i would like to thank all the people who have helped me and MAG, by providing the assistance and sponsorship which has enabled me to get to this stage,

am shortly going to make the 2 hour journey to Lindesnes, arriving between 20:00 and 21:00 then i will just have a few hours to wait until i set off at the turn of the year, hopefully i will find somewhere to stay in the early hours of tomorrow morning between Lindesnes and Lyngdal.

because i will not be carrying the satellite terminal until i get to Ljosland, i am relying on being able to get access to landline internet for the first four days, if i am unnable to do this then you will not hear from me unitl the 4/5th, so if the diary entries dry up it doesnt necessarily mean that i have come to grief

i can hardly believe this is it, the culmination of so many hours and days of planning and training. most expeditions of this kind require six months to a year, in which to prepare and bring together the resources necessary. i have been working towards this goal for a little less than 3 months. i have had some amazing luck, and many coincidences have contributed towards enabling me to be ready in such little time. but this in itself this is dangerous, having too much luck can lead to complacency, and the expectation that the luck will hold out.

careful planning, listening to advice, and attention to detail are what produces luck, and just because i have been fortunate this far it would be wise of me, to remember that luck can go the other way too

tonight i will be attending the “walking in of the new year” with my hosts, this is a local tradition in Evje where residents walk around the town carrying candles after dark, to welcome the coming year and say goodbye to the old one, i am looking forward to seeing this spectacle and i hope that it will get me in the right mood for my departure - i will have plenty of time to get to Lindesnes before midnight

this is my first major expedition, a huge step into the unknown. i know there will be hard times ahead

i didnt think this D Day thing through. if this is D Day - 1 that means D Day is tomorrow, which it isnt strictly speaking. if im starting at midnight on the 31st then that means this is really D Day - 2. il get it right next time i do one of these things.

went skiing today to check all the gear out, skis fine, boots gave me blisters - but if i tape my feet up they should be ok, pulk is good and the weight is fine when going uphill, but my skills need some work when skiing downhill with it, it pushed me over on my face and i scraped some skin off the end of my nose. now it looks like i have syphilis or something - not great for pulling - pulk or otherwise.

the plan is to walk the first 123 km from Lindesnes to Ljosland where i will meet up with the skis and pulk and begin skiing, i am sending the computer & satellite terminal with the rest of the gear so that i will be as light as possible for the dash on foot to Ljosland

im all packed now and ready to go, all that remains is to get going  

busy day today getting all the gear that was unavailable in UK, lots of good stuff but Norway is expensive. now everything is ready and tomorrow im going for a days skiing to test it all out.

packed the pulk this evening, it is f***ing heavy, in case youre wondering a pulk is a sled for carrying gear, so packing the pulk is not like “kicking the bucket” or “screwing the pooch”. on the other hand it does sound quite good “pack the pulk”, you could imagine Richard Burton saying it in a war movie; “Johnie packed the pulk im afraid; ack ack over Dunkirk”.

so anyway, i packed the pulk, and its heavy. really heavy. i dont want to weigh it and find out exactly how much weight i will be pulling. but i will be eating my rations to cut that weight down, infact i will be eating very enthusiastically, i will have to put away 6 - 7000 calories per day. had five helpings of excellent pizza this evening, trying to put on some last minute fatness

am in Norway, left the hallowed shores for the last time this year at 0630 this morning, currently staying with an old friend of my fathers in Evje. a couple of days here to check and test all the kit, and do some final planning and i will be off on new years eve.

on the plane today i was sat next to a lady, whose son and husband were siting in the row in front of us. we could see the heads of them in front of us, they had identical hair, albeit with a variation of hair colour. i could see the lady beside me looking at the heads of her son and husband, looking at the similarity, i could see her thinking to herself, “i made that one out of that one” (funny how sometimes you can almost hear another persons thoughts - but maybe im kidding myself). it must be an amazing thing to create a life from scratch, a sense of accomplishment which only a woman can feel. it made me think about the differences between men and women.

recently i have been thinking a lot about women and why they are so fundamentally different, and im sure that this ability to (almost) spontaneously create life has something to do with it. after all, if half the guys in this world suddenly got the power to bring new human beings into existence, i think they would start to act a little different, and the other half of the guys would probably start to treat them a little differently too.

have had my first look at the pulk, its a great bit of kit - far better than anything i have used before, the skis too are top notch, but i will have to fit a minor component myself. not knowing my exact shoe size, the Asnes factory couldnt fit the tightening strap to the bindings.

right now im just planning where i will stop on the first few days, hopefully my progress on the ground will be sufficient for me to stay on schedule

bought a book for the trip today, the complete poems of william blake. its thick enough to choke an elephant and i do not anticipate finishing it. i actually bought it by accident, i picked it up just to take a look in a book shop and dropped it - damaging the cover, so i had to buy it.

its probably not a bad idea to take something which would otherwise be unreadable on a very long trip where you will have no choice but to read it. in afghanistan i took a copy of the koran, but some b****ard pinched it before i could read the final chapter - apparently they all lived happily ever after

the only poetry i know is the stuff you get quoted in movies “no bird soars too high if it soars with its own two wings” thats blake, from the movie two hands with heath ledger. given my ignorance this book is probably not such a bad thing. maybe under its influence, i will get more articulate, and i will learn not to say “s**t” when things go wrong

i am about to leave my dads house - in the next few minutes, i have been here for nearly three months while i was planning ths trip and it has become familiar, out there beyond the horizon the icy wastes beckon. (hows that for some poeticality)

ive packed all my gear, tomorrow im staying the night in reading before catching a plane early on the 28th

i know where im going but i am not sure what i am leaving behind, since leaving the marines in may, much has happened. this time last year i was in afghanistan, and much in my life was uncertain, as it is now but for different reasons. i am on the verge of something momentous, and my resolve - nay, my very existence will be challenged by the journey ahead

it forces me to question some of the things i have done, and the decisions made on the road which has led me here. some things i regret, and there are some wrongs i have committed which i wish i could take back, and let people know how sorry i am for having hurt them

i visited my mothers grave yesterday, to accompany my father as he laid some flowers. i do not believe that the mortal remains of a person bear any relation to who they were - still, i found it hard not to be moved

Holy Jesus. and not the festive kind - i have just re-read the Marines winter warfare training pamphlet.

sweet jesus, what have i got myself into.

the pamphlet covers everything from the wind chill factors at various temperatures and wind strengths (at -34 in a strong breeze the equivalent temperature is -70 . . . f**k), to the safe thickness of ice when crossing a frozen lake. over and over it says “never go anywhere alone”. there is a section on avalanche; which areas and weather conditions induce the greatest risk, procedures for crossing high risk areas, and actions if caught in an avalanche - at one point it says “a very good skier may be able to ski diagonally out of danger” at this point i remembered a james bond movie where the baddies set of an avalanche to get him, and bond outruns the huge wall of falling snow to musical accompaniment. now i consider myself a pretty good skier, but i doubt if there is anyone in the world who could outrun an avalanche on x-country skis while dragging a sled

some of the pamphlet covers stuff which is irrelevant to me, like the freezing points of various chemical warfare agents (below the agents freezing point its lethality will be reduced; mustard gas = -14, phosgene gas = -118, so if its too cold for phosgene to get you then youre probably screwed anyway). the worst chapter is the one on cold weather injuries; frost nip, frost bite, hypothermia, tench foot, e.t.c. and the terrible things which extreme cold can do to the human body. i like my body just the way it is, and i dont want to loose any bits - especially not the most important ones

i was already aware of all these things, but after having been reminded of them i had to say a few choice swear words and have a cigarette

now i am scared

i tested the cooker out today, with some unleaded petrol, when you first light it there is an explosion of flame, and if this was done in the tent then it would burn a hole in the canvas. the tent will be indespensible in hazardous conditions - like a liferaft or a space capsule, without it i would be a goner. so i will have to light the cooker outside and wait until the flame changes to a more stable condition before bringing it inside to cook. the reason for the variable condition of the flame is due to the fuel being heated; when the cooker is first lit, the fuel is being burnt as a liquid, it burns innefficiently with a yellow flame and produces noxious fumes, once the fuel becomes heated through a loop in the fuel line it begins burning as fumes - this changes it to a blue flame which is more manageable and efficient.

i also drilled some holes in my cooking pot (this is not as stupid as it sounds, read on . . .) so that i could put some wire through, to make a handle. this will allow me to cook over an open log fire if the pot is suspended from a sapling branch, clever eh?

i got some more last minite things today from a chemist, immodium and dioralyte. both necessary if you happen to eat some dodgy food, i was waiting outside the chemist doors at 0900 for them to open - they must have thought that i needed immodium urgently - how embarrsing, i contemplated buying some pornography, just so that they wouldnt notice the immodium purchase, but thought better of it. i also asked the chemist about miltivitamins (a constant diet of tinned food can lead to scurvy) the lady suggested several types before selecting one for me, she said “this one doesnt contain iron supplements, and since youre a man you dont need them” i asked why girls would need more iron than boys

- isnt it amazing that no matter what you go to a chemist for, it causes some form of embarrasment, and i thought buying condoms was bad enough

i am not terrified of the prospect ahead - apprehension would be a better way of describing it. it is a feeling which stops short of actual fear but still makes my head swim everytime i allow myself to think of it. i am afraid of failure, but i wouldnt have got this far if i thought that i was going to fail

snow brush . . . it just came to me. i dont have a snow brush (this happens to me about a dozen times / day; i am doing something perfectly innocently, when Zap - an idea hits me in the head, something ive forgotten or something i have got to do before i forget. i used to have to write things down to be able to remember them but since i have been doing this expedition thing, i have gotten better at remembering stuff). anyhow for those who dont know, a snow brush is used to brush snow (well, duh . . .) when you bring gear into your tent from outside it is likely to be covered in snow, so to prevent this from melting & f***ing up your life, you brush it off before you bring it in, simple. but hitherto i hadnt even thought of bringing one

it would be fascinating to see inside a mind and be able to watch an idea forming, i have always imagined the mind as like the surface of some water, and ideas well up from inside it like bubbles floating to the surface - for a demonstration of this, eat some baked beans and go for a bath

i dont know where the snow brush idea came from, i was looking for the ‘f’ key to type fail (see 1st paragraph) when it just popped in, but im quite pleased with myself for remembering it. i know exactly where to get one - there is a dustpan&brush brush sitting on the workbench in the garage this minute, blissfully unaware that its about to become a sonw brush - that is if i remember to go and get it

one more time just to make sure it wasnt an accident