Imagine being hidden away – aged 82 and in poor health – in a care home in a remote part of Wales where your real identity was concealed to prevent your friends from finding you.
Such was the fate of ‘Robert Millington’.
Only this is not his real name. It was the alias he lived under at the establishment and which epitomised the veil of secrecy surrounding his admission.
The person we are referring to is Sir Ranulph Fiennes, the world’s greatest living explorer.
The list of restrictions and conditions which governed his stay in rural Wales almost defies belief and can be summarised as follows: must be kept in his room, must not socialise with anyone, must not spend time in communal spaces.
Most importantly, on the occasions he needed to leave his quarters – when being taken for a walk, for example – he was required to wear a disguise consisting of sunglasses, hat and gloves in case he was recognised.
The draconian measures were introduced at the behest of Sir Ranulph’s second wife Louise Millington-Cotes – Lady Fiennes as she now is – according to the owner of the care home who has spoken exclusively to the Daily Mail.
Why the gloves?
Presumably to cover the missing tips of his frostbitten fingers (sawn off by Sir Ranulph at home shortly after his failed 2000 North Pole expedition because he could not cope with the constant pain), which could conceivably have identified him.
The scenario is beyond parody. But the inhumanity of the situation only starts here.
In a document seen by the Daily Mail, the worried care home owner raised concerns about unorthodox medication arrangements put in place by Lady Fiennes and the validity of a ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ document that she had provided.
The care home owner contacted the authorities, including the police, and wrote to the Office of the Public Guardian.
Sir Ranulph Fiennes, the world’s greatest living explorer, was found in a care home in a remote part of Wales where his real identity was concealed
His wife Louise Millington-Cotes who at 59, is 23 years younger than him, has lasting power of attorney over her husband’s property and financial affairs as well as his health and welfare
The care inspectorate concluded at the start of 2026 that Sir Ranulph was being deprived of his liberty unlawfully because his wife had failed to ensure the relevant legal protocols had been put in place.
Behind all this is the desperately sad picture of a frailer than ever Sir Ranulph. Isolated and vulnerable, he had five falls at this care home, as well as a vomiting and a trembling session, and there were several mornings when he couldn’t be woken to take his Parkinson’s medication.
Poignantly, the person he misses most is his childhood sweetheart and wife of 34 years, Virginia ‘Ginny’ Fiennes, who died in 2004.
‘Nobody else [apart from the current Lady Fiennes] visited,’ the owner tells the Daily Mail. ‘Nobody else rang.
‘Whenever I sat with him he talked about his first wife, Ginny. He never talked about Louise. He couldn’t remember her name. She told him to call her “wifey.”’
Heartbreaking.
The owner gleaned an insight into the relationship between Sir Ranulph and the current Lady Fiennes on his very first night at the Welsh care home.
‘He said something and she snapped at him to tell him off,’ the owner recalled.
‘We were taken aback and he just looked over and winked and smiled as if to say “Don’t worry. She’s going in a minute. I know what she’s like”. But it was also a little bit of embarrassment as well.’
Sir Ranulph was last seen in public at a gala evening organised in his honour by the Royal Geographical Society in October, 2024, when he appeared in a brief, pre-recorded video apologising for not being ‘well enough’ to attend in person.
Some of his closest friends have been trying to contact him, mostly without success, ever since and have grown increasingly concerned about him and his whereabouts.
The latest revelations will surely only add to their growing fears for his safety.
The ‘disappearance’ of Sir Ranulph, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2019, was the subject of a Daily Mail investigation last Saturday headlined: ‘Where on earth is Ranulph Fiennes?’
Perhaps most alarming for all Sir Ranulph’s desperately worried friends, his whereabouts are, once again, unknown
The truth is that during one year alone he was shunted between five different facilities – four care homes and a hotel – all over the country.
He arrived at the Welsh establishment on January 21 and spent 49 days there.
His wife Louise Millington-Cotes – ‘Millington’ being the alias she gave Sir Ranulph – who at 59, is 23 years younger than he is – has lasting power of attorney over her husband’s property and financial affairs as well as his health and welfare, granted to her at around the time of the National Geographic tribute.
In other words, she has substantial control over her husband, which is not unusual considering his rapidly failing health.
Nonetheless, the Care Inspectorate of Wales concluded that her husband – they were married in 2005 and have a daughter Elizabeth, Fiennes’ only child – was being unlawfully ‘deprived of his liberty’ because Lady Fiennes did not have the authorisation which covered his residence.
The instructions issued by Lady Fiennes were implemented initially because an external male carer (minder might be a better description) was employed by her to provide ‘one-to-one care’ for Sir Ranulph.
The measures were not confined to keeping his identity secret, however.
‘He was not allowed to read certain books,’ the owner said. ‘If we were taking books for him to read, she had to approve them.
‘She didn’t want him to watch anything to do with the Antarctic or the North Pole or Everest on the TV either because she said it would cause him “trauma and upset him” to be reminded of past adventures. She also preferred him to eat mainly salads and soups.’
All this is understandable in many ways but would surely have done little to improve the quality of his already greatly reduced existence however well intentioned.
Either way, the spartan regime didn’t last long.
Lady Fiennes attracted criticism when, after Sir Ranulph was traced to his previous care home in Fulham in 2025, she only permitted visitors if they signed non-disclosure agreements
Staff were soon informed who the latest arrival really was and Sir Ranulph was allowed to chat contentedly to them and other residents and also watch Sky TV, American sitcoms and tuck into fish and chips.
But on March 10, seven weeks after he arrived, he was suddenly moved out without warning.
‘She [his wife] arrived at 09:12 and he was off the premises by 10.53,’ the care home boss recorded in a detailed statement.
‘No notice, no handover, no forwarding address.’
The statement forms part of a dossier, covering his time in Wales, which is now being sent to the Court of Protection – the body with the power to revoke a lasting power of attorney in certain circumstances – by Sir Ranulph’s friend of almost 30 years Michael Kobold, who has shared many adventures with him over the years and is driving a campaign to find him.
A complaint has also been made by Mr Kobold to West Mercia Police, the force which covers the last known address of Lady Fiennes in Shropshire.
None of this means Lady Fiennes has done anything wrong.
She told the owner of the Welsh home that Sir Ranulph needed to be kept hidden to protect him from friends whom she accused of trying to take advantage of him.
There is no evidence, however strongly held and sincere her suspicions might be, to indicate that they are acting out of anything other than concern for her husband, who was part of the only team to have ever completed a pole-to-pole surface circumnavigation of the globe (in 1982) and, ten years later, to have crossed the Antarctic unsupported.
Lady Fiennes, on the other hand, attracted criticism when, after Sir Ranulph was traced to his previous care home in Fulham in the summer of 2025, she only permitted visitors if they signed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs).
Sir Ranulph’s stay in Wales, quite aside from the shenanigans to hide his real identity, was controversial from the very start, according to the care home owner.
The day before he was admitted, Lady Fiennes, a horse trainer from Cheshire, emailed the owner a number of documents.
She called one of them (addressed to the Fulham establishment and signed by her husband’s private GP) the ‘Do not take to hospital letter.’
It read: ‘This is to confirm that Sir Ranulph Fiennes should not be admitted to hospital in the event of his fainting or collapsing. He has done this on a number of occasions and has always recovered. He is given to having hallucinogenic reactions to any change of environment, especially being taken to A & E, not helped by his already weakened physical and mental health as well as his significant Parkinson’s disease.
‘I should also add that Sir Ranulph does not want to be resuscitated in the event of a serious collapse’.
There is nothing sinister about DNR requests but they normally occur during end of life care in hospital following serious illness.
Lady Fiennes reinforced to staff the instruction that her husband was not to be taken to hospital ‘under any circumstances’.
A contemporaneous note made by the home records her edict as not to go to hospital ‘even if he’s bleeding out’.
The owner told the Daily Mail: ‘What she’d said to us was that if he falls and cracks his head open – because he was having falls – under no circumstances are you to call an ambulance. He is not to be taken to A & E under any circumstances.
Poignantly, the person Ranulph misses most is his childhood sweetheart and wife of 34 years, Virginia ‘Ginny’ Fiennes, who died in 2004
‘I remember saying, “Does she really think we’re going to stand there and let him bleed out? I wouldn’t do that to an animal. I’m not going to do it to Sir Ranulph Fiennes.” It shocked us.
‘I also remember saying, “What if anything happens like that and he does just bleed out and passes away?” She replied: “That’s for me to deal with. It’s not for you. You’ve done what I asked you to do.”
‘That’s not how it works. That doesn’t absolve me from my responsibilities and duties as the provider of a care home.’
There were other issues.
Lady Fiennes failed to provide any medication list from a doctor or prescriber despite repeated requests, the owner said, and insisted that Sir Ranulph stayed under his private GP in London which meant he could not be registered locally like their other residents.
She supplied all of his medication and some of the antibiotics he was given were in her name, not his.
She asked a manager to vary some of his doses of medication but staff refused to do so without a written prescription.
‘That left the home with no clinical oversight of him at all,’ the owner told the Daily Mail. ‘No doctor saw him in the 49 days he was with us.’
So on March 11, the owner wrote to the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) – which exists to protect the elderly and vulnerable from being exploited by those granted power of attorney – ‘to raise safeguarding concerns’ about Sir Ranulph.
The letter said ‘Mrs Millington-Cotes’ would bring a bag of multiple medications to the home but only hand some of them over to staff to administer to her husband.
Additionally, the owner tells us, there was an oxygen cylinder in Sir Ranulph’s bedroom that ‘did not appear to have been supplied through a clinical oxygen provider.’ So staff removed it.
Sir Ranulph’s longstanding friend Michael Kobold and Lady Fiennes’s son Alexander Millington-Cotes, from a previous relationship, are now crowdfunding the legal challenge, mentioned earlier, to his mother’s lasting power of attorney.
But, perhaps most alarming for all Sir Ranulph’s desperately worried friends, his whereabouts are, once again, unknown.
