I first got involved with the South Kensington Club through [founder] Luca Del Bono's sister, who has children the same age as mine. Right in the very early stages of the club, even before it was a construction site, Luca said he was interested in adding an "explorers" element to it. I came up with a couple of ideas for him and we finally settled on this Voyager programme, so I was involved right from the start.
South Kensington Club attracts people who are interested in a certain lifestyle of well-being and a sense of exotic travel. There isn't really one defining trait; it's a diverse membership, which is just like London itself – a great mixture of worldly people. The Voyager programme hosts regular talks and we've just started a travel documentary film club. The speakers have been really varied – we've had adventurers such as Lewis Pugh, Ben Saunders and Squash Falconer, as well as the likes of celebrity chef Valentine Warner, who travels to remote corners of the world to fish and hunt his food, and even Sophie Benge, a journalist who has written books about Russian banya sauna treatments, which we offer at the club.
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Travel was always my interest, and there was a slow progression from it being something that I'd save up to do to actually becoming my profession. I initially worked as a guide in Italy, South Africa and Namibia, but the Arctic was always my dream.
More people have been to the moon than to the North Pole. It really is a fantasy – until you go, you have no idea what it's like or what it's going to feel like.
I first went in 2003, when I was invited to participate in a race to the magnetic pole. My team won and I found that I loved it and was good with the cold and endurance. I then realised the record is still out there – no woman has ever travelled solo to the geographic North Pole. I've had a couple of attempts at it – most recently in 2010, when I got stuck in a really big ice flow. It's like a huge chess game up there – you can hear the ice cracking around you and you don't know where to make camp because the ice is always moving and you always wake up in a different place. That year I ended up on a huge floating island of ice and when I was rescued, I found out I was four-and-a-half months pregnant, so that changed my plans quite dramatically.
I still want to reach the true North Pole and this time I'm hoping to swim part of it, as Lewis Pugh did. When he did his talk [at the club] I thought: "That's crazy. Why would anyone do something like that?" But here I am. I practise in the Serpentine most mornings. It's an interesting process and I'm learning something new, something I never even considered doing. I find that everything is 80 per cent mental preparation over physical, but I have to get good enough to swim strongly for a kilometre before I do it in sub-zero temperatures. I'm planning to go either next summer or the one after.
When you spend that much time on your own in a place like the North Pole, it gives you an incredible strength and peace of mind. It doesn't actually matter whether you achieve your goal or not because what you've done, you realise, is pretty amazing. It changes you.
CHRISTINA FRANCO is an arctic explorer and manages the Voyager programme at South Kensington Club, London, where she organises events and annual guided tours as well as helps members prepare for bucket-list expeditions; southkensingtonclub.com
