Straight-line expedition set to circle globe

Press, 23 August 1979, Page 6

Straight-line expedition set to circle globe

NZPA London A British team of amateur adventurers will leave Greenwich next month for the world’s first circumnavigation over both poles — along the Greenwich Meridian. Led by one of Britain’s best-known explorers, Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham Fiennes — normally abbreviated to simply Ran. Fiennes — the Trans-Globe Expedition will take three years to complete, after seven years of preparation. The six-man, one-woman group will travel by LandRover through Europe and the West African Sahara, by ship to the Antarctic, by snowmobile across 4200 km of Antarctica to the South Pole, by boat across the Pacific to Alaska, by motorised rubber raft up the Yukon and Mackenzie

rivers, through the icy, 4800 km North-West Passage, and by ski and snowmobile over the Arctic ice cap to the North Pole before returning by ship to Greenwich. The team will be in New Zealand in March, 1981, if all goes to schedule. The expedition will use 200 tonnes of equipment, as well as a Canadian De Havilland Twin Otter aircraft and a 60m ship specially constructed for ice work. It ha« all been provided free. The expedition could not ha' a been mounted without sponsorship. In return the expedition will promote the equipment at trade fairs throughout the world, including New 7 Zealand. The expedition will map [least 1300 km of previously unexplored terrain in the (Antarctic, carry out extensive glacier, weather, and

magnetic-field research in both polar regions, and assess the effects of the journey on members’ bodies through wearing miniature tape machines to monitor their hearts. The only woman in the expedition is Lady Virginia Fiennes, wife of the expedition’s leader, and originator of the idea. She will run the polar base camps for the Arctic and Antarctic crossings, directing communications. Sir Ranulph TwistletonWykeham Fiennes, the third baronet of Banbury, was educated at Eton and was seconded from the British Army to the Sultan of Muscat’s armed forces in Oman. After leaving the Army he led British expeditions to the White Nile, the Jostedalsbre Glacier, and the Headless Valley in British Columbia.