Fedden Henry Robin Romilly

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Biografie:
Henry Robin Romilly Fedden (1908-77)
Robin Fedden came to mountaineering in his late thirties having learnt to love the mountains as a skier and walker, first on family holidays in Europe, then in the course of travels in the Near East before the war. Almost all his climbing was done with his wife Renee; other companions included Basil Goodfellow, Carl Nater and Peter McColl. He had all the enthusiasm and ambition of the late convert and in the end had done serious climbs in 4 continents and many different ranges. He drove himself hard and climbed with great nervous energy; I shall not easily forget the single-minded determination with which he climbed, in spite of illness, in what was to prove his final venture in Kulu in 1976.
But to write of Robin in terms of conventional mountaineering experience and achievement would be to miss the point. For he was no specialist craftsman or iceman, indeed he had come to climbing too late to satisfy his ambitions on the traditional routes of the Alps. Rather he was the supreme all-rounder enjoying mountain travel equally well on horse-back or on ski as on crampons; in the last few years he was also experimenting with light canoes as a means of travel in hill country and had organized in 1970 a successful canoe trip down the Kizilizmak River from the Pontine Alps to the Black Sea. And his interests were catholic. Wherever he went he delighted in observing and taking note of the peasant community, the buildings and traditions of the country, the trees and the bird life.
His greatest achievement as a mountain traveller was undoubtedly the series of expeditions he organized, in 2 of which I was fortunate to be included, to the remote places of this overcrowded world: skiing the length of the Pyrenees in spring, climbing in the Kurdish provinces of Turkey, in the Pindos range of Greece, in the Cordillera Vi1cabamba of Peru and lastly in Kulu and Lahoul.
He was an accomplished and polished writer, his best known book being Crusader Castles (1950) a product of the time he spent in the Near East before and during the war. But his real memorial is in the marvellous work he did for the National Trust which he joined shortly after the war, first as Curator of Polesden Lacey, then as secretary of the Historic Buildings Committee and from 1968 to 1973 as Deputy Director General. On his retirement, when he was made CBE, he remained with the Trust as consultant. He served the Club in a number of ways, most notably in the leading part he played in the recent redecorations and in the rehanging of our pictures.
But above and beyond all his other qualities Robin had a rare genius for friendship, indefinable but compelling. He had an extra-ordinarily wide circle of friends drawn from many different walks of life and was the most stimulating and sympathetic of companions, always contributing something worthwhile to whatever was in hand. How we shall miss him!
Peter Lloyd
Quelle: Alpine Journal Volume 83, 1978, Seite 268-269


Geboren am:
1908
Gestorben am:
1977