To the South Pole by wheelchair ? surely not it sounds impossible until you introduce a determined Swedish man and a converted wheelchair that moves about on skis.

Aron Anderson, a 28 year old paralympian from Sweden contracted cancer in his lower back as a child and was left semi paralised and in a wheelchair but this hasn’t stopped him from achieving some fairly remarkable feats including this first by setting a record of reaching the South pole by wheelchair after battling for 21 days in temperatures as low as minus 35 degrees and averaging minus 30 degrees.

Adapted wheelchair

Aron used a wheelchair that had been adapted to move on skis however much of the land he had to cross was not the plateau you would expect but in fact quite undulating.. So as with a self propelled wheelchair, he had to power himself along which at times was virtually impossible. At one point in the 21 day journey he faced uphill gradient in his wheelchair for 6 days in a row. At these temperatures the amount of energy burned is enormous as was his appetite.

Towards the end of his journey, Aron said "the glide on the snow here is really hard" and that he now wanted "some real food, I'm kind of tired of this freeze-dried food."

Fund raising for the Children with Cancer Foundation, Aron has so far raised five million Krona (£442,670) to fight cancer among children in Sweden. He has more wheelchair challenges up his sleeve for 2017 !