THE BEGINNING - NOVEMBER 2004

It was November 2004 and I was glugging a large glass of red wine in a tiny crowded gallery off the King’s Road. Outside was dark and cold with heavy lashing rain. Inside it was warm and cosy and the guests were being offered trays of prawn satay and vegetable tempura from the local Thai restaurant.

The occasion was a book launch – The Nature Notebooks of Edward Wilson – and I was a guest of David and his brother Chris, co-authors of the book and direct descendants of Edward Wilson the naturalist and polar explorer who tragically perished with Scott on the way back from the South Pole.

It was a convivial evening and the wine was flowing.

A whisper went around room – ‘dog sledging in the Arctic’. I gulped another mouthful of prawn and wine and suddenly an icy arrow pierced my brain! DOG SLEDGING IN THE ARCTIC!!!!! I barged my way through the crowd to where the whisper was emanating. It was true. A trip was being arranged to raise funds for SPRI – The Scott Polar Research Institute of which I am a Friend.

Within the hour I had verbally signed up to join the trip along with half the people in the room. It seemed like the most fantastic thing in the world on this cold rainy winter evening in London.

All the way home on the bus, I thought about it with great excitement and I’m sure the wine had nothing to do with it whatsoever.