Going high...and low

Intrepid dad takes aim at lowest and highest points on every continent

- SOPHIE HALLE-RICHARDS

STANDING on top of Mount Kilimanjaro after an exhausting 1,363mile journey, Oli France was relieved.

On the way, he'd faced extreme weather, police shakedowns, attempted extortion and wild animals.

Having grown up in a small village outside Wigan, a young Oli could never have dreamed of making a career from trips like this guiding teams through some of the world's most hostile destinations.

The married dad-of-two has spent the last 10 years of his life completing jaw-dropping adventures; including climbing the highest mountain in Iraq, a solo 400-mile crossing of Lake Baikal in Siberia, and a solo winter 8,000-mile from Hong Kong to Istanbul across the mountainous spine of Asia.

But now, Oli, 32, has his sights on an even bigger challenge. He has plans to complete a challenge which has never been done before - to journey from the lowest point in every continent, to the highest.

It's a project that will take him across 20 different countries and every imaginable landscape through jungles, seas, deserts, mountains, war-zones and polar regions.

"It's only in the last year or two that I've convinced myself the whole project is actually possible," Oli said, speaking to the Manchester Evening News.