John Ridgeway: Man of Adventure
Created | Updated Jun 20, 2003
Every now and again you come across someone who completely changes your life. For me, one of those people was John Ridgeway.
'You're looking old Creasey,'
he said, as we met for the first time in years a couple of days ago.
John captured the nation's imagination, back in 1966, when he and Chay Blyth rowed across the Atlantic. Yes rowed. John was a young Captain in the Parachute Regiment and Chay was his Sergeant. They were both bored, both wanted to do something no one had done before, and they both very nearly died as a result of their endeavour.
Since then John and his wife Marie Christine, who is just as remarkable as he is, have put down roots on a windswept peninsula
at the North West tip of Scotland. They both, along with their
eldest daughter (born just nine months after the end of the
Atlantic row) run one of the UK's most successful adventure
schools. Most winters they set off for distant parts to practice
what they preach... always go that extra mile, and always leave
things a tiny bit better than they found them.
I first met John and Marie Christine in the autumn of 1976. They
were preparing to celebrate their school's 10th anniversary by
sailing with their instructors in the 1977/78 Whitbread Round The
World Race. I was to produce a documentary for ATV about the
journey. Here's what John wrote about our first meeting:
'Richard and I got on very well together. We had much in common: confused family background, poor academic record at school, fierce enthusiasm.'
Before the race started I'd been unexpectedly promoted to Head of
Documentaries. Roger Deakins... now one of Hollywood's leading
cameramen, then an unknown but, in my view, exceptionally talented
stills photographer... and Noel Smart, an ATV cameraman-turned-sound-recordist (in order to take part in the sail of a lifetime) were commissioned to film the journey.
My only instruction was to take no helicopter shots with billowing
sails. The focus of this documentary was claustrophobia; what it is
really like to go around the world with a dozen strangers on a 57
foot floating island, buffeted for weeks on end by mountainous seas.
In fact, on leaving Cape Town, John decided to make a short cut by sailing further south than any other yacht in the fleet. The crew found themselves surrounded by razor sharp icebergs, and on watch 24 hours a day in case one struck their fragile fibre island and turned it from home to coffin. They survived this, as John has all his adventures(sic!), but when they approached Auckland at the end of the second leg, Roger and Noel downed camera and, on docking, left ship.
'Mutinied'
as John wrote.
'Had enough,'
was their take. As a result, I found myself flying from London (England) to Auckland (New Zealand) for dinner, to persuade Roger and Noel to go back on board and John and Marie Christine to accept them, before I flew back home. Yes, 28 hours there and 28 hours back just for dinner, but it was a very memorable one.
John, not surprisingly, was dismayed by the stark reality of the
film, but after it, if anything, our respect for each other grew.
We made other films together and, over the years, I sat behind my
executive desk watching him and Marie Christine: they adopted a
daughter after a trek to the Peruvian jungle where they found her
father, a close friend of John's, had been murdered; they explored
the world again. And then, out of the blue, an idea for a journey
that no one had ever done before popped into my head. That was just
6 years ago at the zenith of an astonishingly lucky television
career, and I rang John to ask him for some advice!
'I'd leave the office and do it,'
he told me, knowing I wouldn't. But I DID, and it changed my life.. but that's another story!
Over lunch we talked about growing older; John is now 61 and I'm 55, and both of us discovered that we're still dreaming, daring and
preparing adventures that will keep us going into our old age. John
has commissioned a new boat that's 'perfect' for sailing in the
ice, and, after a 30 year absence, I'm renewing my flying license
with a marathon or two in mind.
As I look back there's been only one other person who has had a
bigger influence on my life. One day I'll write something for the
Post about my Dad. He was an astonishing man.
Editors Note: *Dad* is the author John Creasey
