CREDIT: Chris Winter/LNP
Sir Ranulph Fiennes has more connections with South Africa than most people are aware of. He was born posthumously after his father was killed in the 2nd World War and his mother moved to South Africa in January 1947 when he was 2 and a half and lived there until he was 12 years old. Initially, he went to Little People’s Play School in Wynberg and then was educated at Western Province Preparatory School. He grew up in Constantia where his grandmother Florence Agnes Rathfelder descends from one of the wealthiest families in the Cape. See reference to her deceased estate here.
Sir Ranulph Fiennes remembers attending St. Saviours Church in Claremont where Canon Wade was the resident priest. He said the Minister had two skinny daughters one of them was Virginia Wade who won the Wimbledon Tennis Singles. On visits home, he loves to eat out at the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront and makes a special place in his heart for Cape Town. Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, 3rd Baronet “Order of the British Empire” (born 7 March 1944), better known as Ranulph (Ran) Fiennes, is a “British people British”List of explorers” adventurer and holder of several endurance records. He is also a prolific writer.
Sir Ranulph Fiennes served in the British Army for eight years including a period of counter-insurgency service while attached to the army of the Sultanate of “Oman” He later undertook numerous expeditions and was the first person to visit both the “North Pole” and South Poles by surface means and the first to completely cross Antarctica on foot. In May 2009, at the age of 65, he climbed to the summit of Mount Everest. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, he is the world’s greatest living explorer. Sir Ranulph Fiennes has written numerous books about his army service and his expeditions as well as a book defending Robert Falcon Scott from modern revisionists. Ranulph is a descendant of Johannes Rathfelder was born Mar 1821 in Wurttemberg, and died on 20 Nov 1909. He married Susanna Elizabeth MacFarlane, daughter of John MacFarlane and Mathilda Aldred. She was born Abt. 1836, and died on 30 May 1914.
