Student takes inspiration from Andy Murray’s family for polar challenge

Tom Warburton, who plans to be the youngest person to complete a solo trek to the South Pole, training in Norway

Tom Warburton, from Bedford, said his long-held ambition crystallised after some planning in the pub and he will now take on the challenge in November.

His training regime involves glacier camping, practising putting up a tent while it is clipped to him, downing litres of peanut butter milkshake daily and dragging around tyres to simulate a sledge carrying his supplies.

Travelling on foot and by skis with no support or assistance, he plans to cover more than 685 miles from the Hercules inlet on the Antarctic coast to the South Pole in temperatures of around -15 C.

The journey is expected to take around 45 days. In 2017, Lieutenant Scott Sears, brother of Andy Murray’s wife Kim, then aged 27, broke the record by two years.

Mr Warburton, a Nottingham University student, said this had inspired him to take on the challenge.

He said: “I always wanted to do it and after Scott Sears had completed it I thought, ‘I could do that’.

“There was a bit of planning in the pub, talking about whether it would be possible, and it’s gone from there really.

“I’ve always been fascinated by feats of endurance and pushing yourself to the limits in modern society.

“The Antarctic is the last place where the only thing you can rely on is yourself.”

Lieutenant Sears was followed by French adventurer Matthieu Tordeur, also 27, but Mr Warburton would beat the record again by around six years.

For months he has been undergoing a gruelling training regime to get ready for the expedition.

“I need to put on about two and a bit stone to get ready for the amount of weight I’ll lose, so I’ve been eating a lot of carbs,” he said.

“I drink about four peanut butter milkshakes a day and have four or five meals of pasta and chicken.”

Mr Warburton, who studies international security and terrorism, has visited Norway on training trips.

He spent six days solo camping on ice in January to test equipment and temperatures.

Mr Warburton said: “It was colder than I expected and I struggled to sleep quite a lot because of the cold temperatures and the wind.

“My body temperature was melting the snow underneath me and I was waking up covered in water.”

During the expedition, his only contact will be calls via a satellite phone every two or three days.