At 17,342 feet hight, Kilimanjaro is the highest free standing mountain in the world. In 1995, inspired by Rebecca Stephens’s Everest expedition I decided to climb Africa’s highest peak.

Writing for Trail Walking magazine, I also took recording equipment and gathered interviews and kept an audio diary of my own experiences. With the skillful editing of Producer Mark Steven, these sounds were broadcast, as four nail biting episodes, on BBC Radio Scotland.

There is a large metal box on the summit – containing the highest visitors book in the world. Busy collecting interviews with my fellow trekkers on the summit, I forgot to sign the book. I therefore returned the next year, and climbed the mountain again just to sign the book. I wrote “Believe and Succeed!”