Lined up carefully on a set of shelves in the corner of his living room, the titles of Charlie Cooper's book collection speak volumes.

Mind Over Matter by Ranulph Fiennes, Pole to Pole by Michael Palin, South by Sir Ernest Shackleton, Extreme Survival by Dr Kenneth Kamler and Scott's Last Expedition Volumes One and Two are just some of the works on display.

Ever since he was a child, Charlie has been inspired by the intrepid tales of the great explorers who pushed themselves to the absolute limit and made it out the other side.

Fast forward several decades and he has just returned home after achieving his schoolboy dream to follow in the footsteps of his heroes.

When he heard about The Polar Race 2007 - a gruelling 450-mile expedition to the magnetic North Pole - he knew it was an opportunity too good to miss.

"I have always been interested in stories of explorers and why they did what they did," said the sales manager from Netley Abbey. "I always wanted to do something like this and I never thought I would. The chance to go to the North Pole was something I had to do.

"What I did was luxury compared to some of the things they had to put up with. It took the original explorers two years to get up there to start in the first place."

More than 100 people from across the world applied to take part in the third Polar Race - known as one of the world's toughest challeneges - but just 15 got selected after rigorous rounds of interviews, assessments and physical tests.

"I just wanted to do something out of the ordinary, something that would test me physically and mentally and - probably most importantly - something I could look back on in years to come and think, I have done that'," explains Charlie.

The dad-of-one is not a man to shy away from physical challenges. A qualified fitness instructor, he has twice completed the London Marathon in under three hours and is a keen walker and hiker.

It was the intensity of the three-and-a-half-week challenge which Charlie, who was in a team called Brass Monkeys with two men from Bristol, really wrestled with.

"The mental side was very tough," he admits.

"It was 30 per cent physical, 70 per cent mental. When you're stuck with two other guys, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it's hard. We got on pretty well but with something like the London Marathon you can stop if you don't feel good. With this there is no one around for hundreds of miles so you don't have that opportunity."

Facing temperatures of -40C and blizzard conditions in one of the planet's most inhospitable environments, the six teams taking part faced the constant threat of frostbite and attack by polar bear.

Everyone received essential firearms training in case they came face-to-face with one of the beasts on a bad day but - almost disappointingly for Charlie - his team didn't set eyes on one the entire trip.

"We found bear tracks outside our tent one morning that hadn't been there the night before.

It was a bit unnerving to say the least.

"He obviously put his nose near the tent and thought they smell so bad I'm not going near them! We wore the same clothes for three-and- a-half-weeks."

On foot or skis depending on the terrain, the teams raced from Resolute Bay to the official position of the North Magnetic Pole, on Ellef Ringnes Island, both of which are in the Nunavut province of Canada.

Starting on April 9 - Charlie's 46th birthday - they had to drag everything they needed to survive on sleds weighing up to 70kg.

The day would start when they woke at around 5.30am and they would finally set off two hours later after breakfasting and taking the tent down.

"When it's colder everything takes longer," winces Charlie. "The worst thing was waking up in the morning and getting out of the sleeping bag. The stove had to be turned off at night so the sleeping bag would be wet and frozen when we woke up. The inside of the tent would be too and when you moved it all came down on your head."

After breakfast the men - who all developed frostnip in their fingers during the trip - would have to trek for 12 hours with only snacks of chocolate, pepperoni, dried fruit and nuts to keep them going.

"We were constantly hungry," he says. "I lost a stone in weight which I still haven't put back on."

When they were too exhausted to continue, they would find somewhere to camp and it would finally be dinnertime with dehydrated packets of chicken curry, beef stew and meat and potato to feast on.

After writing his diary, it would be time to bed down for an often fitful night's sleep as the wind roared and they listened out for polar bears, before the day started all over again.

Pitted against the other teams and the elements, as they raced towards the convergent point of the Earth's magnetic field in four stages they still found time to admire the view.

"The scenery was fantastic and the sky was crystal blue," smiles Charlie. "You could look 360 degrees around you and see for miles, there is absolutely nothing there at all when it's flat. There were some days when we were trying to head for a certain mountain.

"We would be trying to get there all day and wouldn't get there because it was so far away."

Finishing in fifth place, the feeling of elation after realising his goal of a lifetime was so immense that the high shows no signs of going away.

"It's very hard to put it into words," says Charlie, who raised £11,000 for Wessex Cancer Trust. "You go through life thinking I would like to do this or that.

"It was a great sense of achievement and I was looking forward to having a shower, a beer and a comfy bed.

"Even things like bread and milk - things that you normally take for granted in normal life - you appreciate so much more.

"It goes to show if you want to do something badly enough then you can do it. I'm still bouncing around a little bit."

12:19pm Friday 28th September 2007

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