Arctic Insanity

1

A Crazy Plan

Just before Christmas in 2019 a friend phoned me at my house in Guernsey to say that he was buying a Bell 505X single-engine helicopter, which was being built in Canada.

He explained that potential buyers visit the Bell factory in Quebec, Canada, and take a flight in the helicopter. If they decide to buy the machine, it's dismantled, placed in a shipping container, loaded onto a ship and transported across the Atlantic. When it arrives in the UK, it's re-assembled and flight-tested again. Only then do you have your shiny new aircraft.

'But it's all phenomenally expensive,' he said.

A crazy thought hit me. 'How about we cut out the middleman?'

'What do you mean?'

'I'll fly it back for you.'

He let out a guffaw. 'You're joking, aren't you?'

'I'm serious.'

'Jules, don't be stupid. You can't fly a helicopter from Canada to the UK.'

'Why not?'

I believe that if you stay in your comfort zone your whole life, you waste your potential.

'It's too far. That's why.'

'But it must be possible.'

'Has anyone ever attempted it before?'?

'No idea.'

Better to die trying than never to have tried at all, I thought to myself. I would rather live a very full life and hope I make it to old age than sit in my wheelchair dribbling into my tea dreaming about all the things I wish I'd done.

'I doubt it. I mean, helicopters like the 505X aren't designed to fly those sorts of distances.'

'Yeah, but I'd make some stops.'

'But you'd have to fly very high over a frozen landscape. It's treacherous. It's not like flying across the Home Counties.'

'I get that.'

'Do you? You'd be flying across some of the remotest areas on the planet.'

'That's part of the challenge.' I wanted to test myself as a pilot and see how good I really was. 'Come on, then, will you let me do it?'

The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. The trip would be an opportunity to raise some more money for the charity I support, the haematology cancer care unit at University College, London. Several years earlier, I'd been diagnosed with cancer just as I was about to sell my second management consultancy, and had to have a tumour removed from my head. I almost died. So the charity is very close to my heart.

'You really want to do this, don't you?'

'It would be fun.'

'You know, anything could go wrong. You'd need to do your homework well.'

'Don't worry, mate, I will.'

I'm not a novice when it comes to adventure. I had actually been to the Arctic before, on a ski-touring and dog-sledging expedition, when we took a commercial flight to Iceland and then continued on a smaller plane to Kulusuk, on the eastern coast of Greenland. I had also climbed Everest. That involved a massive logistical challenge. I've always considered myself good at meticulous planning: it all comes down to knowledge, resourcefulness and adaptability. That expedition pushed me to the limit, which was precisely what I wanted when I chose to undertake it. Mind you, no amount of planning, or equipment, can guarantee you will be safe. Weather is unpredictable. I nearly got killed in an avalanche triggered by an earthquake in Nepal.

'What if you run out of fuel?'

'I'll make sure I don't.'

'You might crash.'

'I could have an accident walking down the high street.'

'I know you like a challenge, Jules, but, if I'm honest, I think you're crazy.'

I laughed. 'Maybe I am.'

'Only you could come up with such a hare-brained idea.'

Maybe he had a point, I thought when I came off the phone. What had I done? Exactly the same as I had done when I vowed to climb Everest. After Everest, I said I'd go to the North Pole, but my heart wasn't in that. I kept telling people it was next on the agenda simply because everybody kept asking what I was going to do next. Flying a helicopter from Canada across the Arctic Circle to the UK excited me, though. It was exactly the kind of challenge I'd been looking for.

I'd first caught the helicopter bug in the summer of 2017 when I took my two daughters, Steph and Lizzie, to the Hertfordshire Country Show at Redbourn, near the farm where I then lived. As we wandered through the crowds, I came across a guy at one of the stands who was demonstrating a microlight aircraft. It was basically a cloth wing with a lawn-mower engine strapped to it. I stood watching him with growing fascination.

'This thing is amazing,' I said to him.

'It is, isn't it?' he replied proudly.

'What do you need to do to be able to fly one?'

'Just twenty-five hours' flying time.'

'Is that all?'

'Yeah. And then you're good to go.'

I was amazed; this was incredible. Twenty-five hours and I could get airborne in a microlight. I could whizz around the farm and have some fun. You know when something lights a fire inside you? I have to do this, I thought to myself. The seed was sown.

I then heard the immortal words, 'Dad, I'm bored,' and my daughters dragged me away from the stall to go shopping in the crafts marquee. I love my daughters to bits.

At that stage, that was the extent of my plans: take off from the back field, whizz around in the skies above Hertfordshire for a little while, then drop back down into the field. Great fun, I thought.

As soon as I got home that evening, I googled everything I could about microlights. I found out you could get a one- or a two-seater, but that was about it. That was your limit. It would be fun, but I wanted to share the experience with my family. It's very important to do things you enjoy with somebody else - to share the adventure. I'd learnt that from skiing: nice by yourself, but great with your girlfriend or a bunch of mates. I didn't mind being up there in the sky alone, but I would much sooner have company.

Within an hour of starting my research, microlights were shelved and I'd moved on to helicopters. I found out that Harrison Ford flies one - and a jet helicopter at that. Having played Han Solo in Star Wars, he has now become the character.

Helicopters aren't as simple as microlights. You need 11 exams and a minimum of 45 hours of flying to qualify, but by now I was hooked on the idea. I signed up to train as a pilot.

It proved to be seriously tough work. In truth, there were many occasions when I very nearly gave up. You control a helicopter with what's called a cyclic stick, located between your legs. You push it forward to go forward, back to go back, left to go left, and right to go right. If you keep moving the cyclic in a circle, the aircraft doesn't know where to go, so it should stay still. It does work, but if you do a big stir, the machine rolls all over the place while remaining in the same spot. Trying to hover five feet above the ground is incredibly difficult. There is a reason why more people learn to fly light planes than helicopters.

With my instructor sitting beside me, we'd be going forwards relatively steadily. I would move the cyclic slightly to the left and we'd lurch like we were on a rollercoaster. I'd overcompensate - swing it back to the right - and two seconds later we'd lurch back to the right. One time, the instructor said to me, 'If you don't stop all this lurching, you're going to make me sick.' It was all I could do to keep the machine in the air, let alone control it. Gradually, I came to understand the subtleties involved. The cyclic is incredibly sensitive and you only need to move it very slightly: almost like you're mind-controlling the helicopter.

Four gruelling months later, on a nerve-racking day in November, dripping with perspiration after a two-and-a-half-hour flight with the examiner right next to me, I gained my wings - my helicopter pilot's licence. It was a wonderful moment.

'What do people usually do after they pass?' I asked.

'They stick their licence in their bedside drawer, and it never comes out again,' my instructor replied.

For most people, that really does seem to be what happens. They don't fly for a month, then they leave it for another month - maybe the weather is bad, maybe they're busy. Another month goes by. Suddenly it's three months later and you've got to go in and do an hour-long check flight before you can rent an aircraft to go somewhere. They can't really be bothered. Six months go by. They're out of practice; then they're basically done.

I could see how easy it would be to fall into this trap with work, kids and so on, but I swore to myself, there and then, that my licence would not die quietly in any drawer. I promised I would do at least an hour's flying every month to keep myself sharp. I'd hire a Robinson R22, the tiny two-seater helicopter I had qualified in, and do a trip up to Derbyshire to see my dad. I'd find excuses to go somewhere, do something, get up in the air. Eventually, I bought a Bell 206 Jetranger, on the recommendation of my instructor, and made frequent trips from Guernsey, where I was by then living, to the mainland. With each trip, I became more skilled and confident.

When I began to plan the trip from Canada to the UK, I soon realised I couldn't fly in a straight line across the Atlantic - that way I'd run out of fuel and...