SIR Ranulph Fiennes, the only man alive ever to have travelled around the Earth’s circumpolar surface, is heading out on some very different travels around Great Britain.

Next month, the man named by the Guinness Book of Records as ‘the world’s greatest living explorer’ will present his Living Dangerously: An Evening With Ranulph Fiennes show at the Mercury Theatre in Colchester.

He’ll be discussing his record-breaking private expeditions, travelling by riverboat, hovercraft, manhaul sledge, skidoo, Land Rover and ski as he reflects on a life in pursuit of extreme adventure, risking life and limb.

Among his many achievements, Sir Ranulph was the first to reach both Poles, the first to cross the Antarctic and Arctic Ocean, as well as the first to circumnavigate the world along its polar axis.

Living Dangerously spans Sir Ranulph’s childhood and school misdemeanours, his army life and early expeditions, through the Transglobe Expedition to his Global Reach Challenge: his goal to become the first person to cross both polar ice caps and climb the highest mountain on each of the seven continents.

“I’ll be talking about my life: my childhood and schooling, and training with the SAS – and being chucked out of the SAS,” says Sir Ranulph. “I’ll talk about my very first posting with the British Army, and being the youngest captain in the British Army – even though I didn’t deserve it – and how that inspired my love of exploring.

“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 2,000-mile long boat trip down one of the toughest rivers in the world, in a rubber dinghy.

“There’s so much to talk about that I can only briefly touch on being the oldest Brit up Everest and the oldest pensioner in Great Britain to go up the north face of the Eiger. I’ve tried to get a good mix of polar exploring and my other adventures.”

Gazette:

Are there any expeditions or challenges Sir Ranulph would still like to conquer?

“The record I would like to have broken is to cross all the ice caps and climb all seven of the highest mountains,” he says. “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.

“It was 2009 and I was in my 60s and quite fit, but when you’re a bit older, things start to go wrong. Your circulation heads towards your core so if you have ever gotten frost bite before, you are even more likely to get it again. The mountains that you can actually climb when you are in your 70s have to be much lower than the ones you could have climbed before. There are only three of them out of seven I haven’t done, so it’s very annoying. I’m sure someone else will complete it soon.”

Sir Ranulph is competitive, which is not a good trait, he reveals.

“When I was first asked to climb Everest,” he begins, “I said no, because of my extreme vertigo. Then, six months later, my wife died and I just wanted to do something, anything to distract me.

“So I did months and months of training and then I got a heart attack when I was 300 metres from the top and my friend got hypoxia on the way down. I told the doctor when I got down to base camp that I was never trying it again but he told me that if you go up the other side, from Nepal, it’s dead easy.

“Four years after that, 2008, I did that and nearly got to the top, didn’t get a heart attack, but the body of my Sherpa’s father appeared in the snow, as he had previously died trying to climb Everest. There hadn’t been that much snow that year so the bodies just reappear. It was awful.

“The next year, by which time I was an OAP, I had worked out why I had failed twice: I was being too competitive. The next time I tried, I went with a Sherpa who was so fit, there was no point in trying to be competitive. I went very slowly that time.”

Sir Ranulph, who relaxes by sleeping, listening to Irish musician Enya and ‘running/shuffling’ around the Serpentine a couple of times between lectures, has always got something lined-up but declined to reveal his next adventure. He says: “The enemy are constantly listening to what we are planning.

“If it’s a first, you don’t want to let anyone know, so unfortunately, I can’t divulge as to what I am doing next. You’ll just have to wait and see.”

Tickets for his show, which takes place at the Colchester theatre on February 13, are now sold out but to go on the waiting list for returns, just call the box office on 01206 573948.