A Visit to the South Pole?

I went to the South Pole a few days ago. For a pint. I was hill-walking in Kerry with the Spartan Red Sox, and one night we went to the South Pole Inn, the Annascaul pub which Tom Crean opened when he returned home after years of Antarctic exploration. There's a statue of him on the village green now, across from the pub, holding several husky pups, based on a photograph from one of his voyages. It's a nice old pub, and you can imagine him behind the bar, pulling a pint and smiling gently as the locals complain about the weather.

Back home this week I've been reading 'An Unsung Hero', Michael Smith's biography of Crean, and a good read it is too. The conditions he and others coped with – months struggling over the ice on what became Scott's last journey, seasons in the dark of the long Antarctic winters, weeks in an open boat, the desperate journey to save Shackleton’s Endurance expedition - well, it was a different kind of life, and puts a different perspective on complaining about the traffic. Frank Hurley’s superb photograph of Crean, on the Endurance expedition, says it all - the woollen jumper and hat, the gaunt face, the pipe, the piercing eyes; a man you won't meet every day. The picture is in the pub and on the cover of the book, and it has to be one of the all time great portrait photographs.

Crean was an authentic Irish action hero who never harmed or threatened anyone or made a fiery speech or a fuss about himself in his life. In these days of 'celebrity'- and worse - we could do with more like him.

I look forward to going back to the South Pole - the pub that is. I think the Antarctic will have to wait. Global warming? EasyJet?