Climb Your Mountain: Everyday lessons from an extraordinary life

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Preparation for what came to be called the Transglobe Expedition began in 1972 and occupied much of Fiennes’s and Ginny’s time during the rest of the decade. The trekking team, led by Fiennes and including fellow Britons Charles Burton and Oliver Shepard, had a support crew of some three dozen people, including Ginny. They departed from Greenwich, England, in September 1979, attempting to stay as close as possible to the Greenwich meridian as they journeyed southward over land and water, until they reached the coast of Antarctica in January 1980. They remained there until October, when Fiennes, Burton, and Shepherd departed on snowmobiles for the South Pole, which they reached on December 15. Setting out again after a short time at the American base there, they arrived at the Scott Base on the west coast of Antarctica in mid-January 1981, having made the continental traverse in a record-setting 67 days. Sir Ranulph has also previously climbed Mount Kosciuszko in Australasia, which is included on some lists of each continent’s highest mountains in place of Carstensz Pyramid.

I’ll also touch upon some of my favourite expeditions, one of which was finding an Arab city with my first wife Ginny that we spent 26 years looking for, and how, in the first year after we got married, we did our first journey together: a 2000 mile long boat trip down one of the toughest rivers in the world, in a rubber dinghy.Taking seven years to plan, this was one of Ranulph Fiennes’ most epic journeys. The team, led by Ranulph, circumnavigated the world on its polar axis, using only surface transport. In total, they covered 52,000 miles over three years. Along with his expedition partner, Charles Burton, Ranulph became the first person to visit both North and South poles travelling only on the surface and to cross the Antarctic and Arctic Oceans. It was such a huge challenge no one has ever repeated the route.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes, (born March 7, 1944, Windsor, Berkshire, England), British adventurer, pioneering polar explorer, and writer, who, among his many exploits, in 1979–82 led the first north-south surface circumnavigation of the world (i.e., along a meridian). Fights Marxist Terrorists 1968-1970 and receives the Sultans Bravery Medal from Her Majesty the Queen. 1968 Everest is the most difficult, I've done that. And if when I'd done Everest I had done the minor ones, that would have been no problem.Sir Ranulph is halfway to completing his Global Reach Challenge in aid of Marie Curie, having already crossed both polar ice caps, and climbed Mount Everest in Asia, Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa and Mount Elbrus in Europe.