David Hempleman Adams

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety eight, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:31

My castaway this week is an explorer. He developed his taste for the great outdoors when, as a schoolboy in Swindon, the Duke of Edinburgh's award scheme lured him away on camping trips in the Brecon Beacons. While still in his early thirties, he made himself wealthy by turning around an ailing company, giving him the foundation he needed to attempt the adventurer's Grand Slam. Earlier this year, he achieved his ambition when he reached the North Pole with the Norwegian Runa Geldnus. So he entered the history books as the only man to climb the highest peaks on seven continents and reach both the magnetic and geographical North and South Poles. That's a lot of travelling for a man who sees himself as an amateur in his field. It's easy to be a starter, he says, quoting Margaret Thatcher. But are you a finisher? He is David Hempelman Adams. Well, you're obviously a finisher, David. You finally did the Grand Slam and were awarded the OBE in recognition. Why you, do you think? What's in your genes that makes you the great adventurer?

David Hempleman Adams1:31

I don't know, I mean my father, Leonie.

David Hempleman Adams1:34

adventure he ever did was probably getting across Swindon in the traffic jam. So I'm not really sure. I I certainly know that when I did the bronze award, Duke of Edinburgh's award, that was an eye opener for me.

Presenter1:47

You would have been thirteen, would you?

David Hempleman Adams1:48

Yeah, something like that. We had to do, I think it was 15 miles and I had this fantastic teacher called Mansell James, old Welsh teacher. And my parents were divorced and I suppose I was f probably the only kid in the whole school at that time with divorced parents and he took me under his wing and got me down to the Brecons and got me on the track of a venture.

Presenter2:11

Why do you link that to the divorce?

David Hempleman Adams2:14

Uh because I think he uh saw a vulnerable lad and I think he he sort of put me and my brother under his wing and uh gave us a bit more attention.

Presenter2:23

Were you aware in that moment when you were out in the Breckenbeakin doing whether it was the bronze or the silver or the gold?

Presenter2:29

Did you was there a moment when you said, This is what I am going to do with my life? I am going to be an adventurer?

David Hempleman Adams2:34

No, not at all. It was something that I enjoyed and I knew I would like to carry on doing that. And I've always been pragmatic even in later life. I've always tried to do the adventure as a hobby and have a business background as well. I think if you do adventure full-time, such as other people, such as Rand Fiennes or Chris Bonington, which is a fantastic lifestyle, but I think... They do it as a job, don't they? Well, they earn a living out of it and that's all they do. I think you lose part of why you're doing it, and I think perhaps it then becomes a job like any other job.

Presenter2:57

They do it as a job, don't they?

Speaker 43:00

Yeah.

Presenter3:00

Yeah.

Presenter3:09

What you lose the fun, do you?

David Hempleman Adams3:10

I think so. I personally would.

Presenter3:11

So I

Presenter3:12

Standing on the ice is like another day at the office. Hardly.

David Hempleman Adams3:16

Well, it's it's interesting you say that. I mean often on on this last North Pole trip we were the only people in the end in this whole Arctic Ocean and the wind was horribly cold. It would take you hours to get your fingers uh warm again. And um we'd we'd say to each other, Runo Geldners uh and myself, we'd often say, Well, here's another day at the office In that circumstance it was another day at the office because we had a job in hand and and that's what we had to go and do.

Presenter3:47

Tell me about your first record.

David Hempleman Adams3:49

Well I've got Sting with Moonover Bourbon Street for my first record because what's happening today I suppose is with extra disposable income communication people can go off to Everest and you you hear these stories where you pay a lot of money and go up Everest or they go to real far-flung corners of the world but when I started a long time ago now I had to hitchhike everywhere. You couldn't afford the cable car so you'd have to climb out of the walk out of the the valley first of all and we couldn't afford the hut and then we'd cook up outside the hut and then climb something. And when I became a businessman I remember driving out, staying in the best hotels, getting a cable car up, staying inside the hut, having a three course meal with wine in the evening, getting out in the morning and we only got halfway up because we weren't a fit and it was a disaster. And I always remember Sting was in those days a great influence on us.

Speaker 44:52

As many years ago

Speaker 44:56

But I became what I am

Speaker 45:00

I was trapped in this life

Speaker 45:04

Like an innocent lamb

Speaker 45:08

Now I can never show my face

Speaker 45:12

Hallelujah.

Speaker 45:16

Should only see me walking

Presenter5:20

STING WITH MOON OVER BURBEN Street. Tell me, David Templeman Adams, about this adventurer's grand slam. Seven peaks and four poles.

Presenter5:30

Who who set this collective challenge, or is it your own invention?

David Hempleman Adams5:34

Um, I suppose it's the PR invention and other people's invention really.

Presenter5:39

But it is just a case of notching them up. I mean, you're not pioneering in the sense that nobody has climbed these things before.

David Hempleman Adams5:46

Uh no, one or two of them uh was pioneering. I suppose on the magnetic north pole no one had ever did a solo trip there, so I suppose that was setting the standard for years.

Presenter5:54

And what's the difference between the magnetic and and the geographic poles? I don't understand.

David Hempleman Adams5:58

The geographical pole is where the Earth's axis rotates. So you've got a North and South geographical pole and the magnetic pole is simply where the the compass points to so you have a north and south magnetic pole. Now on the south geographical pole that's a landmass so there's a there's a pole and you can touch it and you can... There's lots of flags up it and lots of people have been there, right? I'm not so sure many people have traveled over land there but there's certainly you can get a an aeroplane in and

Presenter6:16

And there's lots of flags up it and lots of people have been there, right?

David Hempleman Adams6:25

Uh get a cup of tea and a sauna and all that stuff.

Presenter6:27

But the north is water.

David Hempleman Adams6:29

Well, the north is water. It's an ocean, it floats and it's got currents and it's moving all the time. It's just like an escalator, but basically, as soon as you get there, you float off. And when we got there this year, we were there for twelve hours and we floated off seven miles. So it moves yeah it can move quite quickly.

Presenter6:46

That is the problem when you're travelling to the North Pole, of whichever kind is it all of the time. You can you can travel for several miles in a day and go to sleep at night and wake up and discover you've drifted backwards again.

David Hempleman Adams6:57

I remember one day we walked ten hours, we did six miles through really, really terrible rubble and we camped and we actually when we got up in the morning we checked our navigation and we'd floated back seven miles. Yeah, I mean that that's a pretty low time in fact and and that happened to us two or three days on the trot.

Speaker 47:09

Uh

Presenter7:09

Definitely.

Speaker 47:09

Yeah.

Speaker 47:10

Yeah.

Presenter7:10

It's sound destroying, it's a little bit more.

Presenter7:17

And how often do you actually fall in the water? Because these great sort of streams, if not rivers, open up all of the time as the ice moves, don't you?

David Hempleman Adams7:24

Yeah. Well, on the north it's, you know, hopefully never fall in and unfortunately this year we fell in uh both of us fell in twice.

Presenter7:33

It's no laughing matter, surely.

David Hempleman Adams7:35

Well when I actually went through the ice I remember just frantically thinking you've got to get out, you've got to get out and I had my skis on as well and Runa was saying keep your skis on, keep your skis and I was thinking Christ, you know all I want to do is get out. We have these little ice spikes, they're just like daggers so you can actually get some leverage on the ice and so I was on my chest trying to come forward with these ice daggers. with my skis still on and still attached the sledge and that sounds as if it's sort of slow motion but it's just mad panic you're just trying to get out and I remember getting to the other side like a beach whale and thinking god my hands were wet and my my all the way up to my waist was wet.

Presenter8:22

But you've heaved yourself out of this hole.

David Hempleman Adams8:23

Yeah, yeah. And um you're just you're waiting for the blood to come back to your your legs and to your feet because if you don't feel anything then you know you've got trouble and you know you've got really severe frostbite. And that's when the pain starts because once the blood starts circulating and gets into the your cold limbs

Presenter8:43

But to an extent it's a delicious moment, is it, when you feel your legs again?

David Hempleman Adams8:45

You feel your legs again. Yeah, when you get that pain, it's a nice moment. You know, you're still in charge of your legs. Yeah, you know, you're going to be okay.

Presenter8:50

You know you're still in charge of your

Presenter8:54

Second record

David Hempleman Adams8:56

Well Billy Joel, and again this goes back to student days. When I was a student I used to do one of these student exchange trips and go off to New York State and teach climbing. And I remember asking this girl out and in Manhattan they've got these diners with these fantastic cubicles and I asked for ketchup and I got the ketchup bottle and shook it and the actual top came shooting off and this stream of ketchup went about 20 feet down the aisle up about five different people. And I always, whenever I hear this record, it takes me straight back to this restaurant. And I don't think I've ever been in such a dangerous position as when I was in there.

Speaker 49:40

The bottle of weights

Speaker 49:44

Bottle red

Speaker 49:47

Perhaps a bottle of roses instead

Speaker 49:55

Get a table near the street

Speaker 49:58

In our own familiar place, you and I face to face

Speaker 410:08

Bottle red

Presenter10:15

Villijole and scenes from an Italian restaurant. Um then of course there are the mountains, seven of them all together. The first one you did when you were twenty three, Mount McKinley in Alaska. Can you remember the buzz?

David Hempleman Adams10:26

Yeah, again things have changed, you know, since those days when I was a youngster. I remember we got a greyhound bus all the way up to Alaska, but we flew in, there was only two teams on the mountain then. Nowadays you get quite a few more and it's very, very regulated now. You've got to have permissions and permits and all sorts. But I remember coming out of McKinley and getting a lift to the first highway. And that fantastic feeling, looking back and seeing this huge mountain and just think, God, we've climbed the highest thing in North America. And if you look at all the cities and all the mountains in the whole of North America, we climbed the highest point of North America. And that was a fantastic feeling.

Presenter11:10

But when you go up Mount Everest as you do it's been said before now, as you get higher you do start seeing dead bodies, don't you?

Presenter11:18

Yeah. Because they're preserved by the cold.

David Hempleman Adams11:20

Yeah, and you'll get dead bodies on McKinley as well, and and that's one thing that when we climbed it, now uh when I look back on it, we went across avalanche paths, we went across uh real uh dangerous places where there was a lot of stonefall and but for the grace of God, you know, it could have been us. And that's uh when you you suddenly stall a little bit and you think, God, you know, some of these climbers are damn sight better than me and um they've uh they've either died from hypothermia or or oxygen problems or anything else.

Presenter11:52

And when you eventually do get to the top.

Presenter11:54

you know, if if the downside is the kind of awful experiences you've had along the way.

Presenter12:00

The upside must be that it's just wonderful up there, isn't it?

David Hempleman Adams12:04

It is. And I remember consciously thinking, well there's two things. One, have a good look around because you'll never be here again. And as you get higher and higher, the sky changes. It goes from a light blue up to a completely dark, dark virtually to space. So it's virtually black. And as you get higher, there's less atmosphere. So when the stars do come out, it's as if you could actually cut the stars with a knife. It's just so beautiful. And if you really concentrate, you can see the satellites tracking across. But I remember also thinking, you've got to get down. Most climbers die on the way down. And this very conscious thought of you haven't succeeded until you actually get down.

Presenter12:55

Record number three.

David Hempleman Adams12:56

Well Peter Gabriel I've chosen uh just purely from Everest and this used to remind me of home for two reasons. One because I used to play Peter Gabriel at at home, but also he's my neighbour so I'd always used to play this at night and I used to think of home uh and now I whenever I hear this I I always think of Everest.

Speaker 413:18

Don't give up

Speaker 413:20

It's too hard.

Speaker 413:26

Don't give up.

Speaker 413:30

You know what you've anything?

Speaker 413:35

Don't give up.

Speaker 413:38

But somewhere there's a place where we

Presenter13:45

Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush and don't give up. It was apparently David, your father, who set you on course for making money to finance all this adventuring. Tell me about your dad and the glue factory.

David Hempleman Adams13:57

Uh well the clue factory. God, my grandmother would be upset at that.

Presenter14:01

Really, what should I call?

David Hempleman Adams14:03

Well it is actually glue but it's unlike sort of boiling down horses it's chemical glue.

Presenter14:10

Posh glue.

David Hempleman Adams14:11

Posh glue, yeah. What uh happened was I was climbing uh somewhere around the world and my father had a heart attack. So um I joined and he was he was quite pragmatic in the in the sense that he said, Well, you're gonna get more out of this if you buy your shares and he made me buy the shares but I was fortunate in that the company was bankrupt virtually'cause I went to the bank and went around all my friends and uh all the fellows with the money wouldn't give me the money and all the fellows who didn't have any money said well let's go on a flyer here.

Presenter14:44

And you turned it around after?

David Hempleman Adams14:46

Well, it was a team effort. I mean that that's the the main thing. It was a completely team effort.

Presenter14:51

But the bottom line is ten years later you were worth quite a few million quid.

David Hempleman Adams14:56

I was worth a a lot more money than I started, that's for sure.

Presenter14:59

But is that the money that's financed these expeditions?

David Hempleman Adams15:02

No, and what I do is um I put that money into trust for the children and Claire.

Presenter15:09

So you ease your conscience with this money that's there in case everything goes wrong. But you must be constantly aware of the agonies that they're suffering, you know, for the latest message from the radio monitoring centre or whatever it is. Do you ever feel what am I doing here and what am I putting them through?

David Hempleman Adams15:25

Yeah, you do, but you try to put it out of the back of your mind and I think you've got to be singularly selfish and go and do these things.

Presenter15:32

Why?

David Hempleman Adams15:32

Uh

David Hempleman Adams15:34

Uh because otherwise um you wouldn't do them. Other th you know, if you did have a I suppose a conscience, you wouldn't do them.

Presenter15:40

But if you're only doing them for your own enjoyment, you're not doing them to pioneer, to explore where no man has been before, you're doing it'cause you want to do it.

David Hempleman Adams15:47

You don't

David Hempleman Adams15:48

Yeah, and I think whereas Claire and I have been together for such a long time, I think she's become accustomed to it and we met when we were very young and I've always done that. I think what's very difficult is for the children because when they see rucksacks in the hallway they immediately think, Oh boy, the the old boy's going away for some time and that's that's very very difficult.

Presenter16:13

More music.

David Hempleman Adams16:14

Well again going back to my father and business, he taught me everything I knew and it's only as I've got older that I've realized how much he taught me. Even subconsciously I've realized now a few years on how much he taught me. And we traveled the world on business. That's one of the nice things about adventure is that you travel to the remotest places in the world and see different cultures. But in business you see the big cities and I remember going to New York or Barcelona and we go to see an art gallery or something like that. But what he loved was opera and he would always put on Carmen.

David Hempleman Adams16:51

And when he died w he died very young and he died of leukemia and it was wi it was it was such a tragedy to see this fella um going through this illness. Um and for years I just couldn't listen to Carmen. As soon as it came on or the T V or anything I just had to switch it off.

Speaker 417:51

Oh, a firmer rule and red big cowboy.

Presenter18:09

Tom Krause as Escamilio, singing part of the Torreador song from Act Two of Bizet's Carmen, with the Manhattan Opera Chorus and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra conducted by Leonard Bernstein. You did, David Hempelman Adams, the seventh of the seven peaks in nineteen ninety five, Carsten's Pyramid in Australasia, which you mentioned earlier. Te tell me about the terrain. It's deep in the jungle, isn't it?

David Hempleman Adams18:32

Yeah, for me this was a bit of an odd one because I hate snakes and spiders so I was dreading this. We left Heathrow in a big jumbo jet and as we got further and further away from London the planes got smaller and smaller. And uh we got down to in the end after about six different flights to um Iranjaya which is uh this island.

Presenter18:55

And land on a little airstrip in the jungle somewhere.

David Hempleman Adams18:56

Well, th th they've only found this uh tribe only a f well, um, this century anyway, but uh only a few years ago. I think, I believe just after the war, the in the Balium Valley.

Presenter19:08

Who are they? What are they like?

David Hempleman Adams19:10

Well what was incredible is we came in and landed on this grass strip where these guys had just chopped down these trees and uh stamped out a a grass field. And these people live in uh mud huts and the ladies wear grass skirts and nothing on top and these guys wear these penis gourds and that's it. It was just absolutely amazing. It was just like going back to the Stone Age.

Presenter19:34

But these are the people who are going to be your sherpers because I'm

David Hempleman Adams19:36

That's right. So once we got all our kit we had about uh two rucksacks each. But what then happened had to happen, we had a porter for each rucksack, but then you had to have another ten porters to carry these guys' food and all they ate were these yams. Huge great things. Yeah, because they were really heavy. I mean these things were um

Presenter19:53

Huge great things to be carried out.

David Hempleman Adams19:58

hundred weights. So we've got these guys with these penis scores. We're in nothing else. We're in the carrying these huge weights of yams for the guys who carried our rucksack. And then you had another fifty porters carrying the yams for the for the twenty guys.

Presenter20:13

Yeah.

David Hempleman Adams20:15

Carrying the yams, we were carrying our rucksack, and then you had another 200 people carrying the yams for this 50. So here we were, trying to go through this jungle.

David Hempleman Adams20:24

Um

David Hempleman Adams20:26

with just this entourage of this whole village carrying these yams.

Presenter20:30

And you're you're all in the kit, but p they're in the bare feet.

David Hempleman Adams20:32

Oh, absolutely, yeah. We had the best kid in the world and they just had bare feet and they were as warm as toast and we were freezing.

Presenter20:39

And they go up the mountain right now.

David Hempleman Adams20:41

No, no, they they just get to base count. But um

David Hempleman Adams20:44

Claire was pregnant at the time and she said well you can go but you better get back and I remember thinking god I'm not going to get back in time so they had this shop steward and to get the plane back I had to half the time to get across this island and this guy said well you know it can't be done and I'm not and I'm not going to let my men basically carry these weights for the money so I said well I'll double the money or triple the money and he said no we're not going to do that and it it so happened I had a picture of my wife and the two little girls and as soon as they saw this photograph that was it they they upped their bags and started running

David Hempleman Adams21:28

And so we had a really hard time keeping up with them, and I caught the plane, got back to London, drove to Bath, and she was late by two weeks.

Presenter21:41

Next record.

David Hempleman Adams21:42

Uh well this this this Van Morrison um again this just reminds me as Carsten's Pyramid.

Speaker 421:52

That's you just trample inside.

Speaker 421:57

Then I know how much you want me that

Speaker 422:02

Jan Hai!

Speaker 422:04

Can I just have one more dance with you, my love?

Speaker 422:11

Can I just make some more romance with you or my love?

Presenter22:19

Van Morrison and Moondance. You've said, David, that it was misses Thatcher who got you to the South Pole. How so?

David Hempleman Adams22:26

What I was trying to do was become the first British person to get to the South Pole solo and unsupported. I had 60 days of food. After about I think it was 10 days. I was struggling and I pulled my back. I was pulling this sledge, which was about £350 I think it was, and pulled it on some sestrugi. And I ended up on the floor and just pulled all my muscles in the back. And I got into the tent and I thought, well, I'm going to push the button and come and get rescued. Because I was behind schedule and I was homesick and all the rest of it. And I was reading Margaret Thatcher's book, and this isn't a political statement at all, but I picked up her book in Heathrow Airport because it was the thickest book for the cheapest price. And the other thing is, weight is critical. You cut your shoelaces down, you cut, you take everything out of the bag so all the food's got no wrapping or anything. So what I was doing is I was using this book as toilet paper as well. So it had a tool. After you'd read it, after I read it. So anyway, this day I thought, God, you know, I'm going to give up.

Presenter23:31

After

David Hempleman Adams23:37

And just at the top of the page, just before I went to use it, I was sort of mid whatever, and I started reading that her father said to her as a youngster, it's easy to be a starter, but are you a finisher too? So I whipped that page out and used another page. And I put it in my top pocket and I read that every morning and every night on the whole trip. And when I got to the it was a close run thing, I'll tell you, with the toilet paper, because I got to the South Pole with no food left, and that was the only page of toilet paper I had left. So the next one would have been that page, so I got to the South Pole just in time. And I promise you that is a true story.

Presenter24:16

Yeah.

Presenter24:18

That's a great story. You've taken other people you do lead other people, businessmen who want to take time out or have a different experience or something and pit themselves against the elements.

David Hempleman Adams24:22

He's not

Presenter24:28

Are there those who simply can't do it when they get out there?

David Hempleman Adams24:32

Well, I mean it's a very good point and I think everybody's got their own limitations so I think it's up to you to see well what's the physical challenge and would that person be capable. But I took a group to the magnetic North Pole and there was this lawyer who sat in the corner who said I'm never going to do this. And these guys are going through it. One because they're not like my Joke Venerable Bronze Award on those days for me. For these guys it's exactly the same thing.

Presenter25:01

Their first time out.

David Hempleman Adams25:02

And so they're scared, of course, and they're getting a hard time from their wives. And this particular fellow, his wife said, If you go, we're getting divorced. So he still went anyway. And so he was getting hell from all sides. And in the end, it was wonderful to see that as this fellow gradually got into it, gradually got used to it, he was by far the strongest member on the whole team. And I'd take him anywhere again. It was a guy called Andrew Higgs, and he was incredible.

Presenter25:32

Mecho number six.

David Hempleman Adams25:34

is the cranberries which um

David Hempleman Adams25:37

Great track called Dreams. South Pole was a solo trip, as I said, and to keep myself, I suppose, sane, I used to read the book and I used to listen to The Walkman, and this was uh this is the one I loved on this trip.

Speaker 426:14

Impossible to know Impossible to know

Presenter26:21

The cranberries and dreams. You

Presenter26:24

Finished off the Grand Slam, got got to your eleventh goal of it this year, in April, the North Pole, with your Norwegian companion, Runa Geldnes. How did you two celebrate in that moment? What did you do?

David Hempleman Adams26:38

What it was, I suppose, leading up to that, you know, it was tough, it was incredibly tough. And a lot of there was an Italian expedition, there was a French expedition, there was a fantastic Norwegian expedition that was attempting it, very, very experienced Norwegian expedition. There were two Royal Marines, British Royal Marines. And in the end, we were the only two people on the whole ocean who actually got to the North Pole. And I thought that was fantastic in terms of the two nations and just hanging in there and getting there in the end. So within half a mile from the pole, I said to Runa, okay, Runa, you go ahead now for Norway.

David Hempleman Adams27:26

And he said, Oh, no, they big, you know, this is for England, you know.

David Hempleman Adams27:29

And he said, you go ahead. So this is probably the only uh course words, I suppose.

David Hempleman Adams27:36

That we had with each other. So I said, Runa, you got to go ahead. And he was saying, oh no, you've got to go ahead. So in the end, we compromised. And we both walked, I won't say hand in hand, but we walked the last half a mile with each other. And we got down to, it was incredible, 89, 59, 59.9. And we stopped, and that was it. It was just the same as anywhere else. So we just looked at each other and gave a great big embrace. And Runa said very romantic, oh David, this is the first time a man's cuddled me.

Presenter28:14

Record number seven.

David Hempleman Adams28:16

I used to get into the tent each night, absolutely shattered, and I used to get into the sleeping bag and I'd be asleep in two seconds. Runa would get into the sleeping bag, light up a cigarette, and he'd put his walkman on. And whenever this came on the Verve, he used to he used to wake me up.

Presenter28:25

Rudolph

David Hempleman Adams28:34

It's David, David, this is the Verve again and whack it onto my head. And so the Verve reminds me of Runa waking me up in the North Pole and freezing.

Presenter29:13

The Verve and Bittersweet Symphony. You were back out, David, tricking on the ice when you heard that you'd been awarded the OBE. How did you get to hear about it out there?

David Hempleman Adams29:23

Well it was very odd. I I I came back home for four days and I had to go straight back out and I was crossing Baffin Island and I got to this little Inuit village called Broughton Island and this little fella came up and said, You gotta phone home and so I phoned my PA and she said um you gotta phone this number I said well what's it about? and phone up and find out. She did and they wouldn't uh say anything to her so

David Hempleman Adams29:49

Well, I didn't have any money on me, so I phoned this number and I re had to reverse the charges. And it was through to the Cabinet Office this very nice lady said, We couldn't tell anyone else, but uh we'd like to give you the O P and would you accept it?

David Hempleman Adams30:04

I was in the middle of nowhere, there were these Inuit hunters skinning these seals with all this blubber all around and these huskies barking, and it was the most surreal experience to be given this OBE in the middle of nowhere. And it w it was just a wonderful, wonderful thing, wonderful experience.

Presenter30:24

Good job. She agreed to pay for the call, really. So you've done the grand slam. You've got the T-shirt in the middle. What next? Your your forty-two. Do you pack it all in now? Slow down?

David Hempleman Adams30:25

I know, I know.

David Hempleman Adams30:36

We'll certainly slow down, I think. But I I hope anyway that there will always be a challenge out there doing I'd love I'm I'm um getting a balloon license and I'd love to do ballooning. I've been told, and I don't know if this is right or wrong

Presenter30:43

You got one in mine?

David Hempleman Adams30:53

But no one's ever flown across the Andes.

Presenter30:55

In the meantime, you you you have to survive on this desert island, which presumably is chicken feed for a guy like you really isn't.

David Hempleman Adams31:01

I would find that hard. I'm off next week with the children to a beach. And what I find after about oh dear, after five minutes it seems, but you've dug the the hole and built the sound castle and you've done a few lengths with the kids and then I start to get itchy feet after about two days. And then the hole tends to get bigger and bigger and by two weeks you could you could bury a a a chieftain tank probably in one of these holes and uh it just gets bigger and bigger.

Presenter31:34

Last record.

David Hempleman Adams31:35

You've got to be very careful choosing music and I've always found if you go take music on an expedition, if you take real uh slow, dour music, that puts you in the mood for the rest of the day. So I've always taken stuff which is a little bit more upbeat. Uh and this, if you're going to stay on a desert island for whatever amount of years or whatever, uh I would take this one.

Presenter32:28

Stangetz and Magnia de Carnival, and if you could only take one of those records, David, which one would you take?

David Hempleman Adams32:33

That would be the one.

Presenter32:35

What about your book? You get the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. They're already there for you.

David Hempleman Adams32:41

That this was a hard one. I suppose the two that I've read and I would love to read again, Apsley's Cherry Gerard's Worst Journey in the World, because I think if you read that then you think well life's not so bad on this desert island. But the one that had a big influence on me when I was a youngster was Jonathan Livington's Seagull by Richard Back and that was a lovely book.

Presenter33:06

What about your luxury?

David Hempleman Adams33:08

It's a very poor excuse, but I I wish I had time to

David Hempleman Adams33:14

play an an instrument and play it properly. And I would probably take the saxophone. I think the saxophone is so wonderful. It's uh a fantastic instrument. And that's why I would take Stan Getz of course, because of the saxophone and I would love, just love to learn and play properly the saxophone.

Presenter33:32

Davy Temple, Madams, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

David Hempleman Adams33:36

Thank you very much.

Speaker 333:44

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts please visit bbc.co. uk slash radio four.