Sir Ranulph has climbed world’s highest mountains – but fears Scots whirlpool

POLAR explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes has climbed the world’s highest mountains but admits he feared ending up at the bottom of a Scottish whirlpool.

The adventurer, who has conquered both Poles, Mount Everest, the North Face of the Eiger and discovered lost biblical cities, thought he’d bitten off more than he could chew when he tried to navigate his way through the treacherous Corryvreckan.

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And Sir Ranulph reckons the locals’ tips of using SHEEP to survive the narrow straits between the isles of Jura and Scarba were just shaggy dog stories.

The 81-year old – who will bring his Living Dangerously talking tour to Scotland this week – says: “I spent a Christmas Day on the Isle of Muck once on the West Coast of Scotland with my late wife Ginny.

“We were out in a little rubber boat trying to steer clear of the Corryvreckan whirlpools.

“It’s all a question of timing trying to get through the strait as you can feel the currents pulling the boat down and hear the engine straining.”

He adds: “But the local farmers told us that sometimes they had to chuck their sheep overboard to lighten the load and stop their boats going round and round and down.

“One of the guys I know actually filmed them throwing their sheep into the water in order to save their boat.

“The sheep can then swim away – apparently. That’s what the farmer was saying to me anyway, but I’m not so sure.”

Born in South Africa as Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes – but known as Ran for short – he is officially the world’s greatest living explorer.

But Sir Ranulph, who was an officer in the Scots Greys and the SAS, is used to staring death in the face.

In 2000, he was left with severe frostbite walking unsupported to the North Pole after rescuing his 300lb sledge after it plunged through the breaking ice floes into the icy waters.

He said: “I had no choice. I had to get that sledge as it had my tent and heater in it.”

Later he sawed off the dead tips of his fingers in a tool shed.

He says: “Of course my surgeon was not happy at all with my work, but reluctantly admitted I had made not a bad job of it.

“But it is really irritating having your fingers and thumb on one hand half the length they should be – especially when you’re trying to fix your bowtie in a hurry for a black tie dinner.”

He almost got to wear a bowtie on a professional basis when he auditioned for the role of James Bond after Sir Sean Connery quit playing 007 for the second time in 1971.

He recalls: “I made it into the last six out of 200, where you got to meet the producer Cubby Broccoli, who was him lying on a couch smoking a cigar.

TURNED DOWN FOR BOND

“He took one look at me and said, ‘His hands are too chunky and he looks like a farmer — next’.

“The one who got it was called Roger Moore. But I don’t think I would have fancied acting although I can’t really be sure as I didn’t do it.”

However, his closest brush with death wasn’t on an expedition but a budget airline to Edinburgh in 2003, when he collapsed from a massive heart attack.

He says: “I was flying from Bristol to Edinburgh and we hadn’t taken off yet.

“I can’t remember it at all, but apparently I collapsed on the floor and the hostess told the captain not to take off.

“A fire engine, which is always there, came rushing out with the heart defibrillator and they zapped me 13 times to get me going.

DOUBLE BYPASS

“I didn’t wake up until four days later after a double bypass operation.

“It’s just as well that the airplane hadn’t taken off or I probably wouldn’t be here. So my timing was really excellent on that occasion.”

His conquests also include finding the lost city of Ubar in 1991.

He says: “I spent 26 years searching for it only to discover the site was right under the base camp I’d been using for nearly quarter of a century. That was slightly frustrating.”

But is there anything Sir Ranulph is actually scared of?

He replies: “Yes. I’ve had two phobias in my life. Spiders and vertigo.

“I cured my fear of spiders when I joined the army of the Sultan of Oman. In the desert these huge wolf spiders would run over you. So I had to get over it.

“And I cured my vertigo by climbing Mount Everest of course.”

That was in 2009, when he was 65 – and even though he’s now an octogenarian he still has his eyes on bagging more world records.

He says: “I was in Norway this week discussing a new expedition. But that’s all I can say as the pesky Norwegians might have their eye on it too.”

Sadly in 2004, his fellow polar explorer wife Ginny died from cancer.

HOPES FOR ‘HUMAN SWAN’ PAL

He remarried the following year after meeting his second wife, Louise, during a lecture he was giving and became a father for the first time at the age of 62 with their daughter Elizabeth.

But in October this year, his explorer friend Sacha Dench, 43, dubbed the ‘human swan’, was involved in a midair collision over the Highlands in a paramotor during her 3,000-mile journey around the UK.

Dan Burton, 54, who was in a separate aircraft, was killed by the crash.

He says: “That was very, very sad as she is a wonderful lady and I just hope that the surgeons can put her legs back together again.

“She is a very determined person and was about to give a lecture with us in London and couldn’t of course, but we shall be back together again soon I’m sure as soon as she’s on her feet.

“It’s just really sad that the gentleman with her died.”

OH, AND I ALSO WROTE A DE NIRO FILM TOO

EXPLORER Sir Ranulph can also add another achievement to his impressive list of accomplishments – he wrote a Hollywood film starring Robert De Niro.

The adventurer is officially credited as the man behind the 2011 film Killer Elite – about an assassin who is paid to hunt down three members of the SAS.

However Sir Ranulph admits the movie, which also starred Jason Stratham and Clive Owen, bore little resemblance to his book it was adapted from.

He explains: “I wrote a thing called The Feather Men and the Americans made the film and called it Killer Elite.

“They put Robert De Niro and Jason Stratham and all that lot in it and when I watched it I couldn’t work out any parts that were to do with my book.

“But my book was still number one in the Sunday Times list when it came out and on the cover it said ‘fact or fiction?’ It still sells though.”

And the accomplished author may be seeing another of his books hit the big screen in the near future too.

He says: “They are also thinking about making one called The Sett which is about a ten year quest to find someone who had killed someone else’s wife – it took 10 years to get vengeance.”

And is that fact or fiction?

Sir Ranulph  replies coyly: “Yes – it is fact or fiction.”

As for his own visits to Scotland, Sir Ranulph insists he will never forget his Christmas Day by the Corryvreckan.

Although he can now add a third thing he is scared of to his list – whirlpools.

He says: “We loved being on Muck which was in 1969 as I had just come back with the Scot Greys from the Cold War in Germany.

“But I really didn’t like the Corryvreckan at all – I found the sea around there quite frightening. I’m just glad I never ended up in the whirlpools like those poor sheep.”

*Sir Ranulph Fiennes presents Living Dangerously at Aberdeen’s Music Hall on Friday December 10, Edinburgh’s Usher Hall on December 18 and at Motherwell’s Concert Hall on February 11, 2022.

For more information visit sirranulphfiennes.co.uk

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