don't.

I think there's too many parameters that can go wrong

and it can be pretty sort of...

...terminal.

I did the communications for him.

And he called me on the radio...

And I picked it up.
It was like, "Hi, Ran."

And I heard this voice and I'd never heard him scared.

Normally it's, "Hello, Flo.
Yes, blah, blah, blah, blah."

And this was more like, "Yeah, I got a problem here."

And he, I could tell it in his voice,

he was still being his methodical, professional self,

but I could tell that he was seriously hurt.

Everything went wrong.

The sledge fell into the water

and everything vital was on board, you know.

I managed to slide down,

grab the sledge, which was now sinking in the water,

managed to pull it out.

My hands got wet.

Very quickly I lost all feeling in both hands.

That was a desperate situation.
Very desperate.

It was about a week later I managed to get to a hospital.

He's triumphed over adversity

in some of the most remote places in world

but today, simply opening a letter is a struggle.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes will lose the tips

of four of his fingers on his left hand.

The surgeons will cut, um, a bit below the mummified areas

in order to have skin to put over the new stumps.

You're very stoic about it all.

No, I mean, it's, you know,

there's no point in crying over spilt milk.

-Faithful old shed?
-Yeah.

Forty years.

The amputation was fixed but not for five months.

And every time I touched something, it was agony.

Ginny said, "Well, you're getting very irritable."

Which I was.

So, we got a Black and Decker workbench.

Put your hand in it. Ginny would tighten up so it couldn't move.

Start that way, turn it through about that much.

Try a bit more, then try a bit more

until you've gone right the way round.

It did sort of rather hurt because of getting too close in,

but after a bit, you get good at doing it.

That one and that one, made a bit of a botch-up job.

That one, because of the big bone in the middle,

that took over a day.

Beautiful. No rain.

Hardly believe it's Wales.

No matter what you might have done in the past,

when age catches up with you,

your teeth, your eyes, your ears,

then obviously, if you're human, you're gonna object.

The mind wants to do things,

but then suddenly finds that your body's falling to bits.

-Bear, good to see you again.
-Well done. You're such a star.

-You been OK?
-Yeah, I'm... If you feel that.

That's not muscle, that's a heart... blood...

-Oh, my God!
-From Cromwell Hospital.

They wouldn't let me out.

So I said, "If you let me wear the thing for 24 hours..."

There's a battery in there.

These are plugged into heart plugs,

or whatever you call them.

And after this, we've gotta return all their stuff

to Cromwell Hospital on the way home.

You're unbelievable.

They won't insure you for anything when...

So, are you meant to be there now?

Yes. For 24 hours, yeah.

Those were the days.

Do you think there is a heaven, a hell and all that?

Maybe, maybe not.

I used to be frightened of death.

But ever since I had a massive heart attack,

which I didn't feel, no pain at all.

I just suddenly woke up three and a half days later

and Ginny told me in the hospital bed with wires,

"You had a heart attack three days ago,

on an aeroplane, which hadn't taken off,

and you were taken to the A&E."

And so I knew that I had been dead

for three days and nights.

And how many angels did I see? None.

It was just complete wonderful nothingness.

Thirteen times your heart stopped?

Thirteen times my heart stopped.

And they told her if they did manage to resuscitate me,

I'd probably have some sort of brain damage.

She later said that didn't make much difference.

My problem was that I was due to do a major project

with a friend of mine, Dr Michael Stroud.

Seven marathons on seven continents in seven days.

This had to start only three and a half months

after the operation.

I got a phone call from Ran on the intensive care unit

and, you know, he basically said,

"Don't cancel the marathons.

They're telling me that my heart wasn't much damaged."

Sir Ranulph, who had heart bypass surgery in June,

is raising money for the British Heart Foundation.

The choice was slightly not selfish but personal.

The British Heart Foundation had saved my life.

Go, guys.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes

and fellow Antarctic explorer, Dr Mike Stroud,

are trying something no one's ever attempted.

If they complete all seven marathons,

they'll have run 183.4 miles

and travelled 45,000 miles by air.

There are gonna be people watching this

and listening to you thinking what you're doing is suicidal.

I didn't want to push myself.

I didn't want to, at any point,

have my heart beating more than a 130 beats a minute.

Did it?

I forgot to take the pulse machine,

so I don't know whether it did or it didn't.

You forgot to bring that?

Isn't that a vital piece of equipment?

Yeah, that was very stupid.

Ran was doing his seven marathons,

which was batty, really.

Ginny was gonna come up

and watch him do the one in London.

-But she didn't come.
-We're off.

Good luck!

So I rang her up that evening.

"Why didn't you come?"
She said, "Oh, well, I had backache."

Anyway, I rang her up the next day

and said, "How is your backache?"

She said, "Well, it wasn't backache."

So I said, "Well, Ginny, for goodness' sake,

why don't I come down and pick you up?

And I can bring you back to London

and be there when Ran comes back."

Um, and she said,
"No, I can't. But you mustn't tell him."

So it was simply awful.

But that's the way she wanted to do it.

I can remember it very, very clearly indeed.

I don't know how long she'd had cancer for.

One, two, three, four, five.

Five, four, three, two, one.

One, two, three, four, five.
Five, four, three, two, one.

All my love and look forward to seeing you then.

Thank you very much, my love.
That's excellent.

And that's good graft. Over.

Well, I love you very much. Speak to you later.

Nighty night. Bye.

The phone rang here at home and it was Ran.

And he said, "I've got really, really bad news."

He said she'd died about 15 minutes ago.

"She's still in my arms."

I think I've massacred this rose.

I don't know what to do with it.

He was very business-like about everything

because that's how he dealt with it.

My problem is it is the only topic

which makes me emotional

and so I have to, inside, force myself not to get that way

because the love was huge

and therefore time doesn't heal it, really.

It sort of sits.

It was a terrible time for him.

And poor Ran,

he had three really close family who all died.

His sister was cancer

and his mother fairly shortly after Ginny.

I can't remember when and where

I gave to actually crying.

I can remember at night, going up and talking to the animals

using the names that she had for them,

and Julia, and so on and so forth.

And just desperately wanting

to get out of a mood of zero nothingness.

Ginny said, you know, "This is such a shame

because he was going to try and ease off a bit

and we were gonna have more time together and more holidays."

-I think he would have.
-Push, push, push.

Well, I don't know, actually.

Knowing Ran, he probably would have carried on doing something,

but I think it certainly drove him to just go flat out.

Well done, Ran.
Well done, Ran.

Keep it going as long as you can.

Come on, push it on. Push, push, push, push, push. That's good.

I worked and worked and worked and worked

so as to be away from home.

Life was completely second-rate.

Now, terribly sad, last year, your wife died.

You'd been together since you were...?

Well, she was nine, I was 12.

We knew each other for about 48 years.

Do you think that your drive to keep going

even now with the marathons

and so on and future exhibition, expeditions

has anything to do with the fact

that you just want to keep yourself busy?

I don't want to think any more.

I don't want to have time to think.

So, the more I can do, it's good. Yeah, keep busy.

He went up Everest.

Um...

But he told me that it was a sort of not an easy way out,

but if he dropped off a cliff or fell asleep in the snow,

it would be an option,

because he had no motivation to go on after Ginny died.

But he turned back because he felt his heart going.

That's the most heroic thing I know that he's done,

given who he was.

His instinct to survive is stronger than his, um, grief.

Just getting ready to, um, go into the sea

to get rid of suspected Parkinson's.

I've tried what the doctor suggested,

and it didn't stop the shaking.

And basically, I saw on TV,

that you can make your own body protein by getting cold.

The exact opposite to what I became quite good at,

which was staying warm.

I can remember with Anton and Jill and Ginny,

Paris holiday.

We decided we would have a look in the catacombs.

And you walked down.

And on that side and that side,

each person is bones and a skull,

bones and a skull, bones and a skull. Twelve high.

Millions.

What's the name of that one?
What's the name of that one?

Did that one worry?

What you worry about is just utterly pointless.

It's not going to affect anything.

You're gonna end up like one of them.

But you'll have a name cos you'll be...

People will remember what you've done.

Maybe ten years or something.
Very unlikely.

But I don't mind about that because of what I've just said.

It's just irrelevant.

We have a time down here and when it's done, it's done.

For 16 years since Ginny died,

I probably only come into the house

for, like, a bath, or watching TV.

I thought that it was that way but it obviously isn't.

So, I started advertising to sell Greenlands

about three years ago.

I tell you, I'm gonna start hitting it.

This house, this was Ginny.

Now Ginny's gone, the house has lost that anchorage.

But the place brings back the memories.

The view out of the sitting room window.

It's quite pretty.

And Ran's clearing away the clinker from the chimney.

God.

And at the back of the house, some barns.

It's got cupboards and fitted shelves.

It's lovely hearing her voice like this.

-Tea up, pussy cat.
-OK.

Tea up.

Is there any tea leaves?
Teabags?

This is wonderful.

Darling, are there any teabags?

-Teabags?
-No. Finished them all.

That's so funny.
That's so wonderful.

Walkies time. Come on.

Come on. Puppy.

It's just amazing how time...

Huh.

Just a memory which you've totally forgotten ever existed

and all the happiness that was involved.

How many other times have I forgotten that were lovely?

But we had our time.

We made it the way Ginny wanted it to be.

And, um, when we withdraw, we'll leave them with the atmosphere.

When, you know, not long before she died,

she looked at me and said,

"I've said to Ran that he must remarry

and have a child."

You know, that was it.

She was desperate for him to have a child

cos she knew that's what he wanted more than anything.

So, uh, yeah, she did want him to move on.

Cor, stiff.

Trouble with not being able to straighten up.

The first time I've spent the entire night tied in.

And that's the sort of, shall we say, lavatory.

2007, when we climbed the North Face of the Eiger together,

he was realising that,

you know, he wasn't the man

that he was in his thirties and forties.

He was coming to terms with that sort of fragility.

You know, his own internal battle

that his body wasn't the impregnable fortress

that perhaps it once was.

Often find I literally can't do moves

which other people can do

where there's a particularly tricky grip

which has to be on the left hand.

Yeah.

That really foxes me.

Don't want to lose my axe.

-Careful.
-Why?

Well, it'll cut the rope.

-That wouldn't be good.
-No.

So Ran's basically hanging completely above the void.

Not liking it one bit, I tell you.

-What did you reckon to that?
-Hair-raising, I'm afraid.

Not my cup of tea at all.
Very frightening.

It was a pretty interesting, rich time

to be around Ran.

You know, he's still going through

all the emotional rigmarole of Ginny's loss

and I think it was his sister was about to pass away and...

So he was dealing with a lot of that emotional imbalance.

And, you know, it was also the time

that he first got together with Louise.

He rang to say that he'd met somebody.

And he was going to marry them.

And I said, "You've gotta do what you're happy doing,

because you just want someone

to be happy that you love, don't you?"

Ran's plans to climb the Eiger have absolutely terrified me.

It's not my idea of something particularly pleasant.

And after how ill Everest made him,

you would have thought

that he would be less inclined to do such things.

And for the first time on this expedition,

he has a bigger reason than ever before

to get back down alive.

His four-month-old daughter, Elizabeth.

Those of us who were close friends of his

were told that because he was marrying again

that, you know, his life was going to change.

Those particular chapters have closed

involving old army friends like me,

and that he was setting off on a new a new life.

Everything was separate in Ran's life.

-I think he's, you know...
-Compartmentalised.

Yeah, every part of his life.

We're in a compartment, aren't we?

Hmm.

And Louise is definitely in a compartment.

My whole world, every person she spoke to,

would bring up Ginny and this and that,

and Ginny and that, and so on.

I wouldn't have liked it if I'd been Louise.

I'm fearful that I lose the close warmth of my wife

because of her thinking, "Oh, dear,

he's still living back in those times."

Ran doesn't run away.
He doesn't run away.

The competitive instinct kicks in.

He's, "I'm gonna climb that bloody hill."

It's third time lucky for the explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes

who's become the oldest Briton to scale Everest.

This morning, the 65-year-old

finally made it to the top of the world.

Is that it, or do you have any more mountains

that you want to conquer?

I'm not going near any more mountains,

not even for Marie Curie.

I hate them.

Fifteen hundred feet on Exmoor

is quite high enough.
So, that's it.

That was when they had

the Guinness World Hall of Fame in London.

The world's greatest musician, Paul McCartney.

The world's greatest sportsperson,

Billie Jean King. Myself.

And lastly, that gentleman who was a cuckoo clock salesman

who had an amazing ability

to walk over a hundred yards on red-hot coals with no shoes on.

Scientists tried to work it out but they couldn't.

That's Bothie coming in from the sunlight.

That's Ginny.

That is Charlie Burton, a wonderful guy,

at the base camp in Antarctica, just before setting out.

Sorry, I thought you wanted

to photograph what I was pointing at.

That's, um, last year.

That's Elizabeth. She would have been 13 coming on 14.

And Louise.

And me looking, or trying to look smart.

We're a happy family, as they call it.

How do you find parenting?

I find it's, um, wonderful

and it means that you've had a complete life.

And seeing someone who is your blood,

and the blood of the someone you love,

is just a great process all the time.

When we were having little mock fights,

Elizabeth used to always go for your nose.

She was happiest when she managed to get Daddy's nose,

about the size of which she was usually rude.

Her nickname is Mouse or Totty Mouse.

Louise's nickname is Lollick.

I asked her the other day, "Why do I call you Lollick?"

She thought for a bit and said she couldn't remember.

And I can't remember either.

I've made a plan based on statistics.

I'll do what I've always been doing every year

which is to climb Crib Goch

until I'm 85.

86th year I'll have to find something else.

I might try Ben Nevis.

I'm not sure if I'll be allowed to drive then.

Hello, sweetheart.

I'm leaving early.
I'm leaving now.

Right, darling.

Very, very much love to you and give Mouse a kiss.

She's amazing.

Lovely Mouse.
Lots and lots of love.

-Love you very much.
-I love you.

Love you, sweetheart. Darling.