Video:
Hammond tells Times Online about the weirdest thing he has ever driven
Gentlemen, start your, er, dogs. It’s one of those strange moments, the start
of an Arctic expedition. You stand around and chat with the same mates that
you have stood around with all over the world in far more ordinary
circumstances. We spoke about the weather - it was snowy and cold,
obviously; we spoke about how we had slept (very badly). They all looked the
same as they did standing around with me at the test track in Surrey or in
the pub. Except they were rather more wrapped up in big coats and hats.
I looked across to James May’s and Jeremy Clarkson’s truck, gleaming red
against the snow, and I felt more than a little jealous. I felt, in fact,
like a 10-year-old being handed an empty shoebox and a packet of crayons for
Christmas while his mates next door are given the keys to a helicopter and a
live tiger in a cage. Never mind, though, I was determined; I would carry
out my half of this trip with courage and dignity. I would be tough, I would
impress them with my resilience, my newfound Arctic fitness and the finely
honed sledging skills.
Finally we ran out of ideas for procrastination and had to concede that, yes,
it was time to go. James and Jeremy climbed aboard their truck to flick
switches and turn on cameras. I climbed on to the backboard of the wooden
sledge and made ready with the release rope.
Jeremy’s and James’s truck engine roared as it, too, tore away from our
improvised start line in our race to the magnetic North Pole. I strained to
see ahead, my eyes drying out quickly in the cold rush of air, but I could
still see the dogs as they bent to pull their pay-load, their heads down and
straining forwards, their powerful back legs digging deep.
I waited to see how the pack would react to being overtaken by a bright red
pickup truck with engine wailing and two yobs doubtless hurling insults as
they overtook. But they never came past. We were ahead. On our wooden sledge
pulled by a handful of mutts we could out-accelerate their custom-built,
technology-laden truck. I twisted round to watch as the truck dropped away
behind. I could still see James and Jeremy in their cab. They had stopped. I
would learn later that James had forgotten his gloves.
I turned back and laughed into the wind at seeing James’s hunched figure as he
hurled himself from the open door to run back to the hotel while Jeremy
yelled abuse at him through the same open door.
I’M in the tent. It’s cold. I’m in my sleeping bag wearing everything I’ve got
except my jacket. Which is outside on the sledge getting snowed on. This,
apparently, is what you do when you’re a Brave Polar Explorer. You leave
your coat outside so that it doesn’t soak up all the condensation that comes
off your body in the night and then freeze when you go out in it the next
day.
Everybody’s obsessed with sweat, piss and where to take a dump out here. And,
no, there isn’t anywhere. You just wander out onto the ice with a bog roll
and the gun in case of polar bears - the gun is there in case of bears. Not
the bog roll, which really wouldn’t help.
There’s nothing to shelter behind, no trees, obviously, just flat ice. So you
pick a spot, drop your trolleys and get on with it. As for taking a piss,
well I can’t even begin to talk about it. It is, as I’ve recorded, very cold
indeed: -40C or -50C. That has a less than flattering effect on the
gentleman’s area of even the most steely nerved, testosterone-filled Brave
Polar Explorer.
We didn’t discover the North Pole, obviously; that was done by men in massive
hats with ships that got stuck in the ice and pit ponies that got eaten when
they found there were no penguins. I spend the day eating enough nuts and
chocolate to run a power station with their calorific-flaming value. I might
be the first Brave Polar Explorer to return from an expedition and have to
go on a diet.
The film crew and I had been given strict orders governing how we would work:
standing around, even for a few moments, was to risk hypothermia, frostbite
and a million other nasty things that don’t happen filming at a racetrack in
Surrey.
The batteries that would power the kit were expected to last a fraction of the
time they would in warmer climes and the simple business of taking off
gloves to get the camera and sound kit out of their travelling cases to set
up a shot meant risking the loss of one of those gloves to the constant,
streaming wind and the subsequent loss of the exposed hand to frostbite.
We were told we had to drink at least a litre of water in the morning because
the freezing atmosphere takes away all our body’s moisture and it’s as
dehydrating as the hottest desert out here. Weird really: there’s water
everywhere but it’s locked up as ice. We get our water from snow. You put
the stove on, stick a massive cooking pot on it and shovel tons of snow into
it. And it does have to be tons. A load of snow as big as a Land Rover will
produce enough water to fill an egg cup.
You’re supposed to examine the colour of your pee every time you go, to see
how dehydrated you are. If it’s clear then you’re okay. If it’s the colour
of straw when it hits the snow, you’ve got to drink more or you risk getting
massive headaches in the day and being ill. Mine came out like sand. I need
to drink more.
We get up, we harness the dogs and run them for six to eight hours, or as long
as they can manage, then we pitch camp, have a short sleep, maybe four hours
or so, and then set off again for as long as the dogs will go. It doesn’t
matter if we get out of synch with the days because it never gets dark.
Bathurst Island today is easily discernible from the rest of the sea ice
because it rises up into a huge, white mound. To reach it, we have to go up
through a wide valley. It’s called Polar Bear Pass because the polar bears
travel through it every year on their migration. There are thousands of
them. And this is migration time. Lovely. If the cold, the slopes and the
bears don’t get me, terminal constipation will. And people do this for fun?
Bloody lunatics.
The valley spread, wide and forbidding, flanked by lowlying hills. In places,
the wind had polished the tops of the hills until the ice glinted black. I
looked up and saw a structure standing in a bank of snow a few hundred yards
away on the edge of a hill. The shape of it was familiar; it chimed with
something deep in my human heart. It was narrow, maybe only a metre wide,
but tall; taller than a man standing. There was a single door to one side,
the side facing away from me. It could only be one thing. And I had to run
back and tell the team.
“Bloody hell, guys, there’s a bog here. I’ve found it. It’s beautiful. I want
to see if it’s real. Give me the gun. And the bog roll. If I’m not back in
half an hour, tell my family I died a happy man.”
And it was a lavatory. Of sorts. A basic wooden outhouse of the kind you might
see gracing an allotment. To my eyes, though, it was more magnificent than a
cathedral, more gracious and stately than Blenheim Palace. I would have
swapped the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel Tower and the Sydney Opera House for this
building any day of the week.
The plumbing was rudimentary - there wasn’t any. It was a sort of Arctic
Glastonbury affair. But it worked. There was a seat and there was privacy.
And I didn’t care how many polar bears were dancing around outside
sharpening their teeth and arguing over who wanted leg and who wanted
breast; they could bloody well wait until I was out.
THE news that we had lost the race came as we burst out of yet another stretch
of broken ice boulders lying in a chaotic mass, now behind us. Jeremy could
not keep the joy out of his voice as he told me that he and his team were
standing at the finish point. Their sat nav system had confirmed it.
They had struggled through and done something no one else had achieved
(driving to the magnetic North Pole) and were, justifiably, proud and
pleased. I looked at the dogs, their heads up as they glanced round at me
talking into the box in my hand. I wondered if they might resent me for
letting them down, for failing to help them win. A plane would land on skis
on the ice at the magnetic North Pole that evening and collect the truck
team. Then it would land and collect us.
Using three snowmobiles as graders and steamrollers, we made runs up and down
a stretch of ice and snow to prepare the surface for the plane. With our
work on the runway finished, we retired to drink cold coffee from our flasks
and try to stay warm. The call came soon after.
The voice told me that there had been a problem. The plane had landed at the
magnetic North Pole and loaded up the truck team. But in landing it had
broken one of its skis. It could now only land on its wheels. We would be
staying on the ice until they could land back at Resolute, fix the plane and
make the return flight for us.
I was told later that I managed to swear constantly and without repetition for
40 minutes. We settled into the tent, accepting our fate with perhaps rather
less bravery and equanimity than that with which Scott and his team accepted
theirs as they faced certain death on the ice nearly 100 years ago.
Looking around, we were a ragtag bunch. We had not shaved, of course, and our
beards varied from manly and bushy coverings worthy of a bear to my own sad,
wispy affair. A beard-shaving competition was declared.
We must arrive back in civilisation in style and with a dash of explorer’s
panache. A variety of shaving implements were produced from rucksacks and
bags. We laid them out. No one had brought shaving foam. We had not
anticipated a need for it.
But we found that by holding your head over the steam from the now constantly
boiling pot of water on the overworked stove you could soften the beard at
least to the extent that screams could be stifled as we scraped away
whatever growth we had. I lost, naturally, though I thought my Shakespearean
moustache and dangerous, narrow beard rather the part.
More time passed. Several of us had iPods: they had done sterling work keeping
us sane through the long hours spent trudging or skiing across the icy
landscape. We invented iPod roulette. It’s simple. Those playing must each
bring their iPod. A random letter is announced by an independent figure who
has no iPod, and then a number.
All players must then dial into their machine the relevant letter and assign
to the play menu the track beginning with that letter. The point of the game
is to throw up the most embarrassing, humiliating tracks possible, giving
the other players the chance to laugh at, mock and abuse the player thus
exposed.
The game kept us busy for another few hours. Finally, the plane arrived and we
began the long journey back to civilisation, to a place where remembering
your coat is a matter of comfort and not life and death. And to my own dogs
at home, who would never display the bravery, dedication and endurance of
the dogs in front of me now, but whose loyalty and willingness were equally
strong. And I would go home to my wife and daughters, the women who together
make up the reason for my life, wherever it takes me.
© Richard Hammond 2008 Extracted from As You Do, to be published
by Weidenfeld & Nicolson on September 18 at £18.99. Copies can be
ordered for £17.09, including postage, from The Sunday Times BookFirst on
0870 165 8585
