Ranulph fiennes autobiography cold sore prevention

Reading it on a recent holiday trip across Canada seemed appropriate. After all, it was cold. Cold, but not that cold. Photograph by Iain McDonald.

Ranulph Fiennes book detailing his

That would put me in the correct mindset for the book, right? No more so is this sense of humour on display than in the title of his book. There are only so many descriptions of snowfields and glaciers you can read before you become a little desensitised to it. It snows a lot. What else? In it, he describes how he and his companions were forced to take Valium tablets in order to be able to sleep, the pain from their uncontrollable shivering was so great.

A combination of that shivering and sweating in their sleeping bags would see the polar adventurers lose more than 1, calories every night. And this was just their training trip — the actual expedition would prove to be much more difficult. The team proved to be an interesting bunch. From hundreds of applicants, the final crew was whittled down to an interesting few: Charlie Burton, a former soldier found working behind the bar in a local pub, and Oliver Shepard, a former soldier.

In fact, the book is a testament to human character; to endurance, resourcefulness, bravery, ambition.