Battling extreme wind and temperatures of -50°C in a bid to reach the North Pole alongside Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Dr Mike Stroud once became so desperate to escape that he considered pretending to have a stroke, just so they could call in a rescue team.
Thankfully, Stroud resisted. He and Fiennes, known as the world’s greatest explorer, failed to reach the pole but survived those tortuous conditions – so they tried again.
Together, the intrepid pair made five trips to the Arctic between 1986 and 1990, before heading south and completing the first unsupported crossing of the Antarctic. It was an extraordinary feat that bonded the two men for ever.
For the last two years, however, Stroud has been unable to see his old comrade. Fiennes has allegedly been moved from one care home to another, under an alias, by his wife Louise Millington-Cotes.
Now, Stroud may never have another chance to sit down with Fiennes and share memories of their icy adventures.
“I’ve got throat cancer that’s spread,” reveals the 71-year-old doctor, speaking to me from his home in Hampshire. “I’m unfortunately, probably, terminally ill… I was told a year ago that I’d be dead by now.”
He says “probably” because he’s trying an innovative form of treatment which may be working. But it remains “overwhelmingly likely” the disease will kill him before long, Stroud admits.
Fiennes, 82, has been struggling too. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease seven years ago and was last seen in public in 2024.
In a tragic private dispute that has suddenly become very public, some of Fiennes’ closest friends and relatives have recently claimed that his whereabouts have been kept secret, preventing them from visiting him.
He is now reported to have been taken back home and police are satisfied he is being cared for. But loved ones dispute this and say they remain in the dark. Millington-Cotes has not commented and has asked journalists not to contact her.
Stroud is “very sad” to think he might not see his comrade again before it’s too late. “I wrote an email to Louise two or three months ago, saying I’m terminally ill and would really like to see him,” he says. “She didn’t reply.”
Friendship forged in the toughest conditions
This year marks four decades since the two men first met – leading to years of fantastic, yet also harrowing, experiences together.
Fiennes, known by friends as Ran, was already famed as “the world’s greatest living explorer” after becoming the first person to reach both poles without using an aircraft. Come 1986, he was aiming to reach the North Pole via a two-man trek – unaided by huskies, vehicles or any other humans – when a partner dropped out at short notice.
Stroud had just served as the doctor on an Antarctic expedition. His colleagues recommended him, and Stroud agreed to take part. Flying to northern Canada, he was “daunted” about meeting Fiennes, feeling “in awe” of him.
“Ran had a reputation for steely, disciplined team leading,” he says. “Instead, I found a very easy-going person.”
Stroud thought it would be “really easy…my colleagues had just walked 900 miles to the South Pole and climbed 10,000ft. The North Pole was only 500 miles and climbing no feet. But it turns out the North is much harder because of the broken sea ice.” The risk of “falling in the water” was a big worry.
They didn’t succeed. But months later they tried again. It was “very gruelling”, and both men had frostbite. “I got it in all the tips of my fingers,” says Stroud. “The nails fell off and the ends deteriorated, then they stick in your gloves and it’s agony getting them off.
“Ran had a terrible frostbite ulcer on his foot that gave him hell. He got so desperate that he cut part of the insulation out of his inner boot, to take the pressure off it, but that ensured it froze again very quickly. If you get frostbite, you don’t let it refreeze and you don’t walk on it – so we weren’t really doing the right things.”
It was years later, on a solo trip in 2000, that Fiennes suffered such severe frostbite that he self-amputated the tips of his fingers and thumb on his left hand using a saw when he got home.
Camaraderie in icy winds
The monotony of “plodding” across snow for so long is also “very boring”, says Stroud. “You try and escape from the discomfort and fatigue and extreme effort by trying to think of everything you’ve ever done in your life: all your friends, holidays, experiences.”
Things were “so desperate” in the Arctic that sometimes he contemplated how to call a halt. “I thought I might feign an illness. I would think when we’d get to the tent: I’ll have a subarachnoid haemorrhage.” (For those of us without a medical degree, that’s a rare form of stroke that involves bleeding on the brain.)
“That would mean that we’d have to be evacuated. But then [in the tent] you’ve got your flapjack and your tea and your false memories about how good the day was. I said to Ran: ‘If I appear to have a stroke, don’t believe me, I’ll be making that up.’ I said to him: ‘Do you ever think about feigning an illness to get out of this?’ And he said: ‘No, but I do keep hoping you’ll be ill!’
So, besides raising millions for charity, why did they keep going back?
“Some people like a challenge, and it doesn’t matter if you fail, as long as you’ve done your best.” He also credits his “defective short-term memory”, meaning he could focus on the day’s achievements each evening, not its pains.
He chuckles that within an hour on day one of their next trip, he’d realise why he wrote in his diary: “Remember: do not ever do this again.”
“You get round it by enjoying good company in the tent with Ran and spending time in your head,” he says. “We had a very intense camaraderie which worked very well.”
That’s why he desperately hopes they can be reunited, but it seems unlikely.
First concerns about Fiennes
After their Antarctic odyssey in 1993, Stroud’s medical career took off. Besides hospital work as a consultant gastroenterologist, he researched how the body copes in extreme conditions and became a professor of clinical nutrition.
He didn’t give up the active life, though. He and Fiennes ran seven marathons in seven days on seven different continents in 2003, just four months after Fiennes had undergone a double bypass operation.
The following year, Fiennes’ first wife, Ginny, died of cancer aged 56. She was a tough, brave, respected explorer and researcher in her own right, who had been crucial in organising many of her husband’s expeditions. Indeed, she had made the call to Stroud to see if he fancied their first Arctic trip.
In 2005, Fiennes married Millington-Cotes, a horse trainer who was 23 years his junior. They had a daughter, Elizabeth. Stroud attended their wedding but says: “I don’t know Louise at all, really.”
The doctor remained close with Fiennes and last saw him in 2024, when he seemed “not too bad”, despite the Parkinson’s. But last year, mutual friends contacted Stroud. “I became aware there were concerns that no one had any contact with him… His whereabouts were not known.”
Perhaps this was natural, Stroud told himself. “He was a very proud man, and it occurred to me that he might find seeing people distressing, because he’s not now as fit and with it.”
But he learnt through a mutual friend, Anton Bowring, that Fiennes was allegedly being moved from one care home to another, registered under an alias for supposed security reasons, after Millington-Cotes had been granted lasting power of attorney.
Ginny’s younger sister, Arabella McIntyre-Brown, became so alarmed that she temporarily moved into a care home herself, after discovering Fiennes was living there, simply to speak with him.
‘I hope we can reminisce’
Stroud could not get involved after receiving his cancer diagnosis. “I thought I was probably down to months,” he says. “I expected not to see this summer.” Neither immunotherapy nor radiotherapy did any good.
Having previously undergone a stem-cell transplant to treat another disease, Stroud has since received white blood cells from the same donor, in the hope those will fight the cancer.
Normally this would be a “stupid” risk, he explains, because the donated cells could attack his body instead, “but I had nothing to lose”.
So far, things seem positive, though he doesn’t dare to think it’s a cure – which is why he is so keen to see Fiennes. He doesn’t know how long they will both be around.
A few months ago, Stroud was contacted by another mutual friend, Mike Kobold, who revealed that the owner of a Welsh care home had contacted care authorities over concerns about whether Fiennes was being held against his will. Evidently things were “significantly worse than I had thought”, he says.
He also learnt that the Care Inspectorate of Wales had confirmed in January that Fiennes was “deprived of his liberty unlawfully”, writing that he is “not free to leave and is not able to consent to care, treatment and accommodation”. These details eventually became public in September after friends contacted .
One friend asked if Stroud would write to the King for help. They even suggested the doctor could make legal enquiries about obtaining power of attorney himself, but he couldn’t face this “massive responsibility” while being so ill.
Fiennes’ stepson, Alex Millington-Cotes, is highly critical of his mother’s actions and launched a crowdfunding campaign last month to “locate and safeguard” Fiennes. Stroud planned to meet the young man in a joint attempt to find and see the explorer this summer, but had to pull out when he was admitted to hospital again.
Cheshire Police have said there are “no immediate safeguarding concerns”, because Fiennes “is living in an appropriate setting with suitable care and professional oversight”. A care watchdog, the Office of the Public Guardian, has not commented publicly but reportedly decided the case was outside of its remit. Stroud hopes it may reconsider.
Fiennes has reportedly returned to his isolated farmhouse in Shropshire this week, but it remains to be seen if friends and relatives will be granted access to him.
The saga has been “extremely sad and concerning”, says Stroud. Asked what could or should happen next, he says plaintively: “I don’t know.” All he’s sure of is that he wants to see his old friend again.
Even if the Parkinson’s has progressed, he is optimistic that Fiennes is “intact enough” to hear about his cancer and his treatment. “I’d like to fill him in on where I’ve got to.”
More than anything, he says, “I’d hope to reminisce”. He remembers how he’d get back from expeditions and soon want to go again, despite the pain.
“Even if you failed, you rapidly forget the hardship… You remember the camaraderie and the extraordinary places you got to see. So when Ran rings up and says, ‘Shall we give it another go?’, you say, ‘Yes, fine,’ because you think: ‘That’ll be fun.'”