Digging Deep

Another day down and another 7 hours and 7 miles of walking. It doesn’t sound a lot, but 7 miles really does creep by slowly out here!

For me a day of walking falls into 3 categories. The first couple of hours I lead so I can walk at my own pace. I’m in front and the world is my oyster.

Hours 3 to 6 some of the more experienced guys take to the front and the pace is a killer. The final hour I seem to find myself hitting a wall.

However, out here you just push through. I think everyone at some stage has found it hard so far, but the team rallies round that person and you just get on with it.

As my Dad would say, you just get your head down and dig deep.

Hello Norway!

Part of the training for us army newbies was a short exercise in Norway. This was put sweetly as a few days ‘above the snowline’, which sounded to me to be a little uncomfortable. The early drive from Catterick was handled manfully by Cpl Harmer and myself. Webby did a really good job of keeping all of the back seat warm and fully employed. The trip out was eventful only because Justin knew the check in lady - who knows a check in lady?! One of the important lessons that we learnt on this trip was that Justin knows people…. everywhere!

A two hour train journey followed our arrival in Bergen and it was here we had our first ‘ouch’ experience. Robbie and Webby began to realise just how ‘well priced’ everything was in Norway. A packet of skittles came in at £2.50, a beer at £7.00.

The train trip was in fact a most lovely experience around the edges of the fjords, slowly climbing higher the further east and inland from Bergen we went. This was heightened immeasurably when a kindly older gentleman bought us a cold and refreshing can of beer. Thanks Justin.

On arrival at the hotel (also the station platform) the reality of the situation hit home: that’s a big mountain, there’s snow on that mountain and jeez, it’s very cold here! The hotel was a mixture of youth hostel and spa with lots of quirky Swedes working there.  Here we received our ‘kit issue’ of Bergans of Norway waterproofs and parka jacket, (the warmest jacket in Christendom, I swear) and some great sunglasses by Julbo. We were also given our thermal layers from Brynje. All the kit is absolutely fantastic and first rate stuff.

The days followed a pattern of first learning a skill, then trying it ourselves before practising it on the mountain. It was all new to us: whether it was getting the stove working, putting up the tent, fixing bindings on to the skis and altering them or simply the act of skiing. Here is Robbie’s ‘bindings 101’.

Whilst we were going through our drills, a snow storm hit the mountain. The wind really got up and the snow forced us to learn a healthy respect for the weather and its power. At one point our photographer Frederick asked me to ‘ski down in this direction, and I’ll shoot you all the way down’, I politely suggested that he might like to revise his terminology for, as a soldier, the sound of that made me a little nervous!

These were a fantastic few days, great for this half of the team to have some shared experiences whilst getting to know each other. It was a huge learning curve, with skills remembered and techniques gained. A massive thank you to all that helped: to Justin and Hempy for putting it together and getting us there and also to Rune Gjeldnes for helping us with our kit. It was a wonderfully rewarding few days.

- Adam Crookshank

Training Diary

The first musings of a walk to the South Pole to commemorate Oates' expedition of 1912 began way back in 2009, on the turret of a tank between my self and Tom Coker, on exercise in Canada. Three years later things look like coming together. We have assembled a team of guys who are keen and all were injured in Afghanistan on the regiment’s tour during the summer of 2010, this is because Oates too was injured in the Boer War!

Early in the year we had a great afternoon with Justin Packshaw and Ed Parker from Walking With The Wounded, a first outreach and sample of what was potentially to come. The team was convened of about seven soldiers which would slowly whittle down with training, injuries and operational commitments to three with a reserve. These four would begin training in earnest for the walk.

The training would begin in February, below is our first session together. When I say begin, I mean, we would meet for an hour or two a week. That’s as good as it would get for the entire eight months. All of us deploy to Afghanistan for the second time as soon as the walk ends, and indeed, most of the regiment will be deployed during the walk. Preparation for a tour of Afghanistan means the Regiment, and the Squadrons in it, have to tick lots of boxes, and as all the members of the team are in different Squadrons it means that for large periods of time the Troop are spread to the four winds. The team or Oates Troop is:

Capt Adam Crookshank

Cpl Robbie Harmer

LCpl Nick Webb

Tpr Renee Paul (Reserve)

10 February 2012.

On Friday the 10^th of Feb the troop met up for our first session. An inauspicious start, as Commanding Officer's PT was cancelled due to bad weather. There was a thick frost on top of snow, and it was bitingly cold, good preparation you could argue, though Tpr Paul from the Caribbean would not agree. “Sir is it going to be this cold on the walk”…..

We packed our bags with around 25Kgs and went for an eight mile walk. We knew that we needed to practise distance and basic time on our feet. The regimental PT every morning would also help us hugely.

The comedy moment of this session would be provided by yours truly, and all of the team combined. Coming out of the ford the ice proved a little thicker than at first thought, ‘It's ok, come on’ I called as I promptly went ass over tit and sported a bloody nose for my keenness!

As I looked back I saw all of the team on all fours, crawling painfully forward cursing the Yorkshire weather. We made good time ... other than my bloody nose and pride we made good time.

24 February 2012.

Another tab with some weight. Just myself and Robbie for this one as the other two are in D Sqn who are on exercise. Its pretty bleak at times in Catterick, the pics should show that.

A good tab around the back area with an increase in weight, but a decrease in speed, just to give us longer one on our feet. Looking at the bleakness of, balmy, tropical, calm North Yorkshire, Robbie quipped, ‘with a pair of whitened out goggles we could pretend we were in the south pole already!’ Very droll Robbie!

Circuits.

Every week we have had two circuits sessions. Due to the pre-deployment training these have happened about 15 times in the last few months!! In the pics you can see the sort of things that we have been ‘enjoying’ at the hands of the regimental PTI’s, who I swear see us as their playthings. They do have free licence to try new ideas on us, which I’m sure fill the dual purpose of preparing us and slaking the PTI’s thirst to inflict pain!

We have been using the circuits to fulfil several training objectives. Most specifically upper body strength and explosive power. This is to compliment the endurance work that is already taking place.

These sessions have tested us all in different ways. Webby is a more rounded athlete so he does well at all of them, but Paul is a speed demon, great at the explosive work, but not as good as, me for example at pull ups. The circuits have been a real leveller in terms of team dynamic, and have proved to be good fun, learning about Webby and Renée’s weekend antics is quite the eye opener!

2 March 2012.

The Northern Echo have agreed to come and interview us for a piece in the weekly publication. The circulation of which covers a lot of the regiment's family areas. This is a big deal for me; direct from the Colonel is to work up the ‘media piece’!!

So the guys are told that they need to be at the gym for 1400. The photographer arrives, we chat politely as the PTIs stand by. (They have set up an outdoor circuit for us to be pictured on.) I get a call from Webby saying that he’s in the police station!!! I also get a text from Renee saying he made a mistake, and thought I said 4 not fourteen hundred. So my team of four is down to two! As the colonel watches from his office window! Webby does explain in a sort of primary school, Billy aged five way, that he’s not the one in trouble (this time) and he is actually a witness! Eventually the interview takes place, The PTIs thrash us for 40 mins getting camera and action shots, god damn them, and the photographer endlessly asking,

‘Can you just flip that tyre again?’

By the time Renée turns up Robbie and I are spent, so we send him on an “individual Oates Circuit” just for the camera because it's ‘what we always do!’ stag on Renée, don’t be late again!!!!!

April- June 2012

Justin brilliantly sent up some harnesses for us. So one afternoon Robbie and I sat with some ropes and a drill and….. a large tyre. We hauled and drilled and finally rigged up three tyres with the harnesses and using karabiners and good old reef knots and ‘North Shields ingenuity’ (Cpl Harmer)

‘Where did you learn how to do that Robbie’

‘Don’t your worry your sen about that sir’!!

Our first walk was three of us around the parade square to test the kit out, the rope burnt out and snapped with in 50 yards due to friction, not ideal as the entire Squadron watches!

After this in the following weeks we extended our dragging sessions out to about three miles and more. However of our three tyres, one is slightly heavier than the other….every day at 1700 there is a race for the other tyres.

- Captain Adam Crookshank