The communities that live along the margins of the great national parks have a tough time. They are poor and undernourished, their lands are restricted by the parks, and when from time to time the odd lion or elephant breaks out of the park, they are the ones who suffer. Arguments about preserving the genetic diversity of the planet can seem a little abstract to someone who has just lost the crops he needs to feed his family or, worse, has just lost one of his family. In the long run, conservation can’t be imposed by outsiders, overriding the needs of local people. If anyone is going to take care of the wildlife, then, in the end, it must be the local people—and someone must take care of them.

Our route took us alongside and sometimes through the great national parks of Tsavo East and Tsavo West, and it was the people who lived on these perimeters that we had come to visit, and also to help. The £100,000 we were hoping to raise from the walk would be spent on building school classrooms, stocking libraries, and paying for other community projects. We wanted to encourage them to see that whatever problems the wildlife may pose to them, it was of benefit to them as well.

As we were approaching our first village of the day, the rhino, with Todd Jones inside it, was in the lead. All the walkers took turns at wearing the thing for an hour at a time, and you quickly learned to tell who was in it at any moment from the way in which it moved. If the rhino sauntered, then it was Giles inside. Giles was an ex-Gordonstoun Hugh Grant lookalike who had spent the last few years hitchhiking languidly around Africa with his own parachute. His technique was to turn up at airfields with this parachute, find someone who was flying in the general direction he wanted to go, hitch a lift, and then, when the fancy took him, just jump out of the plane. Apparently his girlfriend was a top supermodel who, every few months, would find out where he was, fly out there, and then (I’m guessing here) have him washed and sent up to her hotel room.

If the rhino ambled along in a genial way, then it was Tom inside. Tom was a tall, Wodehousian man with exactly the wrong complexion for Africa. He had the amiable air of a member of the landed gentry, and when I asked him where he lived he said, in a vague kind of way, “Shropshire.”