Features

You don't fall asleep. After a particularly long stint, co-driver Matt gets out of the car in some distress, ranting about the many forms of death currently stalking us.

I offer inane pleasantries and fail to mention, or indeed laugh hysterically at, the half-inch long icicles on his eyebrows. He was wearing a full-face helmet.

Eventually, after too many hours of almost Zen-like Atom driving, it becomes clear that if we put in the hours and take our time we might just make it. We're 100 miles from Mo-I-Rana, about 120 miles from the Arctic Circle and it's late afternoon.

We decide to make a break for it and try to beat the impending weather. I take the wheel, start following one of the many lorries tracking their non-stop way up the mountains.

It all starts to go a bit pear-shaped as we enter a tunnel, mainly because I see an opportunity to overtake.

Half way down, and on the wrong side of the road, I hit black ice and start to slide.

Puckering every orifice simultaneously, I flail from full left lock to full right lock twice, losing speed all the time, before clipping the rear mudguard of the lorry with the front cycle wing of the Atom and spinning clear.

For what seemed like half a minute all I could see was unfeeling, grinding lorry wheel. If I was a cat, I'd be hastily chalking off another couple of lives. Four hours later and the velvet blackness is total. No street lights, no stars.

The Circle does not exist on the Land Rover's satnav, and what we thought to be 20-miles is, in fact, 50. We're still 50-miles away. Another two hours. My sense of humour fails, I scream, shout, cry like a baby.

Throw my helmet on the floor. I must cross the line myself. Tonight. But I'm bloody hurting, or I would be, if I could feel anything in my lumpen limbs.