An Irishwoman's Diary

BREAKFAST: oatmeal, corn oil, powdered cream and sugar. Add water, stir and heat. Lunch : more oatmeal, corn oil, dried nuts and sugar, followed by chocolate and dried reindeer heart for afternoon snack.

Dinner : freeze-dried ox, lamb, pork, or reindeer, mixed with mashed potatoes, butter and a dash of spice.

There's isn't much that even the best celebrity chef can do with a celebrity adventurer's diet in the confines of polar extremes. Yet when Norwegian adventurer Børge Ousland was offered fresh fruit, cheese and bread by friendly hikers on the last leg of one of his expeditions, he turned down the offer and stuck to his packaged rations.

Ousland believes that a diet comprising 50 to 55 per cent fat is better fuel for the "slow daily grind" than more carbohydrates or protein. Described as a 21st-century Nansen or Amundsen, he was the first man to walk alone and unassisted to both North and South Poles.

He was also the first to ski alone across Antarctica and across the Arctic Ocean, and the first, with photographer Thomas Ulrich, to trek unsupported across the ice field of Southern Patagonia, the third largest glacier in the world after Antarctica and Greenland. Ousland, a former North Sea saturation diver, has also attempted several 8,000-metre peaks, and in 2007 he and companion Ulrich decided to fulfil an "old dream" by following in the bootsteps of Fridtjof Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen through Russian-owned Franz Josef Land.

Nansen, the father of polar exploration and a scientist, took up snow and ice as a relief from the "mental fatigue" of research into the central nervous system.

However, when his ice-worthy vessel, Fram, was not drifting as close to the North Pole as he had hoped in the late 1890s, he selected one of his 11 crewmen, Johansen, to make an attempt on the Pole with kayaks, dogs and sledges.

Forced to turn back just short of their target, the pair reached the archipelago of Franz Josef Land, where they lived in a stone hut for nine months before being rescued by Frederick Jackson, leader of a British scientific expedition.

Ousland and Ulrich set out southwards from the now well-discovered North Pole in early May, 2007, finally reaching Cape Flora in late July. However, they were forced to wait almost three weeks and "live off the land" before a vessel picked them up and sailed to Murmansk for that essential passport stamp.

Perhaps most endearing were Ousland's final kilometres. Having sailed on south to Bodo, he then got on his bicycle and cycled through Norway to home - reaching Oslo in mid-September.

Ousland believes that "success" is not only about grand expeditions, but also about surviving daily life - as a carer, for instance, or as a patient with a serious illness. "I don't think people are so different, and the only reason we don't know the strength of our own willpower is because it hasn't been put to the test."

Willpower is environmental, rather than genetic, in his view, and can be developed by "taking one step after another", he says. "I didn't think at 20 years old that I could do the things I have done now. I use nature as a platform to build on my willpower, because out in the environment there is an opportunity to be close to the elements, and to have peace of mind." Ousland hopes to expand on this theme when he speaks on September 18th at the National College of Ireland, IFSC, Dublin. It will be his first trip to Ireland, and tickets are available from Great Outdoors, Chatham Street, Dublin 2.

DECLAN McGrath is another man who enjoys an intimacy with the environment, albeit at a less extreme set of co-ordinates. The Waterford Institute of Technology lecturer has just reprinted his best-selling guide to the Comeragh Mountains. This mountain range of old red sandstone is distinctive for its series of "coums" (derived from the Irish word, com, for hollow), which were scooped out of the rock during the Ice Age. The best known o is Coumshingaun or Com Seangán, which translates as "Pissmire's hollow" or "slender ravines in the cliffs".

As McGrath recounts, the Coumshingaun area was home to the Hermit of Lackandarra, Jim Fitzgerald, who was born there in 1886 and died in 1959. He lived alone there on his return from service with the Connaught Rangers, having fought in France and Mesopotamia during the first World War.

Perhaps as a result of his military experiences, Fitzgerald had opted to turn his back on society. Home was a rough hut or burrow dug into the mountainside and covered with sods, McGrath writes. When it was dry, he slept in the open air on a split rock outside. Every fortnight, he made a quick foray down to buy bread, butter, tea, milk and the occasional black pudding with his British Army pension.

McGrath has many such tales to tell in his detailed guide to the geology, flora and fauna of the mountains, and he devotes a section to walks, and to the future. The Comeragh requires its own uplands forum, he believes, and climate change is already leaving its mark, with common plant species growing at higher altitudes.

One less welcome "climber" is bracken, which is very difficult to control or eradicate, and which will, if left untouched, reduce the beauty and agricultural value of the hillscape.

• A Guide to the Comeragh Mountainsby Declan McGrath is published with the support of the Heritage Council, and is available from bookshops in Waterford city, Dungarvan, Tramore and Carrick-on-Suir at €30 hardback.