Wilton-Davies John (Great Britain)

Wilton-Davies John

Business consultant John Wilton-Davies (born in 1973), with no experience whatsoever in polar travelling, decided one day that he wanted to walk solo to the South Pole. He was 34 years old at that time!

John Wilton-Davies is a 36 year-old business consultant from Exeter. His wife Michele works for Christows stockbrokers and they have two children: Zak, aged 3 and Sam, 1. John grew up in Gosport, Hampshire. He spent his 1st year at St John's College, Southsea, and the rest of his school life was spent at St Peter's School in Bournemouth. After trying out a degree course in Physics with Astrophysics at Queen Elizabeth College, London, he moved to Exeter in 1982, where he has lived since. John has worked for an insurance company, been a financial adviser, investment manager, and now runs a small consultancy business helping financial advisers. He is a keen tennis player and footballer.

In 2004, for no apparent reason, he decided that he wanted to walk to the South Pole. Despite his best efforts, he could find no one who would go with him, so decided to learn about polar travel, undertake suitable training, and find people with the necessary expertise, with the aim of undertaking an expedition in 2006.
John says that he has always wanted to take on an extreme physical challenge and felt that, at 44, the time was right. He says that it wouldn't be fair on his family to take on more than one big challenge and so he decided to try for the biggest test he could imagine, in order to remove the prospect of wanting to try something even harder another time.

Unfortunetaly, John did not make it. After having walked about 1000 km, solo, he ran out of food and had to call Patriot Hills for a rescue. He had reached 88° 587.