24 in ’24 Challenge – Book 23 “To the Poles Without a Beard” by Catharine Hartley

Catharine Hartley was a young woman who found it difficult to settle in life. She had lived abroad and travelled a lot and was working for the BBC when she decided that she would take on a big challenge in her life. She would walk to the South Pole and along the way she would become the first British woman to do so. To the Poles Without a Beard is her story of walking to both poles and, with another woman who travelled with her, becoming the record holder.

The author presents herself in this book as being scatty and unprepared for the challenges. It is obvious that she isn’t and that she would not be allowed to be part of the expedition if she was as unfit and silly as her narrative makes her appear. She does travel with a guided expedition and is clear about what is done for her and what she has to do for herself and she also spends quite a lot of time talking about how she raised money and sponsorship for the trip – she also realises that it can be seen as quite self-indulgent to pay a lot of money for this experience so she also raises some money for charity as well.

I found the details of the trip interesting as well as the motives and actions of the other travellers. I also found her details of how the travellers fared after their trips to be very interesting too. These guided trips seem to be quite common now and I recently read a book where a journalist took a similar trip up Everest where it all went badly wrong because the motives of travellers got in the way of safety (see my review here). Various different people have to work together and the guides take the responsibility for the safety and organisation of the group. The author here indicates that she didn’t always do what she was told and that she had difficulty in matching the other participants physically but, in fact, she completed both trips with few big problems.

I wanted to enjoy this book more, because I have a number of books about exploration and travel in extreme environments, but I found it really difficult to like the author as she is portrayed in this book. She seems amazingly shallow and to be enjoy presenting herself as silly. Other people have thought that this narrative is very amusing but I found myself thinking that if she really did behave this way that her fellow travellers must have been heartily sick of her.