Veteran explorer to celebrate 89th birthday with 22-mile charity row

A veteran explorer is aiming to celebrate his 89th birthday by rowing 22 miles to help restore Britain’s temperate rainforests.

Robin Hanbury-Tenison, 88, from Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, will row along the River Tamar across two days in May.

Mr Hanbury-Tenison, who climbed Cornwall’s highest peak aged 84, five months after surviving coronavirus, hopes to raise £200,000 for Thousand Year Trust, a charity dedicated to tripling the amount of temperate rainforest in the UK.

The author and explorer said he is determined to complete his rowing challenge despite his family’s objections.

“My theory is that as long as bits of you are still working, you might as well use them to your advantage,” Mr Hanbury-Tenison told the PA news agency.

“My legs are pretty well given out now, so no more running or climbing mountains, but the arms are still pretty strong.

“I’m just going to get out and have a nice row up and down and I think I’ll do it all right, and I hope I’ll raise quite a lot of money.”

Mr Hanbury-Tenison, who has travelled to some of the world’s most remote places, said he has always enjoyed rowing.

“I actually spent most of my childhood in Ireland in a tree house on an island on the lake, rowing back every morning about a mile to shore,” he said.

“Then when I became an explorer, my first big expedition was to cross the first crossing of South America from east to west in 1958 and from north to south in 1964 to 1965.”

He also led the Royal Geographical Society’s largest expedition to date, taking a group of 115 scientists into the rainforest in Borneo for 15 months from 1977 to 1978.

Now he is supporting his son Merlin Hanbury-Tenison’s efforts to preserve Britain’s temperate rainforest.

Merlin, who founded the Thousand Year Trust in 2023, is crowdfunding to raise £750,000 to create the UKs first Rainforest Research Station and Community Hub.

The station will be built on the site of the family’s former farm on Bodmin Moor which has become a retreat centre and rainforest restoration project.

“Merlin, my son, and daughter-in-law have started a retreat there, where people come and detox in the wood itself,” said Mr Hanbury-Tenison.

“He suffered from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) after being in the Army and a lot of people come and get therapy from being in the woodland.

“The trust is to triple the size of the remaining temperate rainforest.

“At the moment there’s only little fragments and valleys. We hope to join them all up and in the next 30 years have a million acres of temperate rainforest.”

Mr Hanbury-Tenison will embark on his rowing challenge on May 7 and 8, marking two special occasions: his birthday and the 80th anniversary of VE Day.

He aims to complete the feat in a little wooden boat which he likens to an image of The Owl And The Pussycat.

“The idea is that I’m just doing that with a few supplies, some jelly babies on the bench in front of me, and a bunch of bananas, and off we go.”