A lot of people have asked us how we came up with this idea. Why Svalbard? It’s a bit of a random destination isn’t it. Had you even heard of it before? I’d hadn’t when Rob suggested going there. I think I’d watched a couple of episodes of Fortitude and therefore knew the name but didn’t really associate it with it’s geographical position.

It sounds a bit like Mordor from Lord of the Rings. A dark and dangerous place which no one in their right mind would go to. In actual fact that is a pretty good description of what it’s like.

The truth is Svalbard wasn’t the final destination. The original aim was to get to the North Pole. The route was the same but instead of finishing at Svalbard, we would continue rowing until we hit the polar ice caps, and then we would hop out, don our cross country skis and pulks, and walk the final few hundred miles to the North Pole. The naivety!

Ignorance is bliss and we thought this idea sounded plausible. And it would have been bloody impressive to get from London to the North Pole by human power alone. After deciding that this is what we would do, we took an open-minded approach whereby we would assume it was possible until we were proven otherwise. We started googling and then emailing Arctic explorers, guides and expedition adventurers to see if we could get any insights.

One of the first guys to get back to me was Eric Larsen, a Polar explorer with a pretty impressive list of expeditions under his belt. He provided a few nuggets of enlightenment for us. Firstly, in the last 5 years, only one North Pole expedition (ie starting from land – not these guys that fly out to the 89th parallel) has been successful. He says it’s the most difficult adventure on the planet; way harder than climbing Everest – and he should know, as he has done both and been to the South Pole (all in one year in fact!).

Although he didn’t completely shoot us down, his suggestion was if you want to go to the North Pole focus solely on that. The rest of your trip is a great adventure — so if you’re interested in that part — set your goal at Svalbard.

We didn’t rule out the North Pole straight away. Rob was particularly reluctant to rule it out, as it really is the cherry on the top. But we did more research and eventually decided the North Pole was out of the question. Some alternative ideas were kicked about such as rowing back to London from Svalbard, but these were also quickly dismissed. I’d say we’ve got our work cut out as it is. So it is, Svalbard, the final destination.

When we decided to do this expedition, we gave ourselves the task of writing out ten “sky’s the limit” adventure ideas. Have a look at the ideas we came up with. It’s real ‘back of the fag packet’ stuff. As you can see, number 3 of Rob’s list is the one we chose.

Rob’s list



Poldy’s list