A newly wed Oxfordshire man sets out on a seven-year expedition to re-trace the footsteps of earliest man.

James Tremayne, 27, a marine biologist from Charlton-on-Otmoor, said his goodbyes at the Travellers' Club in Pall Mall, London, as he left for Capetown to make the final preparations.

James Tremayne and wife Louise.

He will begin his epic journey on May 1 by foot across four continents just two months after marrying Louise, a writer from London. He was given £6,500 towards the journey by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust.

The symbolic start of the expedition is a 120,000-year-old set of fossilized footprints left in a sand dune near some of the earliest inhabited cave sites near Capetown.

He will then head a team of four who will spend the first year walking the routes early man would have taken across Africa.

James, pictured above with Louise, has had the idea of tracing the history of mankind from its "cradle" in south east Africa for several years. He said: "Our journey will be a broad sweep across the world; it's never been done before."