Ranulph Fiennes · 1983 · polar

Ranulph Fiennes's account of the Transglobe Expedition, 1979 to 1982 - the first and still the only circumnavigation of the Earth on its polar axis by surface travel alone. Thirty-five thousand miles, both poles, two Antarctic and Arctic winters, and ninety-nine days adrift on a breaking ice floe at the end of it.

1. 1
   Greenwich

   2 September 1979, and the Prince of Wales sees them off from the Thames - a plan to go round the world on its polar axis by surface travel only, which nobody had done and nobody has done since.

2. 2
   Barcelona

   South through France by Land Rover to the Mediterranean - the easy part, and the last stretch for three years on which anything goes according to schedule.

3. 3
   Algiers

   Across to Africa and the start of the Sahara crossing - the expedition having spent seven years raising money and permissions from fifty-odd governments before a wheel turned.

4. 4
   Tamanrasset

   The Hoggar mountains in the deep desert, and then south through Niger and Mali - dunes, breakdowns, and the sort of border officials who had never seen the paperwork before.

5. 5
   Abidjan

   The Ivory Coast and the Atlantic, and the Benjamin Bowring waiting - a converted ice-strengthened ship crewed largely by volunteers, which is how the whole expedition was staffed.

6. 6
   Ryvingen

   Antarctica, and a hut built into the ice at seventy-two south for the winter - eight months of darkness in a cardboard-and-timber box, waiting for a season good enough to cross the continent.

7. 7
   The South Pole

   15 December 1980, reached on open snowmobiles - two thousand two hundred miles across the continent in sixty-seven days, on machines designed for Scandinavian farm tracks.

8. 8
   Scott Base

   Down the Scott Glacier to the Ross Ice Shelf and out - the first crossing of Antarctica by that route, and the ship picking them up at the edge of the sea ice.

9. 9
   Auckland

   New Zealand, and north across the Pacific - the halfway point, three years in, with the harder half still ahead.

10. 10
    Los Angeles

    North America, and up the west coast to the Yukon - then down the river by open boat, and into the Northwest Passage in a twelve-foot inflatable.

11. 11
    Tuktoyaktuk

    The Beaufort Sea coast, and three thousand miles of the Passage done in an open boat in a single season - which had not been managed before and depended entirely on the ice being kind that summer.

12. 12
    Alert

    Ellesmere Island, the northernmost settlement on earth, and a second winter - a hut, the dark, and the wait for the ice to be firm enough and the light long enough.

13. 13
    The North Pole

    11 April 1982, on foot and by skidoo across moving pack ice - the first people to reach both poles by surface travel, with a year and a half of the journey still to survive.

14. 14
    Spitsbergen

    And then the worst part: the floe they were on breaking up, and ninety-nine days adrift on a shrinking raft of ice, drifting south until the ship could reach them.

15. 15
    Greenwich

    29 August 1982, back up the Thames after thirty-five thousand miles and three years - and no one has repeated it, because the ice they crossed in the Passage is now open water and the floes will not bear it.