0:00:00.605,0:00:02.359
I essentially drag sledges for a living,

0:00:02.359,0:00:05.543
so it doesn't take an awful lot to flummox me intellectually,

0:00:05.543,0:00:07.085
but I'm going to read this question

0:00:07.085,0:00:09.552
from an interview earlier this year:

0:00:09.552,0:00:12.944
"Philosophically, does the constant supply of information

0:00:12.944,0:00:15.679
steal our ability to imagine

0:00:15.679,0:00:18.495
or replace our dreams of achieving?

0:00:18.495,0:00:21.281
After all, if it is being done somewhere by someone,

0:00:21.281,0:00:23.584
and we can participate virtually,

0:00:23.584,0:00:27.085
then why bother leaving the house?"

0:00:27.085,0:00:29.734
I'm usually introduced as a polar explorer.

0:00:29.734,0:00:32.035
I'm not sure that's the most progressive or 21st-century

0:00:32.035,0:00:36.801
of job titles, but I've spent more than two percent now

0:00:36.801,0:00:40.529
of my entire life living in a tent inside the Arctic Circle,

0:00:40.529,0:00:44.056
so I get out of the house a fair bit.

0:00:44.056,0:00:47.603
And in my nature, I guess, I am a doer of things

0:00:47.603,0:00:52.095
more than I am a spectator or a contemplator of things,

0:00:52.095,0:00:56.319
and it's that dichotomy, the gulf between ideas and action

0:00:56.319,0:00:59.185
that I'm going to try and explore briefly.

0:00:59.185,0:01:02.518
The pithiest answer to the question "why?"

0:01:02.518,0:01:04.886
that's been dogging me for the last 12 years

0:01:04.886,0:01:07.670
was credited certainly to this chap, the rakish-looking gentleman

0:01:07.670,0:01:09.926
standing at the back, second from the left,

0:01:09.926,0:01:12.564
George Lee Mallory. Many of you will know his name.

0:01:12.564,0:01:16.553
In 1924 he was last seen disappearing into the clouds

0:01:16.553,0:01:18.227
near the summit of Mt. Everest.

0:01:18.227,0:01:21.482
He may or may not have been the first person to climb Everest,

0:01:21.482,0:01:23.458
more than 30 years before Edmund Hillary.

0:01:23.458,0:01:26.154
No one knows if he got to the top. It's still a mystery.

0:01:26.154,0:01:29.223
But he was credited with coining the phrase, "Because it's there."

0:01:29.223,0:01:31.913
Now I'm not actually sure that he did say that.

0:01:31.913,0:01:34.239
There's very little evidence to suggest it, but what he did say

0:01:34.239,0:01:36.719
is actually far nicer,

0:01:36.719,0:01:39.773
and again, I've printed this. I'm going to read it out.

0:01:39.773,0:01:41.727
"The first question which you will ask

0:01:41.727,0:01:44.224
and which I must try to answer is this:

0:01:44.224,0:01:48.000
What is the use of climbing Mt. Everest?

0:01:48.000,0:01:50.688
And my answer must at once be, it is no use.

0:01:50.688,0:01:54.449
There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever.

0:01:54.449,0:01:56.322
Oh, we may learn a little about the behavior

0:01:56.322,0:01:58.404
of the human body at high altitudes,

0:01:58.404,0:02:01.068
and possibly medical men may turn our observation

0:02:01.068,0:02:04.097
to some account for the purposes of aviation,

0:02:04.097,0:02:06.297
but otherwise nothing will come of it.

0:02:06.297,0:02:08.683
We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver,

0:02:08.683,0:02:11.282
and not a gem, nor any coal or iron.

0:02:11.282,0:02:14.081
We shall not find a single foot of earth that can be planted

0:02:14.081,0:02:18.223
with crops to raise food. So it is no use.

0:02:18.223,0:02:19.882
If you cannot understand that there is something in man

0:02:19.882,0:02:22.554
which responds to the challenge of this mountain

0:02:22.554,0:02:25.777
and goes out to meet it, that the struggle

0:02:25.777,0:02:30.231
is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward,

0:02:30.231,0:02:33.479
then you won't see why we go.

0:02:33.479,0:02:36.608
What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy,

0:02:36.608,0:02:39.542
and joy, after all, is the end of life.

0:02:39.542,0:02:41.745
We don't live to eat and make money.

0:02:41.745,0:02:44.207
We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life.

0:02:44.207,0:02:49.115
That is what life means, and that is what life is for."

0:02:49.115,0:02:52.569
Mallory's argument that leaving the house,

0:02:52.569,0:02:55.012
embarking on these grand adventures is joyful and fun,

0:02:55.012,0:02:58.918
however, doesn't tally that neatly with my own experience.

0:02:58.918,0:03:02.320
The furthest I've ever got away from my front door

0:03:02.320,0:03:05.464
was in the spring of 2004. I still don't know exactly

0:03:05.464,0:03:07.971
what came over me, but my plan was to make

0:03:07.971,0:03:12.214
a solo and unsupported crossing of the Arctic Ocean.

0:03:12.214,0:03:14.771
I planned essentially to walk from the north coast of Russia

0:03:14.771,0:03:18.103
to the North Pole, and then to carry on to the north coast of Canada.

0:03:18.103,0:03:21.011
No one had ever done this. I was 26 at the time.

0:03:21.011,0:03:23.263
A lot of experts were saying it was impossible,

0:03:23.263,0:03:26.617
and my mum certainly wasn't very keen on the idea.

0:03:26.617,0:03:28.970
(Laughter)

0:03:28.970,0:03:31.896
The journey from a small weather station on the north coast

0:03:31.896,0:03:34.081
of Siberia up to my final starting point,

0:03:34.081,0:03:36.633
the edge of the pack ice, the coast of the Arctic Ocean,

0:03:36.633,0:03:40.094
took about five hours, and if anyone watched fearless

0:03:40.094,0:03:43.406
Felix Baumgartner going up, rather than just coming down,

0:03:43.406,0:03:46.010
you'll appreciate the sense of apprehension,

0:03:46.010,0:03:49.322
as I sat in a helicopter thundering north,

0:03:49.322,0:03:51.979
and the sense, I think if anything, of impending doom.

0:03:51.979,0:03:55.669
I sat there wondering what on Earth I had gotten myself into.

0:03:55.669,0:03:57.713
There was a bit of fun, a bit of joy.

0:03:57.713,0:03:59.554
I was 26. I remember sitting there

0:03:59.554,0:04:02.146
looking down at my sledge. I had my skis ready to go,

0:04:02.146,0:04:04.387
I had a satellite phone, a pump-action shotgun

0:04:04.387,0:04:06.410
in case I was attacked by a polar bear.

0:04:06.410,0:04:08.701
I remember looking out of the window and seeing the second helicopter.

0:04:08.701,0:04:12.187
We were both thundering through this incredible Siberian dawn,

0:04:12.187,0:04:15.052
and part of me felt a bit like a cross between Jason Bourne

0:04:15.052,0:04:17.944
and Wilfred Thesiger. Part of me

0:04:17.944,0:04:24.266
felt quite proud of myself, but mostly I was just utterly terrified.

0:04:24.266,0:04:26.356
And that journey lasted 10 weeks, 72 days.

0:04:26.356,0:04:28.855
I didn't see anyone else. We took this photo next to the helicopter.

0:04:28.855,0:04:31.414
Beyond that, I didn't see anyone for 10 weeks.

0:04:31.414,0:04:33.356
The North Pole is slap bang in the middle of the sea,

0:04:33.356,0:04:36.617
so I'm traveling over the frozen surface of the Arctic Ocean.

0:04:36.617,0:04:40.727
NASA described conditions that year as the worst since records began.

0:04:40.727,0:04:44.383
I was dragging 180 kilos of food and fuel and supplies,

0:04:44.383,0:04:46.984
about 400 pounds. The average temperature for the 10 weeks

0:04:46.984,0:04:49.675
was minus 35. Minus 50 was the coldest.

0:04:49.675,0:04:56.954
So again, there wasn't an awful lot of joy or fun to be had.

0:04:56.954,0:04:58.487
One of the magical things about this journey, however,

0:04:58.487,0:05:00.590
is that because I'm walking over the sea,

0:05:00.590,0:05:04.652
over this floating, drifting, shifting crust of ice

0:05:04.652,0:05:06.847
that's floating on top of the Arctic Ocean is

0:05:06.847,0:05:08.795
it's an environment that's in a constant state of flux.

0:05:08.795,0:05:11.141
The ice is always moving, breaking up, drifting around,

0:05:11.141,0:05:14.601
refreezing, so the scenery that I saw for nearly 3 months

0:05:14.601,0:05:18.048
was unique to me. No one else will ever, could ever,

0:05:18.048,0:05:23.077
possibly see the views, the vistas, that I saw for 10 weeks.

0:05:23.077,0:05:27.040
And that, I guess, is probably the finest argument for leaving the house.

0:05:27.040,0:05:30.922
I can try to tell you what it was like,

0:05:30.922,0:05:32.767
but you'll never know what it was like,

0:05:32.767,0:05:35.695
and the more I try to explain that I felt lonely,

0:05:35.695,0:05:39.414
I was the only human being in 5.4 million square-miles,

0:05:39.414,0:05:43.719
it was cold, nearly minus 75 with windchill on a bad day,

0:05:43.719,0:05:47.551
the more words fall short, and I'm unable to do it justice.

0:05:47.551,0:05:51.742
And it seems to me, therefore, that the doing,

0:05:51.742,0:05:57.040
you know, to try to experience, to engage, to endeavor,

0:05:57.040,0:06:02.426
rather than to watch and to wonder, that's where

0:06:02.426,0:06:04.652
the real meat of life is to be found,

0:06:04.652,0:06:08.596
the juice that we can suck out of our hours and days.

0:06:08.596,0:06:11.079
And I would add a cautionary note here, however.

0:06:11.079,0:06:13.167
In my experience, there is something addictive

0:06:13.167,0:06:17.606
about tasting life at the very edge of what's humanly possible.

0:06:17.606,0:06:19.841
Now I don't just mean in the field of

0:06:19.841,0:06:22.128
daft macho Edwardian style derring-do,

0:06:22.128,0:06:24.321
but also in the fields of pancreatic cancer,

0:06:24.321,0:06:26.228
there is something addictive about this, and in my case,

0:06:26.228,0:06:28.778
I think polar expeditions are perhaps not that far removed

0:06:28.778,0:06:30.160
from having a crack habit.

0:06:30.160,0:06:33.865
I can't explain quite how good it is until you've tried it,

0:06:33.865,0:06:37.682
but it has the capacity to burn up all the money I can get my hands on,

0:06:37.682,0:06:41.260
to ruin every relationship I've ever had,

0:06:41.260,0:06:45.661
so be careful what you wish for.

0:06:45.661,0:06:48.042
Mallory postulated that there is something in man

0:06:48.042,0:06:50.682
that responds to the challenge of the mountain,

0:06:50.682,0:06:52.708
and I wonder if that's the case whether there's something

0:06:52.708,0:06:55.765
in the challenge itself, in the endeavor, and particularly

0:06:55.765,0:06:58.877
in the big, unfinished, chunky challenges that face humanity

0:06:58.877,0:07:03.193
that call out to us, and in my experience that's certainly the case.

0:07:03.193,0:07:04.973
There is one unfinished challenge

0:07:04.973,0:07:08.245
that's been calling out to me for most of my adult life.

0:07:08.245,0:07:09.673
Many of you will know the story.

0:07:09.673,0:07:12.264
This is a photo of Captain Scott and his team.

0:07:12.264,0:07:14.137
Scott set out just over a hundred years ago to try

0:07:14.137,0:07:17.404
to become the first person to reach the South Pole.

0:07:17.404,0:07:19.228
No one knew what was there. It was utterly unmapped

0:07:19.228,0:07:21.253
at the time. We knew more about the surface of the moon

0:07:21.253,0:07:24.000
than we did about the heart of Antarctica.

0:07:24.000,0:07:26.916
Scott, as many of you will know, was beaten to it

0:07:26.916,0:07:29.209
by Roald Amundsen and his Norwegian team,

0:07:29.209,0:07:31.564
who used dogs and dogsleds. Scott's team were on foot,

0:07:31.564,0:07:33.985
all five of them wearing harnesses and dragging around sledges,

0:07:33.985,0:07:38.417
and they arrived at the pole to find the Norwegian flag already there,

0:07:38.417,0:07:41.675
I'd imagine pretty bitter and demoralized.

0:07:41.675,0:07:43.945
All five of them turned and started walking back to the coast

0:07:43.945,0:07:47.533
and all five died on that return journey.

0:07:47.533,0:07:49.767
There is a sort of misconception nowadays that

0:07:49.767,0:07:53.393
it's all been done in the fields of exploration and adventure.

0:07:53.393,0:07:54.680
When I talk about Antarctica, people often say,

0:07:54.680,0:07:55.970
"Hasn't, you know, that's interesting,

0:07:55.970,0:07:59.163
hasn't that Blue Peter presenter just done it on a bike?"

0:07:59.163,0:08:02.753
Or, "That's nice. You know, my grandmother's going

0:08:02.753,0:08:05.383
on a cruise to Antarctica next year. You know.

0:08:05.383,0:08:08.249
Is there a chance you'll see her there?"

0:08:08.249,0:08:10.067
(Laughter)

0:08:10.067,0:08:13.281
But Scott's journey remains unfinished.

0:08:13.281,0:08:15.608
No one has ever walked from the very coast of Antarctica

0:08:15.608,0:08:17.405
to the South Pole and back again.

0:08:17.405,0:08:20.179
It is, arguably, the most audacious endeavor

0:08:20.179,0:08:22.804
of that Edwardian golden age of exploration,

0:08:22.804,0:08:25.357
and it seemed to me high time, given everything

0:08:25.357,0:08:27.278
we have figured out in the century since

0:08:27.278,0:08:30.859
from scurvy to solar panels, that it was high time

0:08:30.859,0:08:32.636
someone had a go at finishing the job.

0:08:32.636,0:08:35.332
So that's precisely what I'm setting out to do.

0:08:35.332,0:08:37.900
This time next year, in October, I'm leading a team of three.

0:08:37.900,0:08:40.759
It will take us about four months to make this return journey.

0:08:40.759,0:08:43.812
That's the scale. The red line is obviously halfway to the pole.

0:08:43.812,0:08:45.206
We have to turn around and come back again.

0:08:45.206,0:08:47.453
I'm well aware of the irony of telling you that we will be

0:08:47.453,0:08:50.188
blogging and tweeting. You'll be able to live

0:08:50.188,0:08:52.621
vicariously and virtually through this journey

0:08:52.621,0:08:55.628
in a way that no one has ever before.

0:08:55.628,0:08:58.211
And it'll also be a four-month chance for me to finally

0:08:58.211,0:09:02.085
come up with a pithy answer to the question, "Why?"

0:09:02.085,0:09:07.018
And our lives today are safer and more comfortable

0:09:07.018,0:09:09.600
than they have ever been. There certainly isn't much call

0:09:09.600,0:09:13.458
for explorers nowadays. My career advisor at school

0:09:13.458,0:09:16.099
never mentioned it as an option.

0:09:16.099,0:09:18.521
If I wanted to know, for example,

0:09:18.521,0:09:20.817
how many stars were in the Milky Way,

0:09:20.817,0:09:23.396
how old those giant heads on Easter Island were,

0:09:23.396,0:09:25.521
most of you could find that out right now

0:09:25.521,0:09:28.347
without even standing up.

0:09:28.347,0:09:31.112
And yet, if I've learned anything in nearly 12 years now

0:09:31.112,0:09:34.199
of dragging heavy things around cold places,

0:09:34.199,0:09:38.158
it is that true, real inspiration and growth

0:09:38.158,0:09:42.418
only comes from adversity and from challenge,

0:09:42.418,0:09:45.434
from stepping away from what's comfortable and familiar

0:09:45.434,0:09:47.915
and stepping out into the unknown.

0:09:47.915,0:09:51.456
In life, we all have tempests to ride and poles to walk to,

0:09:51.456,0:09:53.265
and I think metaphorically speaking, at least,

0:09:53.265,0:09:56.135
we could all benefit from getting outside the house

0:09:56.135,0:10:00.016
a little more often, if only we could summon up the courage.

0:10:00.016,0:10:03.241
I certainly would implore you to open the door just a little bit

0:10:03.241,0:10:06.137
and take a look at what's outside.

0:10:06.137,0:10:07.365
Thank you very much.

0:10:07.365,0:10:16.334
(Applause)