Hello I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Highland Disks from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.

Radio 4. My castaway this week is the adventurer Ben Saunders. In his own words he

specializes in dragging heavy things around cold places. He's one of only three people to have skied

solo to the North Pole and he holds the record for the longest solo Arctic

journey ever on foot. After traversing Russia and the frozen crust of the Arctic Ocean, his next

adventure was to triumph where a century before Captain Scott and his men failed. Today's

cast away successfully retraced that ill-fated Terra Nova route by making

the 1800 mile journey through Antarctica and back entirely on foot.

He says nothing at home quite compares to the highs and lows I've

experienced in a sledge harness and the quest for those extremes has the

potential to burn up all the money you can get your hands on and ruin every relationship you've ever had.

So welcome Ben Saunders. Are you able to feel content in other circumstances or are you at one with yourself when you are in a

parka dragging that sledge at minus 50? Oh, cricky. There be moments of

extraordinary contentment set on these expeditions but I definitely feel you know got back

for Antarctica and I definitely feel in a different place now you know for much of my adult life

there was always sort of a burning ambition for to do something big and I think I finally

scratch that itch now with what we did in Antarctica. So I'm certainly not planning another huge journey any time soon that may change I can

yes the key there might be anytime soon yeah so that really is your job in your

spare time you're an ultra-marathon runner. Do you look at the rest of us

and think what a lazy bunch of good-for-nothing slobs there?

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