While I was serving, I worked as an adventure training officer, teaching soldiers how to ski, canoe and climb.

With fear, you must prevent not cure. Fear must nor be allowed to take hold in the first place. If you are in a canoe never listen to the roar of the rapid ahead before you let go of the river bank. Just do it!

No one will pay you for planning an expedition at first: you have to work in pubs at weekends so you can pay the gas bills. I joined the Territorial Army, which paid me when I turned up to drill nights, and so did my wife.

Will I spend my life in a wheelchair? Tottering around my lounge, instead of running up mountain passes or navigating glaciers?

After my heart attack I thought, is this it?

I go on expeditions for the same reason an estate agent sells houses - to pay the bills.