Arch to Arctic

We stood there for a while longer, looking at the stretch of water that had come to mean so much to us, each carrying our own fears and hopes, and knowing that soon we'd be down there among those white caps, finding out what we were really made of. In 2015, two ordinary friends met in a south London pub and made a decision that would consume the next three years of their lives. What started as a list of wild ideas jotted down became something altogether more serious: run from London to Dover, swim the English Channel, cycle two thousand miles to northern Norway, and row six hundred miles through the Arctic Ocean to Svalbard. Neither could swim properly. Neither had rowed at sea. Neither knew anything about organising an extreme expedition. The mishaps, setbacks, injury and illness, naivety and self-doubt were relentless - and yet, through the sheer power of commitment and the strength of friendship, they achieved far more than they had thought possible. Funny, honest, and quietly profound, this is not a story about exceptional people. It is a story about what becomes possible when ordinary ones refuse to let go of an exceptional idea.