Polar protector

Lewis Gordon Pugh adds writing to his long list of firsts

There’s a wonderful television advert of Lewis Gordon Pugh in Antarctica walking in one direction, with a line of penguins waddling off in exactly the opposite direction. It epitomises his quote about how “going against the tide has never been difficult” for him, and perhaps this explanation in his recently released autobiography is the closest we’ll ever come to understanding the source of Pugh’s determination and his unwavering attitude to attempt what’s never been attempted before.

Some authors might argue that writing a book is every bit as challenging as, say, being the first person to swim at the North Pole or the first to swim the full length of the River Thames, but with the release of the aptly titled Achieving The Impossible, Pugh really can say he’s done it all. Oh yes, he also summited Everest in May.

Just as every challenge Pugh has set himself has taught him something new about himself, so too, he says, has the writing process.

“It’s been a very good, cathartic experience, putting my thoughts down on paper, because I learned a lot about myself in doing so,” he states thoughtfully, before pausing to take a sip of his peppermint tea. “I often say that a good autobiography is like a good fruit salad,” he continues. “There’s got to be the sweet melon, the juicy grapes, and then

there’s got to be some really bitter grapefruit.When you trawl through that bitter grapefruit you realise that there is stuff that has happened many years ago you sometimes haven’t moved on from.”

Pugh’s lists of “firsts”, including being the first person to complete a long distance swim in every ocean of the world, are incredible, to say the least. He attributes a large part of this to never giving up and all of his successes having a kind of a domino effect.

“I’m the only person in history to do an SAS introductory course three times,” he admits. “At the time, I thought ‘why did my body let me down?’ and ‘woe is me’, but I now look back and say thank the Lord I only made it on the third time because that hardship has moulded and created who I am now,” Pugh says.“That adversity was important to be able to show me that I could handle adversity for things that would be even harder, subsequent to being in the SAS.”

The important thing about finishing something, Pugh believes, is that it releases an energy and a power that one has done something and that the next time around, one knows one can do something “a little bit harder and a little bit tougher”. Harder and tougher define most of what he’s done since he left his law career behind him, but Pugh knows he is following his destiny.

“It’s my destiny to be a peace and environmental campaigner, and that view doesn’t come out of arrogance; it comes out of conviction and humility,” he says emphatically. “There’s a direct link between protecting the environment and peace. And conversely, destroying the environment and using up all the resources and conflict.”

This article first appeared in CitiVibe in The Citizen on Thursday 26 August 2010. Photos courtesy Lewis Gordon Pugh and Jonathan Ball Publishers.

Lewis Gordon Pugh’s book Achieving The Impossible (ISBN: 9781868423408, R195) is available now.