Intrepid Penryn pensioner explorer Tony Clarke, who set off on a three-month trip to the frozen north of Scandinavia in June, has reached Europe's most northerly point.

The 67-year-old, from Penryn, has been on many an adventure in the past with his travels taking him everywhere from the tops of mountain ranges to the depths of the driest deserts.

This week, the Packet caught up with Tony to see where his latest expedition has taken him in “The Bumpy Road to Nordkapp.”

“A weather-battered sign by the side of the road informed me that I was entering the Arctic Circle. Now, 1000 miles later, I had just ten miles to go to reach the most northerly point in Europe accessible by road – Nordkapp, or North Cape, in Norway.

The weather had been bad from the start of the trip, 3349 miles away in Penryn, and it had worsened with each day.

My driving visibility was down to a few metres and a bleak wind was relentlessly whipping the truck; cold and icy, it came direct and unimpeded from the polar ice cap and into my old bones.

I pulled off the rutted road and onto what I hoped would be firm moss-covered hard standing, and lurched unexpectedly into the midst of a herd of |reindeer.

They reluctantly moved aside. Swiftly I made up my bed in the back of the Land Rover then double and|treble wrapped myself and crawled, freezing, into my sleeping bag.

At 2.30am I was suddenly woken by a shaft of |sunlight shooting between the curtain and the top of the back window, near blinding me with its glow.

I peered out. The wind had dropped, the fog had |dissipated, the reindeer vanished – and now, I found myself in a different world.

I didn’t waste any time. I hurriedly made and drank a cup of coffee before driving the short distance to the Cape.

There are some moments in life when your heart is so full of joy you just want to skip, to shake the hand of anybody near you and say “Good morning, isn’t it a wonderful day!”

This was that day, that moment. With no-one around to shake hands with, I did what all travellers do – I took a photo: of the vehicle with the Arctic Ocean as a backcloth, and one of myself.

I knew that just beyond the horizon lay the polar ice cap, now covered in a thick blanket of fog.

I felt the cold chill in my bones, jumped into the Land Rover, put on the heater full blast and headed south.

By now it was approaching 4am and the sun, high in the sky, was disappearing fast behind the returning clouds, with the wind and rain following.

The cold was less intense. I had had my hour of sunshine and joy, an hour to be remembered forever.

My heading is south east towards Lapland. I don’t know where I will be sleeping tonight, and tomorrow will bring whatever it brings.

Wherever I have been in the world, I have woken each morning with only a vague idea of where I am, and absolutely no idea of where I will be by the end of the day – whether I will meet friend or foe, whether the roads I travel will be rough or smooth, if the weather will be good or bad.

But what I am sure of, as I get up day after day, week after week, month after month, is that life for me is about to become one more big adventure.”