At the beginning of 2016, I returned to my desk at Savills after completing an expedition to the South Pole. I was elated, mildly frost-bitten and overwhelmingly in awe of Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew, whose extraordinary polar feats a century ago we had honoured with our own endeavours.

Life was once again warm, comfortable and rather more predictable. Then a year later, over a convivial Christmas dinner, the call of the ice resurfaced. How to explain the pull of the Poles? 19th-century American polar explorer Isaac Israel Hayes called it ‘a spice of danger, with much of beauty, and a world of magnificence’. Or, as Apsley Cherry-Garrard, one of the men who travelled to Antarctica with Captain Scott, put it rather more humorously: ‘Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised’.

So, yielding to this irresistible attraction, I re-joined renowned explorer Sir David Hempleman-Adams, plus ex-SAS soldier and bestselling author Andy McNab and anti-bullying teenage campaigner Bea Edwards, in a new mission – this time to ski the last degree of latitude to the North Pole.

It’s a journey few attempt. We travelled more than 110 km across the sea ice in one of the most unforgiving environments on the planet, camping and working in temperatures as low as -40˚C for nine days. We faced massive, moving ice pressure ridges and open water, all the while keeping an eye out for wandering polar bears.

The two polar expeditions were very different. The South is high, generally stable and dry, while in the North you are working at sea level on drifting, volatile ice, often in cold and damp conditions. Learning to adapt wherever you are is key. You’ve got to keep an open mind and be an agile thinker. What works in one place won’t necessarily work in another. So it is important to focus your energy on short-term objectives, testing and adjusting to the circumstances, while never losing sight of the ultimate goal.

Sometimes in life, as in business, you are drawn to take risks. It is often much easier to stay within your comfort zone and say ‘I could never achieve that’. Yet we all have remarkable reserves and capabilities. It isn’t until you push yourself to the limits that you find out what these truly are. Standing at the Poles was a life-shaping experience for me.