Oh my days, what a good night’s sleep can do for you! Even though we were camping within the Arctic Circle I slept for nine hours (well, there was one middle of the night awakening where I had a claustrophobic panic because I had tucked myself in too tightly, but other than that it was undisturbed), I can’t sleep for that long at home!! The previous evening Arctic Yoda Neil said before going to bed you should take your boots off, really heat your socks and feet by the fire, run to bed so not to lose any of the heat, immediately climb into your sleeping bag and wrap a jacket around your feet, and with such toasty toes you’d sleep soundly. I followed that advice precisely and it worked superbly.
In all honesty I did whatever the BSE guys told me – this was their territory, they were the experts and I was a novice in no position to question their mastery. If they had told me to put rubber ducks in my pockets I would have without asking why!
7:00am and we were eventually getting up, but now, as promised from earlier, ‘Why Bobble Hats Are Pointless’: Firstly, despite being well rested there was one irritation that morning when I sat up and the bobble on my hat knocked all the ice off the ceiling of the tent and essentially made it snow inside. That wasn’t the only time, it had happened every single time I went into or out a tent, and every time I’d sat up during the two nights camping! Secondly, it gets that cold at times that you need to put your hood up as well as wear a hat, but got a bobble on your hat and your hood won’t go up! So, you need to pull your hat over your hood which stretches and misshapes it. “Why didn’t you just take the bobble off the hat?” I hear you ask, because I wasn’t going to ruin a perfectly lovely hat, I’m not daft!
That morning you could feel a palpable excitement around the camp, you could hear cheeriness in everyone’s voice, you could sense the urgency to get going to get this finished. The previous morning forensic care had been taken to neatly and efficiently pack your pulk bag, today there was actual glee in stuffing anything in anywhere, sod the mess we won’t need to use it again!
The last-day-of-school air around camp was inflated when we realised Lee and Les would be joining us again. Porridge and tea gulped down, harnessed back up to our pulks, we were literally straining to be unleashed.
It was a balmy -18, overcast, and snowing steadily as we virtually skipped out of camp to embark on the final 15km of our Arctic Trek.
It would be a day of woodland trails and hills again – but no lakes! – and although I was enjoying that it was snowing, it did make it uneven under foot and each step a little more difficult. But we didn’t really care and took it on with renewed purpose; we could exhaust ourselves physically because this was the final day, may as well empty the tanks and get done promptly. For me the previous day’s mental breaking point had been like an intense therapy session and had cleared my head, add to that a full night’s sleep and the unavoidable elation around me, I was genuinely enjoying myself walking into the wind driven snow upon the hills of Northern Finland.
After our massive falling out the day before, my topsy-turvy relationship with this country was back on. Even in this gloomy weather it looked amazing, and frequently I found myself slack-jawed gawping at it.
Such was the pleasure trekking that day the kilometres and hours were fleeting, and before we knew it we stopped for lunch and some more of Jo’s cheese and ham wraps. Today all wraps were present and correct and eaten fully defrosted……
Compared to the previous days this felt like a breeze; the trees and hills were our playground, challenges were mere inconveniences to be shrugged off, and the boisterous hearty conversation reflected this. Perhaps it was due to the excitement, but I was feeling as if this was now simply what I did; get up, get my pulk, go for a walk in the cold, ice and snow. But with that thought came a slight sadness that in only a few hours I wouldn’t do this any more
.
I did feel sorry for Lee, Les, Heikki and Kuuti after lunch; it must have been like looking after 12 toddlers full of sugar. When we weren’t trying to storm ahead too fast we were constantly asking “How far to go? How far have we gone? What time will we finish? How long will it take? How many kilometres to do? Is it far?” bloody hell we must have been annoying.
We did have a couple of steep climbs to ascend in the afternoon, but when being warned of them there was minimal panic and huffing, mostly it was a roll of the eyes and wry smile as if to say “yeah, yeah, whatever. Pfft, hills, I’ve done hills!”. Sure enough we mostly scurried up them without hint of discontent.
We were walking down a tree lined trail when up ahead we could hear odd shouting and hollering. Then the voices seemed recognisable. Then unexpectedly our team members who had been taken off the trek were there cheering us on in a grand finale. Oh it was a pleasure to see them and for the team to be whole again, and what a welcome they had given us! All of a sudden the penny dropped that we were very close to completion, only about a hundred metres or so over a lake – of course we had to end with a lake – to the ‘Finnish Line’.
Those last few metres my mind was racing, I couldn’t believe I was actually going to complete the Arctic Trek; all the training, all the fundraising, all the time spent away from the family, all the gruelling kilometres, all the pain, all the joy, all the highs, all the lows, all the jokes, all the tears, all of it cumulated to the 5 final steps where with arms and walking poles aloft, crossed the ‘Finnish Line’.
WE DID IT!!!
And we did it as a team, and what a team. Each and everyone one of us had needed another of us along the way, and each and every one of us had been there to help another when needed. As we embraced each other in congratulations I could not have been more proud of a group of people. The previous three days had been tough, and all of us had been pushed to breaking point at one point, but as a group we didn’t break and that’s what got us to the end.
Except, was it an end? That evening, once finally showered and cleaned – one point I didn’t dwell on in previous posts is there was no washing on trail, and pretty much the clothes put on on the morning of Day 1 were the same clothes being worn on Day 3 – we’d go for drinks, have a celebratory meal, medal awarding ceremony complete with speech by Lee, and have a few more drinks. All this done with reminiscing of what we’d been through, even early plans of our next adventure were discussed, and it was clear this experience had forged an undeniable bond.
Four days previously we had met at Edinburgh and Heathrow airports, most not really knowing each other, some having never met previously at all, yet here we were deep in hilarity like old friends. Once a member of the When You Wish Upon A Star Arctic Trek team, always a member of the When You Wish Upon A Star Arctic Trek team.
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