Having led 22 major expeditions to remote parts of the world, including both Poles, Ranulph Fiennes is the only man alive to have travelled around the Earth’s circumpolar surface.
He was the first explorer to completely cross the Antarctic continent unsupported, and in 2009, aged 65, climbed to the summit of Mount Everest becoming the oldest Briton ever to do so.
Since 1969, when he led the British Expedition on the White Nile,
Ranulph Fiennes has been at the forefront of many ground breaking exploratory expeditions
Fred Gillam, also known as Fred the Forager, grew up on a country estate in Wiltshire where his father was the head gardener. After developing a passion for plants and fungi at a very early age, he went on to develop a career in lecturing in Forestry, Horticulture and Countryside Management and worked for a number of well known conservation organisations.
His talk is “What Otzi the Iceman knew”.
When the 5000 year old body named “Otzi” was discovered frozen in the ice in the South Tyrol, he was carrying some basic equipment. A closer look at his belongings provides us with a snapshot of an era where sophisticated knowledge of the properties of raw materials; stone, bone, skin, wood, bark, leaves and fungi, meant the difference between comfortable survival and death from exposure, predation, or at the hands of enemies.