Late last week English schoolboy, Lewis Clarke, became the youngest person ever to trek to the South Pole. Setting out on December 2^nd, some two weeks after his 16^th birthday, Lewis, from Bristol, completed the 702 mile journey in 48 days. Though accompanied by an experienced polar guide he dragged his own equipment by sledge across the snows in temperatures as low as -40C and winds gusting to 120 miles per hour.

It is an amazing achievement that surely merited far more media coverage than it in fact generated, particularly when considering that he is only one of three hundred to have reached the South Pole on foot or sledge since the Norwegian, Roald Amundsen and the ill-fated Englishman, Robert Falcon Scott first succeeded back in 1911/12.

Lewis will return home later this week and then it’s back to school where he will face the somewhat more mundane challenge of his GCSE exams. What a remarkable young man.

 I wonder if he can play cricket?