Chris Heminway

For a long time it was presumed that Matthew Henson and Robert Edwin Peary led, in 1909, the first expedition to successfully reach the North Pole.  While undertaking some recent research into polar exploration, I uncovered the fact that Henson and Peary were accompanied by four Inuit (eskimo) men, including one by the name of Egingway. Given the similarity with my own surname, could this discovery help to explain my strange fascination with the ice and recently-found desire to reach the North Pole? Was I indeed an Inuit descendant? Some basic investigation of my family tree soon revealed the truth that, yes, I was of course hallucinating. The Heminway family tree unfortunately extended no farther north than Yorkshire.

Yet I nevertheless find myself today caught up in the excitement of a mid-life crisis that sees me and my co-challengers heading pell-mell into some of the most extreme climatic (climactic?) conditions that the world can throw at us.



I am currently 43 years old and will, later this year, have been married for 20 years to Louise. We live in Harpenden, the home town of four of the eight participants in this challenge, and have three children, namely Robert (15), George (13 or “almost 14, Dad”) and Catherine (10). I am therefore currently running my own free taxi service covering Hertfordshire, South Beds and North London.

I was educated at Leicester University, where I obtained an LLB Law with French and a Diplôme d'Etudes Juridiques Françaises (from Strasbourg University). I quickly decided however, after approximately two weeks of studying law, that I was not going to be cut out for a career in the legal profession. After four years of playing rugby, drinking beer, eating curries and living in some horribly unsalubrious places, for want of a better alternative I went for a career in the City of London. After a number of false starts, I was fortunate enough to work for thirteen years for Lehman Brothers, the US investment bank, initially in Equity Research and subsequently in M&A. Twenty years in, the majority of which was spent knowing little and understanding less of what I was tasked to do, I decided to call it a day last year and seek some more flexible and casual employment. I now work for myself as an independent consultant advising industrial businesses on financial matters.

With a little more free time on my hands, I had been looking for an exciting one-off challenge for the early part of 2006 - so the idea of a few days gentle stroll in the cold has come at the perfect time.  Do I really perhaps have some of that Inuit blood in me, or just an unfulfilled desire to push personal endeavour to the limit?

 While our expedition is fully self-funded, we nevertheless envisage a nicely high-profile opportunity to raise money for deserving causes. Having raised money in the past for child-related causes, I will personally be raising money on this occasion for Save The Children and for Keech Cottage, a local charity which provides care for children and young people diagnosed with a life-limiting conditions. Please follow the links in order to discover more…

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