Middleton man returns after South Pole conquest

Jonathan will be resting and relaxing with a few days at the East Close property to muse on the adventure which saw him reach the southern end of the world. He is due to meet his parents, John and Maria Bradshaw. He and his three fellow adventurers are due to reach Cork in Eire to a rapturous welcome from the fans who devotedly followed every minute of their epic journey.

Mrs Bradshaw said: "I expect we will be saying 'well done' and 'congratulations' to him and all the usual things.

"We still can't really comprehend what he has done.

"When we look at the photographs of him, with ice on his beard, we can't believe how he has sustained those temperatures for so long. They have gone down to -41C and he has endured those for 58 days."

It was Tuesday, January 8, when the Beyond Endurance team of which Jonathan is a member reached the South Pole.

It had taken 57 hours, four hours and five minutes to achieve the goal after a 1,140 km trek through the most inhospitable conditions on the globe. They were the first Irish team to accomplish the feat.

Jonathan (36) was the managing director of an IT company in Bracknell last year when he decided on a radical change of lifestyle.

He sold his house and car, gave up his job and lived with his parents to prepare for a trek to Greenland. He completed that last September.

When in Greenland, he met the Beyond Endurance explorers who invited him to join them for the journey to the Antartic as he had lived in Dublin for a few years. Jonathan trained for his two adventures by hauling a lorry tyre and a large car tyre along Middleton beach for

several hours at a time, day and night whenever the tide was out.

His team left on November 8, each member hauling a sledge weighing more than 150kgs.

They traced the footsteps of Shackleton for eight to ten hours a day across the inhospitable landscape.

Fourteen of those days were a complete whiteout. Visibility was nil, unimaginable gale force winds buffeted the team and snow storms fit only for polar bears and penguins assailed them.

Jonathan described his team mates in his blog as 'three nomads, zombies or skeletons all shuffling towards me, heads bowed, lost in their thoughts, on autopilot, one foot sliding in front of the other...'

He was told when he arrived at the South Pole that he had completed a journey which fewer people had accomplished than had been in outer space.