Cheers mate. I have found a OpenGL basic engine that uses ODE.
That is exactly the sort of thing I am looking for.

Two things;
1. the example includes a map file. I inderstand the basic layout and content, but not the vertices or faces values - see below;

52 vertices
-3.0 0.0 -3.0

17 faces
1 2 27 26 1 1 wall // starting wall

2. the example does not include collision detection. Know any good sources of info about collision detection?

Peter