Sir David Hempleman-Adams: It’s been hard to process Ranulph Fiennes’s disappearance

0At 70, David Hempleman-Adams feels ‘very mortal’, but has no plans to slow down – Russell SachOn a gloriously warm Wiltshire morning, Sir David Hempleman-Adams is at his farm near Hindon, just a few miles from Salisbury, surrounded by the chalk downland that has been his home for the past five years. It is quintessentially English countryside: rolling hills, ancient farmland and wide-open skies. It is hardly the landscape one might expect to have produced one of the world’s greatest explorers.On a gloriously warm Wiltshire morning, Sir David Hempleman-Adams is at his farm near Hindon, just a few miles from Salisbury, surrounded by the chalk downland that has been his home for the past five years. It is quintessentially English countryside: rolling hills, ancient farmland and wide-open skies. It is hardly the landscape one might expect to have produced one of the world’s greatest explorers.

Yet a day after his 70th birthday, Hempleman-Adams remains every inch the adventurer. In 1998, he became the first British person to complete the “Explorer’s Grand Slam” – an adventurer’s goal to reach the North Pole and South Pole, as well as climb the highest mountain on every continent. Five years later, he became the first person to cross the Atlantic Ocean alone in an open wicker basket balloon. He has climbed Everest twice, first in 1993 with his good friend, Brian Blessed, and again in 2011, when he spent the night stranded above 27,000ft in the “death zone” and experienced hallucinations.

“I feel very mortal,” he reflects now. “At my birthday, I will have one toast to absent friends. I have lost a lot of friends along the way, and I truly believe, ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’”

One of those in his close circle is Sir Ranulph Fiennes, an explorer friend of 30 years. An investigation by The Telegraph last month revealed that a watchdog found Fiennes was being “unlawfully” deprived of his liberty when his wife, who has lasting power of attorney, placed him in a care home two years ago. He has not been seen in public in two years, and Fiennes’s wife has refused to let friends visit or tell them where he is.

“His disappearance has been very hard to assimilate,” says Hempleman-Adams. Fiennes was like one of the family. “Great humour with a quick and ready smile, quick to take the p–s out of himself, great fun – that’s what I want to remember,” he says. Fiennes used to read bedtime stories to Hempleman-Adams’s three daughters when they were young. “But this type of thing affects thousands of people in this country. It’s only because he’s high-profile that people have taken notice. That is perhaps the most important point of all,” he adds.

“Ran [Fiennes] is vulnerable, and everyone involved must surely want what is best for him,” he said when the news first broke. “[But] there is a balance to be struck between protecting someone’s dignity and protecting their right to remain connected with the people who have mattered throughout their life.”

Hempleman-Adams’s relationship with adventure began long before the records. Raised in Wiltshire, he attended the local comprehensive school, where one of his teachers first ignited his fascination with exploration with a camping trip to the Welsh mountains.

At 18, he discovered the exploits of Reinhold Messner, the renowned Italian climber who conquered Everest without supplemental oxygen. Then inspiration came from the great British explorers – Hillary, Scott and Shackleton – men for whom exploration was not simply about reaching a destination, but about testing human endurance against the elements.

Hempleman-Adams says his own philosophy is simple: “Everyone has their Everest. I do it because it’s there, but deep down, it’s that love of adventure which I had from the first day I slept in a tent on a mountain at the age of 12. I still have my best night’s sleep in a tent.”

The world of exploration has changed dramatically since Hempleman-Adams began his career. Now, modern adventurers possess satellite communications, sophisticated clothing, GPS and highly accurate weather forecasting. Yet technology, he argues, has not changed the fundamental truth of exploration. “It still does not get you up the mountain,” he quips.

Indeed, it can sometimes make adventure more dangerous. The extraordinary crowds on Everest are partly a consequence of increasingly accurate weather forecasting, which allows climbers to identify narrow windows of perfect conditions and then attempt to summit in huge numbers. Some inexperienced climbers and adventurers arrive for what amounts to the final mile, supported by technology and professional guides, but without the experience to deal with a crisis. When things go wrong, it is frequently volunteers who must rescue them.

Hempleman-Adams has experienced this first-hand. In July 2020, he climbed Mont Blanc with his partner, Rosalind Smith. Smith is an accomplished Cambridge academic, trustee of St John Ambulance and successful technology entrepreneur who developed her own passion for climbing. The pair were climbing in hostile weather conditions and, after reaching the 15,700ft summit in horizontal winds, encountered a Polish couple on the descent. One was suffering from hypothermia, while the other was suffering from altitude sickness.

The couple had GPS and waypoints, but lacked the experience to negotiate a crevasse field safely. With no possibility of a helicopter rescue that day or the next, Hempleman-Adams and Smith guided them through the dangerous terrain down the mountain. They were subsequently awarded the Silver Life Saving Medal of the Order of St John for conspicuous bravery at personal risk.

Smith paid tribute to her partner. “David’s leadership and knowledge of the mountain, and the weather conditions, saved the day. The couple followed him down the mountain even though we were leading them in a direction that disagreed with what they thought their GPS was telling them. He managed to instil confidence in them just through calm gravitas,” she said.

The subject about which Hempleman-Adams is most passionate today is not exploration, but Britain’s young people. His own life was profoundly shaped by opportunities provided through his comprehensive school, such as the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. One of the most influential voices in his school years was Sir Chris Bonington, a Royal Tank Regiment officer.

The young Hempleman-Adams wrote to Bonington, and received a detailed and thoughtful reply which helped set him on his path towards exploration. Decades later, he still takes the time to respond to young people who write to him with dreams of becoming explorers themselves.

He believes young people need incentives, direction and the opportunity to discover their own capabilities. He is also strongly in favour of some form of national service. “Countries such as Sweden have it about right, where young people undertake civilian or military service and gain practical experience, discipline, mentorship and citizenship skills,” he says. “Resilience cannot simply be taught in a classroom. It has to be experienced.”

Hempleman-Adams has three adult daughters from his previous marriage. Alicia, Camilla and Amelia have followed him into the world of adventure, creating a remarkable family legacy. In 2008, Camilla, then aged 15, became the youngest person to ski the last degree to the North Pole. In 2011, Amelia, then 16, became the youngest person to ski to the South Pole. Earlier this year, Alicia became the first British woman to cross the Atlantic in a hydrogen gas balloon.

The other area which concerns him is tax, mostly inheritance tax (IHT). He has offloaded nearly all his assets to his children, including his family home, commercial property and management stock, to avoid paying IHT. “We’ve hounded the super-rich out of this country, and lost billions in tax,” he says, “but inheritance tax also hurts those hard-working people, and their parents, who have scrapped and saved money for their children, only for the greedy state to take it for more handouts to those who contribute little to the country.”

On this week’s announcement from Kemi Badenoch that the Conservatives would scrap IHT on family homes, he says: “I wish she had gone further and, like Australia, just abolished IHT. Yes, great to increase [the amount couples can leave] to £1m, but it’s tinkering. She needs to be bold to change opinion.”

It’s a typically robust view that neatly sums up his political views. “Lord Eddie Shackleton, son of the great Shackleton, said I was a capitalist with a socialist heart,” he adds.

There is little sign that turning 70 has caused Hempleman-Adams to contemplate retirement or ever stopping. “Never. I would sleep on the lawn if I had to be taken into hospital,” he says.

For most people, reaching 70 would be a milestone at which to look back on a life well lived. For Hempleman-Adams, it appears to be merely another waypoint.

The world’s highest mountains have been climbed. Both Poles have been reached. Oceans have been crossed by balloon. But for a man who has spent his life believing that everyone has their Everest, there is almost certainly another mountain somewhere on the horizon.

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