Eirian's blog

A Huge Challenge by Local Girl; Eirian Whitehead

Eirain has now returned from her trek across the Arctic and her adventure can be read here : http://eiriansarcticchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/

Her story before leaving
Having led a fairly sedentary life as a Riddlesdown Resident for the past 20 years, this is the biggest challenge I have ever undertaken. I’m not really the adventurous type, having remained within Riddlesdown for my entire life (when my family moved house, we only made it to the top of the hill), even attending Riddlesdown High School, and certainly never travelling anywhere abroad alone. However, last year I decided to sign up for a charity challenge for The British Red Cross, due to take place in April 2012. This will involve a 250km trek across the Arctic, from Tromso in Norway to Jukkasjӓrvi in Sweden, driving a team of huskies in temperatures of -20°C and below for 6 days, in order to raise money for the charity. The charity itself helps vulnerable people both abroad and in the UK, in crisis’ through emergency services and in more personal cases such as helping people to live independently following spells in hospital, and so is a cause which I felt was worth supporting.

The trek itself will hopefully be the trip of a lifetime and probably the craziest thing I will ever do, but certainly requires large amounts of preparation in both fundraising and training! Riddlesdown is an amazing area to train in, with the hills to build up stamina through running and the large open spaces such as the common to walk and run long distances (some of you may even have seen me zooming around or walking with the dogs, Bertie and Joe!) Writing this at the beginning of February 2012, I’m praying for snow to help with the ‘mental challenge’ that the trek will involve. Having been advised that the cold is one of the hardest parts of the challenge to cope with, especially at night when you’re still and have nothing to distract you from the freezing temperatures, I have grand plans to camp in my garden in an attempt to acclimatise. A further challenge brought on by the trek will be controlling the huskies. I do own two dogs myself, but am pretty sure that miniature schnauzers aren’t exactly comparable to a team of working huskies! To help with this I’ve attempted to gain as much experience with large dogs as possible, both through walking mine, as well as various other dogs on the common, and even taking on a ‘Wolf Walk’ in 2011 with the Wolf Conservation Trust where you are able to walk with and even stroke captive wolves. The fitness and mental aspect of the trek will be an incredible personal challenge for all the participants - and as there will be 15 of us overall the training is doubly important as I don’t want to hold anyone back!

As previously mentioned, there is also a fundraising aspect to this, which is something that I would like to thank Riddlesdown for as a community. As part of my fundraising, I will be offering a dog walking service for the local area (some of you may have seen my leaflet, or even taken me up on the offer!) which is something that can hopefully be of use to many, especially with the common being so close this really seems to be dog friendly area. At the time of going to press, the trek is still a while off (17 – 24 April 2012), with 77 days left for me to prepare, but there will be a further update either in the next issue of the Recorder, or perhaps on the website.

If anyone is interested, I also have regular updates on my progress both with training and fundraising on my blog: http://eiriansarcticchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/,

or if anyone would like to contribute to my fundraising efforts, the link is www.justgiving.com/eirian-whitehead.