Save £6 off the ticket price by booking in advance quote ”Tarka” / “Katie-Jane” / “Rachel” (£10 on the door) visit www.adventuretravellive.com

Adventure Travel Live is the must visit, one stop shop for anyone planning an off-the-beaten-track travel adventure. The show is packed with inspiration and travel advice that will help you to uncover the journey of a lifetime. From once-in-a lifetime-travel experiences, small group adventures, trekking, family adventures, career breaks, safaris, overland expeditions, volunteering, gap years and much more.

There are over 60 talks at Adventure Travel Live and our impressive line-up of travel experts includes the likes of Simon Yates (Touching the Void), Ben Fogle, Benedict Allen, co-founder of Lonely Planet Tony Wheeler, Doug Scott, Tom Avery, Simon Calder, Paul Rose and many more, oh and us of course!

We will be presenting ‘The Great Walk of China: Proof that anything is possible!’ Recounting my colossal life-change from the world of commercial fashion to adventurer: surviving blizzards, temperatures of -35°C, frost bite, starvation, exhaustion and dehydration? In 167 days and over 4500km we became the first to walk the entire length of the magical Great Wall of China from its westerly terminus to its most easterly. The equivalent to over 100 consecutive marathons with a third of our body weight on our backs. With the hope of inspiring one or two others, that we are all more capable than we think if we are just brave enough to take the first steps!

Show features include:

• 5 x theatres packed with inspiration and advice; from Simon Calder’s weekend of adventure travel, wildlife adventures, overland & expeditions to the planning the ultimate career break
• Nat Geo Adventure explorers workshop
• Royal Geographical Society Map Zone
• The Big Earth expedition planning feature
• Travel Africa safari planner
• Travel Photographer of the Year exhibition
• Nomad Travel Health & Essential Kit Guide
  

Venue & Getting there
Royal Horticultural Halls, Greycoat Street, Victoria, London SW1P 2QD.
Friday 29 January, 6pm-10pm
Saturday 30 January, 10am-6pm
Sunday 31 January, 10am-5pm

On door price
Friday / adults / £10
(£18 for the evening with Simon Calder + valid any one day)
Saturday / adults / £10
Sunday / adults / £10
Under 16s free


Advance ticket offer
I am pleased to confirm that we have teamed up with the organisers of Adventure Travel Live to offer you a discount to the show when you book in advance. You can save £6 off door price for adults (i.e. £4 valid any day), under 16s are free. Add £1.50 postage and packing per order.

Tickets for an Evening with Simon Calder are £15 and takes place from 6pm to 10pm on Friday 29 January only. Also valid any one day for Adventure Travel Live.

Order online at adventuretravellive.com or call 0871 230 7159 and quote  “Tarka” / “Katie-Jane” / “Caroline” / “Rachel”  (please use reference code where relevant J).

Also dont forget 2 days letter we will be speaking about the Rivers of Ice Expedition at the quirky ‘Night of Adventure’ in the style of Pecha Kucha, 15 speakers, 20 slides per speaker, 20 seconds per slide on February the 2nd at 7pm, at the Roxy Bar & Screen, London. This will be great fun and not to be missed, with all proceeds going to Hope and Homes for Children.

FIFTEEN speakers from across the spectrum of expeditions, adventure and travel will talk about their experiences (Tarka and I speaking as a pair being one of them) .

The subjects range from rowing oceans, climbing Everest, walking and cycling across continents, crossing ice caps (I think this is us!), trekking to the North Pole (and South Pole) all the way to flying cars, climbing Kilimanjaro in a wheelchair and spending six months living in a tree house.

Each one is an amazing story. But the twist is that each speaker is allowed just 20 slides. And each slide scrolls on automatically after just 20 seconds!! Tarks and I have never spoken before in this style and i think its going to be quite a challeng but great fun for the audience to watch. This format, originally called “Pecha Kucha” in Japan, makes for a high-paced, varied, original evening.

The Roxy Bar is a really good venue for a night out. The setting is informal so you can sit on sofas with a beer or eat a light meal while watching the event. Friendly heckling will be encouraged!

This evening of adventure is being held to raise funds and awareness for Hope and Homes for Children. All the proceeds from the event will go to support the work of this charity. So please come along, bring a few friends, have dinner, and make an evening of it. Put it in your diary today and buy your tickets here!

February 2nd 2010, www.roxybarandscreen.com, London, 7pm
15 speakers
20 slides per speaker
20 seconds per slide
£15 minimum entry. Buy your ticket online here (or below) and just bring ID on the night. There will be a few tickets available on the door for cash only. All proceeds from the door go to charity
Dinner and drinks available at the venue

On a seperate note our Great Wall of China documenatry won the people’s choice award at Dundee Mountain Film Festival…yippie! the weekend before last and was well recieved at the Autrans Mountain Film Festival in France this weekend.

As soon as we are home we will start replying to the hundreds of personal messages we received offering kind help and support, as well as updating the website with photos and video footage of our epic journey. For the kit junkies we will do a full equipment review and take a look at the few changes we will make for next year (predominantly the camera equipment).

Another quick thing, currently our first public talk about the Ice Cap crossing will be at the Kendal Mountain Film Festival on the 20th of November.

But we don’t have the warm clothes that we had before or we don’t have a nice hot drinks coming into or big sleeping bag and I mean no fault of the sleeping bag but we have brought bags for weight reasons that are just warm enough to survive but not warm enough for comfort and I’m wearing every single item of clothing I have every hour of the days as it is and we don’t have enough fuels for warm drinks.  So, I’m  just really, really suffering from the cold and it just brought me down yesterday and exploded in to tears and to make it worst, you know, you get tired if you don’t sleep and then you feel the cold more. It’s  kind vicious circle that’s biting me at the moment and I can’t keep the food down.  We’ve got these added supplement of cheese powder and AMS which are the 2 things that have changed since, over the last week since I felt quite ill and so I’m losing a lot of weight ’cause I can’t obviously get out all the calories that I am putting in ’cause it’s coming out one end or another quicker than it’s going in.  So, I’m actually going to stop the AMS and cheese powder and just see if I can keep down just a normal evening meal as it is and then hopefully, stop losing the weight as fast as I am.  So, yeah, all that was a bit down really but today, I am much much better.

We’re having a fairly good weather. Really, really strong winds hitting us on the side but it wasn’t snowing and the clouds are pretty sparce.  It was just a strong wind.  So, we can still see where we’re going and navigation is pretty easy.  So, actually this morning we did a radio interview BBC Somerset with Emma Britten.  That should be going out in the morning.  That was lovely to speak to somebody.

We’re actually camp outside Mount Fitz Roy region which is really fairly well known pinnacle mountain. Really, known for serious climbing and it’s quite different to all the other mountain here.  It’s really jagged peak. I’m sure it’s the most it’s the most  photographed place in Patagonia, all be it not from this side, they would have been photographing  from the other side to where we are.  But its nice to see a landmark. The only other thing to say is, over the last week, we’ve been doing some analysis with Sarah and hopefully she’ll have put on either today or maybe tomorrow some evaluations on how we’re fairing in the minds whether she things we’re going cuckoo or if we’re doing okay. I don’t know.  So, that’s it for today.  We’ll speak tomorrow.  Bye.

On top of the rain, we both have blisters on the inside of the arch of our left foot ’cause we’ve been walking all day on a slope all day in wet shoes, so adjusting those tonight.  Katie fell over a couple of times and almost damaged her ankle quite badly. But we’re still in quiet high spirits and we are about to have dinner and  we will chat with you tomorrow.

The packs weight in about 46 Kilos each at the moment and in addition we have two 8 kilo dry bags which we will shuffle for the first few days and then all the climbing gear and ropes on top of that. Quiet a lot for the back to cope with when its not in perfect working order.

Weather wise we been quiet lucky its not raining its pretty cloudy but fairly pleasant. We’ve had a lot of ice bergs to get through today with the boat which is why its taken so long to get here. But all should be good for the morning.

The only other big news is apparently yesterday we were in National Chilean News papers, but we haven’t seen a copy and it will take a good few weeks to get to the village of Caleta Tortel where we left from this morning, we just heard that thought the grapevine.

That’s all for now, hope fully well have exciting news when we actually get under way. Till tomorrow.

Hang on a second, where is the wind and rain I hear you ask?! Every morning we have woken to the bluest of skies, glorious sunshine, not a breath of wind and a cool bite in the air, keeping the snow crisp. Probability would have it, that we are going to have bad weather for the next forty having used up our 4 good days!

A couple of little things to report. Firstly, Tarka’s allergy, that he suffered from in the Arctic earlier this year, has shown some symptoms again so we have had to bin several items of clothing used in the Arctic and replace them with new ones from the only Cochrane shop.

Last night we went out for a bite to eat and had a classic ‘lost in translation moment’. I ordered a simple pizza and mineral water, dull I know but I am currently loosing weight as opposed to gaining it, so thought I would try and aid recovery. Tarka, as ambitious as ever, tried to order two Empaladers (small samosar style parcel of food) but his brilliant accent actually managed to order him two bowls of lettuce and tomatoes (ensalada)…just what a growing boy needs. To top it off he had accidentally ordered a Chocolate Sunday for his drink, with whipped cream and cherry on top to boot!

The good news is that we have arrived with almost everything we set out with. I say almost because when we arrived in Santiago we had to go through customs and we had to declare all the food that we had with us. Although all the expedition food was fine and they let that through they were deeply suspicious of out Peperami and a few varieties of nuts. The fact that we had 2 bags of nuts and 4 bags of Peperami taken wasn’t really a problem, the problem was that we spent so long in customs that we nearly missed our connecting flight. Whilst I was more than happy to spend the night in Santiago, the thought of Katie’s logistical plan not going 100% according to plan was enough for her to charge across the airport leaving stunned passengers in her wake, through the queue of 200 people waiting to check in and promptly ordered the poor lady at check in to stop the flight. Cutting a long story short, we made it onto the flight and despite taking bets that our bags were never going to make it to the other end we have to give due credit to TAM air who must have got some poor guy to run out onto the runway in order to get our bags on that plane.

This part of Chile really is very beautiful; it’s a strange mix to tundra and Spectacular Mountains, but what I love the most is the fantastically eclectic mix of architecture. I can’t even begin to describe it because no two houses are the same. They have just built houses in what ever shape and size seemed like a good idea at the time and it has such character.

Some of you probably don’t know this but we spent months testing out various cookers trying to see if it was possible to use the MSR Reactor. We had two major problems with the system, one being its efficiency in the cold and the second was obtaining sufficiently good quality gas canisters. On our little shopping spree this morning, as we were replacing our Peperami and nuts, I turned down an isle and there must have been at least 50 different sizes and makes of Iso-Pro (including the illusive 500ml)!!! So for any other expeditions that might be thinking of using a gas stove down here don’t worry about getting hold of the gas. With regards to temperatures we will log the temperature every day on the ice cap and post our findings to try and definitively asses whether it would be feasible to use such a cooker. White gas on the other hand is a nightmare to obtain!!! Well that’s not strictly true, it’s not that it’s a nightmare but the quality just isn’t very good. What they sell is called ´Bencina Blanca´ and although it is white gas its not quite as pure as what I was hoping meaning that we have to clean the cooker a lot more regularly and carry a little more fuel than anticipated.

Katie isn’t feeling very well so she has just gone to have a rest before our combined 20 hours of busing over the next few days.