The cold took no prisoners this year, and the toes of Rosie’s left foot were hit the worst as they froze, thawed, refroze, rethawed and frostbite took hold. As the temperature crawled up through the –40s and into the more temperate –30s, the sun became a fixture in the sky, no longer rising or setting but simply circling Rosie as she pressed north. However, the sun became a fleeting visitor as the rising temperatures brought burnished clouds each staking a claim to their piece of the horizon before enveloping the world completely in a deathly white.

As the clouds fell, Rosie’s senses became almost redundant. What use are ears when there is nothing to hear, what use eyes when all around you is white, what use touch when its only function is to remind you of the pain in your feet? There is no up, no down, no far away, no close up, no sky, no ground, just white and the dead weight of your sledge behind you as your only comfort against complete isolation.

At least as Rosie hauled, climbed, pushed, pulled, levered, smashed and at times dug her way north, the ice conditions began to improve. Then came the storms. Whipping across the Arctic, the snow was coerced into vortices around Rosie, burrowing into every crevice as the wind fashioned the encircling ridges into sails taking her east and south, away from her desired route and course.

The storms were not finished there. The flat pans of ice, already weakened by a mild winter, were pulverised into rubble. Some remained firm beneath and merely presented a challenge of agility and fitness, others hid the black water below and invited falls through and wet clothing that began to stiffen with ice. Rosie’s highways to the pole were gone.

Whilst the whiteout remained, the temperature began to rise yet further and suddenly Rosie was having to negotiate a spaghetti junction of open leads, sometimes swimming across in her stiff orange immersion suit, smashing the thin layer of ice on top with her elbows as she went, sometimes leaping from island to island as they drifted past, praying that she would be fast enough to bring her sledge along with her. Several times Rosie fell in and with the water leaching the life from her, had to clamber up the sheer walls of ice to relative safety with only minutes to act before any action became pointless.

Rosie fought her way north, never giving up, never losing heart or her sense of humour. On the 85th day, less than ninety miles from the Pole, the pilots due to resupply her for the final push took one look at the ice ahead and knew that this would be the last day it would be safe to land on the ice. If Rosie ever wanted to come home, she would have to do so now. Bundled into the back of the plane crushed between the fuel drums and her battered sledge, Rosie flew over the pole that had been her one dream for so many years and turned south for home.

Rosie didn’t reach the North Pole. She cannot claim the record of being the first woman to reach the North Pole solo, but she took away a greater prize. Those who embark on expeditions merely to collect baubles, to boast of records achieved and to stand at dinner parties with puffed out chests retelling their suitably embellished stories will never truly understand that the true prize is the journey itself not the destination and the record that counts is the record of your days, your decisions and your determination, not the record stamped into the appendices of little-read books.

Before Rosie, no solo woman had lasted more than five days and a handful of miles on the Arctic ocean, Rosie trekked more than 300 nautical miles and spent 85 days alone among the ice. She recorded a furthest north for a solo woman and no longer can it be intimated that this journey, this challenge is beyond the capabilities of women. Nansen and Shackleton were both proud to claim furthest north and south respectively, and like these two greatest of men Rosie has shown the way, she has shown that the prize can be reached. Rosie may not ever become the first woman to reach the North Pole solo, but one day one woman will and it will be in part because of Rosie.

It seems my birthday fell just a little too early to take advantage of this.

• Put together a major solo North Pole expedition
• Simultaneously tested new polar equipment while entertaining a small five-year-old boy with my monster/giant impressions.
• Spent time in Toronto, Ottawa, Iqaluit, Resolute, Montreal, London and New York
• Performed two snowmobile rescues for individuals stranded on the sea ice (mentally playing the Ride of the Valkyries all the while)
• Had my name appear on the inside cover of a major label album release.
• Moved continents and set up in New York
• Met Barbara Bush (the twin, not the Granny)
• Learned what shuffleboard is
• Screamed at UPS “just who the hell do I have to wake up in which country to get this package delivered on time”
• Learned that my street is the major route of choice for all night-time emergency services in New York
• Tried Ashtanga yoga
• Met the Inuit grandson of one of Roald Amundsen’s flings
• Competed in a Scotland 10K in Central Park
• Written a soon-to-be published piece for the Grauniad

And met innumerable interesting and warm-hearted people along the way.

Rosie has persuaded Mars (the confectioner rather than the planet) to sponsor an attempt to become the first woman to reach the North Pole solo. It’s a tough journey. In 2004, I was one of the last people to see Dominick Arduin alive when she set out from Siberia to attempt the same journey. Others such as Ann Daniels have been hamstrung by logistics failures, while Bettina Aller was stalked by polar bears for days in 2001 getting frostbite from the revolver she had to brandish at all times.

Rosie asked me to manage the expedition for her and I’ve leapt at the chance to bring some of my old team back together again and do my best to make this an expedition to be proud of. This means I’ll be back and forth between New York, London and the Canadian High Arctic over the next few months and will do my best to up the blogging rate round here so that I can give a flavour of what it’s like preparing and running an expedition where the penalties for poor decisions can be severe. There is also lots of exciting news happening around SOUTH, so watch this space. . . .

With the possible exception of a blog post during our 2005 expedition to Greenland where Ben managed to make me look like Sid James, this youtube screencap from a video made for Ice Edge ranks as the worst picture of me on the net.

I realise that now I am opening the floodgates for someone to prove me wrong.