A visit to the North Pole

Strange things have been happening recently in Robertsbridge in the south of England. Last week a lady saw two polar bears outside a railway station and yesterday a jogger bumped into a team of husky dogs with a sled on wheels in a nearby forest. It seems that the dogs and the sled were real but the two polar bears were two students in disguise. They came from a local secondary school and were raising money for their field trip: a visit to the North Pole.

At the end of March, eight students from Robertsbridge School in Sussex will go on Polarwatch, a ten-day expedition to Resolute Bay, which is a small Inuit settlement of 200 people in the Canadian Arctic. The purpose of the trip is to study weather conditions in the Arctic and look at the effects of global warming. The climax of the trip will be a flight to the magnetic North Pole. They will be the first British school party to go there.

Anybody in Years 9 and 10 at the school was allowed to apply but only eight students were chosen. It made no difference if the students were rich or poor. They had to be strong and fit. In the end the teachers leading the group chose the ones who were the most sociable and had the most common sense.

Obviously, the expedition is going to cost quite a lot, so for the past year the students have been working hard to raise the money. That is what the students were doing in the forest with a team of husky dogs and a sled – they were on a sponsored sled run.

Alice Fletcher, one of the chosen eight students says, 'I've I ve always dreamt of going to the North Pole. It's the chance of a lifetime, isn't it? I can't believe how lucky I am.'