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Our first summit to tackle was in the Cordillera Real, a mountain range situated a couple of hours from La Paz, where we hiked to base camp. For Victoria, it was her first proper camping experience. Not only was she learning the new art of mountaineering and acclimatising to the thin air, but she was also a camping virgin. On top of this was the difficulty in catering for a vegan in meat-loving, milk-drinking South America, where the local idea of a vegetarian is having half a portion of meat.

It had been many years since I climbed in crampons with ropes and harness. It was like becoming a student again as Kenton taught us the basics of rope work and how to plant our crampons in the ice. Testament to my climbing inexperience were the tattered, torn hems of my climbing trousers, where the sharp blades of the crampons had slashed through the material.

For 10 days we yomped, trekked, hiked and climbed across the Andean peaks until we reached our final challenge, Illimani. Victoria had struggled with the food and had been suffering from an upset stomach, but Kenton felt confident that we had the strength, stamina and resolve for our first 6,500-metre peak. After all, this was the main event. This was what we had come halfway around the world for. Leaving without an ascent would not only have felt like failure but also bad karma for our ultimate goal, Everest – more than two vertical miles higher.

I was halfway up the mountain when I got the call from Dad.

‘It’s Mum,’ he said. ‘She’s in the ICU in an induced coma.’

The call came as a bolt from the blue. Why now, when I was stuck on the other side of the world?

I felt as helpless as I was clueless. I didn’t know what to do. My instinct was to drop everything and head home as quickly as possible, but that was easier said than done when you are clinging to an icy mountain in the isolated nation of Bolivia.

Dad explained that Mum had fallen ill after a routine injection. The needle had pierced an artery and she had bled internally for 12 hours until she passed out. The hospital had placed her in an induced coma. She had a tracheostomy tube cut into her neck and she was in the intensive care unit, being cared for by four nurses, day and night.

‘I’m coming home,’ I told Dad.

‘There’s nothing you can do,’ he reassured me, ‘she’s unconscious, she won’t even know who’s there.’

If all went well, we would summit the following day and I would be home within three days.

‘She would want you to continue,’ he added.

It was a knife-edge decision. My instinct was to head straight home, but even I could see the pointlessness of returning to a mother who was in an induced coma. Things weren’t good, but Dad’s reassuring tone implied that she was in the best hands and that three days wouldn’t make a difference. I still don’t know if I made the right decision, but I decided to carry on. Dad had implored me. He told me it was what Mum would have wanted me to do.

At midnight, we packed up our rucksacks and headed off for our first big summit together. Under torchlight we trudged and zig-zagged up the snowy, icy flanks of Illimani. She was a brute to climb. Starved of oxygen, cold and hungry, we battled on until dawn when the mountain was illuminated pink. The power of that sunrise was incredible. I could feel the sun charge my energy – it felt like new batteries had been placed inside me.

The three of us marched on in silence. Heads bowed to the mountain, each of us in our own misery. The suffering on a high mountain is largely invisible. It is the nakedness of that suffering that makes it harder to grasp. You end up hating yourself and beating yourself up for feeling as you do.

It is completely unlike running a marathon in which the physical drain is obvious. Here, the exhaustion is invisible. It creeps up on you and renders you useless. It is impossible to fight it; you simply have to endure it. Suffer it and deal with it.

‘That’s it,’ came an exclamation from Victoria, ‘I’m out.’

It was 6.30 am and we were just a few metres from the summit. Kenton and I were incredulous. She had endured more than six hours of climbing and hardship, only to declare her quitting a matter of minutes from the summit. It was as unexpected as it was illogical, but then mountains have a strange effect on people. Irrationality is the norm and unreasonable behaviour becomes commonplace. It is one of the reasons solo mountaineering is so dangerous. Without another perspective, it’s difficult to gauge right from wrong. Kenton’s surprise soon turned to exasperation.

‘Get some bloody food in you,’ he berated her. ‘You have no energy because you haven’t eaten anything.’

She had ‘bonked’, as the cycling term refers to it. She had used up her reserves and was running on empty. Kenton was right, but I could tell she didn’t like his style. Victoria is not at all precious, but she has also spent her post-Olympic years trying to exorcise the ghosts of always being told what to do. She popped some nuts into her mouth and less than 20 minutes later we summited the highest peak that Victoria or I had ever climbed.

The summit was bittersweet. We had succeeded, but my mind and focus were elsewhere, back in Britain, worrying about my mother. The expedition had also opened a slight rift between Victoria and Kenton.

I spent the next few months visiting my mother’s bedside each day. Slowly, she recovered and three months later she was discharged from hospital. She had defied the odds, and not only could she walk – something my father had warned us might not be possible – but she also had control of all her senses.

Meanwhile, Victoria was worried about the expedition. She had been unimpressed with Kenton’s slightly laissez-faire approach. His lack of headtorch and failure to pack a satellite phone had rankled her. It had bothered me too, but I’d put it down to a one-off error.

Victoria is a harsher critic and I had to try and convince her that not only was Kenton still the man for the job, but also that Everest was still the right challenge for us.

We had both struggled in Bolivia. Victoria had displayed worrying physiological stats and had struggled in the thin air at 6,500 metres, the same height as Camp 1 on Everest. We would be going several vertical miles higher.

Bolivia had been my first real mountain test. It had pushed me physically, but I had also been inadvertently pushed mentally – worrying about both Victoria and my mother. I am a worrier. I wish I wasn’t, but I am. I worry about everything. Worry and guilt are my two worst traits.

I’m one of those people that never really enjoys a party I host, because I’m so busy worrying about whether my guests are having a good time and guilty that they have made the effort to come to the party in the first place.

I often feel guilty. There is often no sensible or rational reason for it. I had always been worried (there we go again) that I would worry about Victoria. I felt a guilty responsibility for her being in the mountains in the first place, even though our decision to try and climb Everest had been very much a collaborative one.

Taking on Mount Everest was a massive task. We had to want it, but we also had to enjoy it. There was no point taking two years out of our lives, and the sacrifices that come with that, to climb one of the most dangerous mountains in the world, if we didn’t really enjoy it.

Life is way too short to spend that amount of time doing something you aren’t really committed to. I got the impression that Victoria had already dedicated enough of her life to cycling, which had never really been her passion. She had simply gone with the ride and discovered she was pretty good at it. She had impressed Kenton with her stamina and mental drive in Bolivia, but she hadn’t impressed herself. We had both seen her ability to beat herself up. But I wanted Victoria to persevere. I could see the life-changing beauty that lay ahead for her, if only she would embrace the challenge.

Our second training expedition would take us into the heart of Nepal and the Himalayas. Kenton wanted to get us used to the high mountains of the Everest region, to introduce us to the food, the sherpas, the equipment and the landscape in which we would spend upwards of two months in our ultimate quest.

It was early January 2018. Kenton and Victoria had gone ahead of me. I thought it would be good for the pair of them to have an extra week to re-bond and connect. We needed absolute trust and confidence in one another, and it was the perfect opportunity for the two of them to spend time together.

I joined them a week later, at the foot of Imja Tse, a 6,000-metre snow peak in the Himalayas of eastern Nepal that is popular with trekkers. It was given the name ‘Island Peak’ by members of the 1953 British Mount Everest expedition, because it is surrounded by a sea of ice. Renamed Imja Tse some 20 years later, it is still called Island Peak by most trekkers and climbers today.

I had spent the previous month at sea-level with my family in the Bahamas. The cold, snowy mountains of Nepal were certainly a shock to the system as I helicoptered from Kathmandu deep into the Khumbu Valley – on the route to Everest herself. Within a day of arriving we were at base camp getting ready to climb another 6,000-metre peak. It was the first time since Bolivia that the three of us had been together in the mountains.

At midnight, we pulled on our safety harness and roped ourselves together. Joining us was a local sherpa called Siddhi. In the chill morning air, we set off up the mountain. The climb was easier than Illimani, but nonetheless we struggled.

About halfway up, Victoria stopped for a rest and she broke. She hit the wall and just couldn’t go on. I was confused and upset, and I didn’t know what we could do. If she was struggling here, then what would happen once we went higher?

Victoria settled on a safe glacial plane while the three of us climbed on towards the summit. We could see her all the way to the top, a tiny silhouette dwarfed by the surrounding snow and ice. Just as the summiting of Illimani had been tempered by worry and guilt, I found myself once again torn between the elation of reaching the summit of Island Peak, getting another step closer to my dream to climb Mount Everest, and my worry over Victoria.

Surprisingly, we never talked about what happened on Island Peak. I’m not sure why. In some ways, I assumed Victoria might have decided to abandon the expedition, but she didn’t. In fact, she seemed to have a renewed sense of determination and Kenton and I admired her resolve.

An astonishing athlete, Victoria had embraced mountaineering effortlessly. I never doubted her physical ability and in fact, I always felt she had a better chance of summiting Everest than I did. But I could see that she struggled with self-doubt. She seemed to listen to a loud inner voice of negativity, which belied her strengths and amazing potential. Kenton and I did our best to reassure her and reinforce how good she was on the mountain, but her own questions about her ability were never far from her mind.

I asked her once whether she had ever been happy with her performance in life.

‘No,’ she replied.

‘Not even when you won a gold medal?’

‘I could have won it better,’ she smiled back.

That’s the thing about Victoria, always scrutinising herself, her own harshest critic.

I hoped that Everest would be a chance to change that. To embrace the unknown and the uncontrollable variables, to give in to the wilderness and silence the inner voice of doubt. We returned to Britain with just a couple of months to make final preparations for the climb.

Shortly after returning from Nepal, my father-in-law announced that after 40 years as a doctor, he had decided to retire. Weekly tennis and golf had kept him in rude health. Fit as a fiddle, he was in great shape. I had been thinking about the trek to Everest Base Camp and decided to invite both my father, Bruce and my father-in-law, Jonathan Hunt. Although I knew the trek would be demanding of two 70-year-olds, I also thought it would be a great opportunity for them to share the experience.

Both Mum and Dad had joined me in various escapades around the world. Dad came out to Ecuador and we visited the Galapagos together, and my mother came out to see me in Costa Rica where we explored the rainforest and even trekked to a smouldering volcano together. They had both come out to La Gomera when James Cracknell and I had set off to row across the Atlantic together, and they had been in Antigua when we arrived two months later.

They have both always supported me 100 per cent. I hate to think of the angst through which I must have put my mother.

In 2017, I invited Dad to join me in Tanzania. He had never visited Africa and I wanted to share with him the wonders of the Serengeti where I was making a documentary about the migration of the wildebeest as they made their way up to the Maasai Mara in Kenya. Dad was with us for 10 days, and it was magical to share with him one of my favourite places on earth.

Dad, at 74, is still working. A veterinary surgeon, he is one of the world’s leading authorities on animal behaviour. He has written nearly a hundred books on dogs and cats and he loves his job. I have often worried about him and wondered whether retirement would be a sensible option, but then his job is who he is. I don’t know what he would do without it.

Dad’s commitment to the clinic and his continuing support of my mother, who was still convalescing at home after her long period in ICU, meant that he couldn’t come on our Everest expedition, but Jonathan surprised me by accepting.

It had been a genuine offer and I hoped that he would add an extra dimension to the trek to Base Camp. While many people are drawn to the Base Camp trek itself, for us it was merely a means to an end. It was an important part of our acclimatisation, but it was incidental.

Kenton had warned us of the risk of sickness and ill health along the route. The 10-day trek to Base Camp is often the breeding ground for illness that can jeopardise the whole mountain climb, from colds and flu bugs to stomach ailments and other lurgies. Jonathan’s 40-year career as a GP meant that we would have a doctor along with us to keep us in good health, as well as me having a family member there. He could be our team doctor.

Victoria and Kenton embraced the idea, and before we knew it, I found myself shopping with my father-in-law for pee bottles and thermal leggings. While having Jonathan along was a great idea, I was worried about the responsibility of taking him. The trek to Base Camp would be a relative walk in the park for those of us heading higher, but for a 70-something the trek could be physically demanding. What if something happened?

I knew how much it meant to Marina for him to accompany us. In a strange way I think it softened her overall worries. The original plan was that Jonathan accompany us to Base Camp where he could stay for a couple of days before heading home.

‘I think he should stay for the whole expedition,’ she said, ‘why doesn’t he become your Base Camp doctor too?’

I think there was a relief for Marina in the knowledge that we would both look out for one another. It made the Everest Expedition more palatable to her.

At the end of our Island Peak climb in Nepal, Victoria and I stayed on to do a couple of days’ fieldwork with the Red Cross. The idea was we would visit some of the people and places supported by the charity.

On the first day, we visited a prosthetic clinic where those who had lost limbs in the earthquake had new limbs fitted. We watched a wheelchair basketball match and met survivors of the disasters, including a young boy who had lost his mother and his leg. We met volunteers who had lost family members and families who had lost their homes and their livelihoods. We visited a blood bank, where I left a pint of my own blood, and we visited rural communities that had lost all their infrastructure.

Victoria and I saw how the Red Cross had helped the Nepalese get back on their feet. They had helped communities rebuild water supplies and sanitation. We were shown how micro-financing had helped families start new businesses and stand on their own two feet. It was moving and humbling. For Victoria in particular, it gave purpose and meaning to our climb and strengthened her resolve. I was always worried that she didn’t have the same motivation to climb Everest that I had.

While my ambition and hope were part of a lifelong dream, her motivation was slightly more rudderless. By that, I don’t mean she lacked commitment, but I always felt she needed more of a reason why she should do it aside from just the physical challenge. Our time with the Red Cross in Nepal was surprisingly emotional and armed us both with a greater sense of purpose and connection to the task at hand.

CHAPTER THREE

Responsibility

I hate goodbyes. I always have. And this one wasn’t going to be easy.

The first goodbye I can remember was when I was about eight. My Canadian father would pack my two sisters and me off to his homeland every summer for eight weeks with my grandparents, Morris and Aileen. How I loved those long summers, those two months on the shores of Lake Chemong in the Kawartha region of Ontario in my grandfather’s hand-built cottage. We paddled, swam and fished. It was the antithesis to London where we lived just off Baker Street in a house with no garden.

Here, nature was on our doorstep. We had freedom within the Canadian wilderness. I felt alive. But all good things must come to an end, and I’d have to say goodbye to Grandma and Grandpa for a year. I hated those goodbyes. I would bawl my eyes out when we were on the way to the airport and cry all the way back to England.

It’s strange but 35 years later I can still feel the emotion, that unique pain of longing and missing. I’m sure it’s why I still hate goodbyes.

Then there was the first time my mother dropped me off at boarding school. I was 14, a year later than everyone else mainly because I was never meant to go to boarding school. I didn’t want to go. My parents didn’t want me to go, but no other school would have me. My parents had taken the decision at an early age to send me to a private school, but I wasn’t academic enough for the high-intensity academia of London day schools. I flunked my exams and ended up with a place boarding in Dorset.

The memory of Mum and Dad driving up the seemingly endless drive towards the imposing building will never fade. All the other pupils already knew one another. I was the new kid. Geeky, unsporty and spotty. I clung to my parents and cried for the better part of a year. A year. Can you imagine what I put my parents through? Sorry Mum and Dad.

Like I say, I’ve never been good at goodbyes and that hasn’t changed.

We are in Colombo International Airport in Sri Lanka. We have just had the most amazing family holiday. Me, Marina, Ludo and Iona: three weeks exploring this beautiful Indian Ocean island. We have laughed and smiled, swum and surfed in the sweltering heat, met elephants and released baby turtles, bumped around in tuk-tuks and eaten every meal together. And now it’s over.

I always get post-holiday blues, but this is different. Much, much different. It’s bigger and it’s sadder. I am saying goodbye as I head off on the biggest challenge of my life. From here, I will fly straight to Kathmandu in Nepal while the rest fly back to England. Our happy family will separate, and I will begin a two-month expedition to climb the highest mountain in the world.

The last day in Colombo had been slightly painful. It had been hot and humid and by the afternoon a huge thunderstorm had broken over the city. Everest had loomed over us like an invisible weight.

The children of course were oblivious to the magnitude of what lay ahead. They were still in the sweet spot of innocence, glorious naivety. It was one of the attractions of attempting the climb while they were still basking in childhood optimism and hopefulness, to avoid them having to face the reality of the risks ahead.

Marina was quieter than usual. I could sense the weight of Everest on her shoulders. The burden of the unknown that she would carry for the next few weeks as she continued with life back in London while I began my trek deep into the Himalayas. We smiled and laughed, but there was an air of sadness. Perhaps it was the rain and the thunder, but it felt heavy. It clung to us.

And now, here we were at Colombo Airport where our lives would separate. No more family smiles, hugs, laughter …

I waited until the last call for my flight. I wanted to put off the goodbyes for as long as I could.

I scooped up the children who enveloped me like an octopus. I squeezed them and inhaled their smell. I nuzzled their necks and whispered into their ears, ‘Look after Mummy.’

‘Have fun, Daddy,’ they both smiled with that innocence and excitement that only children can muster.

‘Please keep safe,’ hugged Marina, ‘we need you.’

We both cried. I didn’t want the children to see my tears. They have seen me cry before and it’s important for children to know they can cry, but this felt different. The tears felt like an admission of fear and I didn’t want them to fear Everest. I wanted them to be excited and inspired by the mountain.

The tears felt like a weakness, liquid fear. In a way they were. My stomach was knotted and twisted. I have left my family for plenty of risky expeditions over the years, but this one felt different – it felt bigger, taller, badder.

I had struggled to rationalise my yearning to climb Mount Everest with my role as husband and father. After all, being a dad is a primary role. It’s not something that you just do part-time. It comes with responsibility and commitment.

I need them and they need me.

Shortly before I left, I had asked the children to give me something special that I could take to the summit with me. Ludo chose his panda teddy bear that he’d had since he was a small child, known as Pandear, and Iona, a little more inexplicably, chose a carrot dog toy.

As well as the two stuffed children’s toys, I wanted to take something else. One of Ludo’s favourite things in the whole world is his silver shark’s tooth necklace. He got it while we were in the Bahamas and he never takes it off. ‘Can I borrow your shark’s tooth to wear to the summit?’ I asked him. It was a big ask, but without hesitation, Ludo placed it around my neck. In its place, I made Ludo a special necklace that I placed around his neck.

That little necklace ceremony was profoundly moving. The silver shark’s tooth had such a profound power and energy. It was a reminder always of what was waiting for me at home.

Marina – Saying goodbye

As the dregs of the harsh winter loitered into March, Ben packed for three months away – two weeks of tropical heat in Sri Lanka, a teardrop-shaped jewel of a country for an amazing family vacation, and two months of extreme altitude in one of the harshest terrains on the planet.

Our holiday was blissful. We travelled through the verdant land, racing along the endless beaches, surfing and releasing turtle hatchlings back into the sea. We fell in love with stray dogs, learned about different curries and watched in awe as blue whales breached majestically in the gargantuan ocean. As our halcyon holiday neared an end, I felt the wave of anxiety welling up in my chest. Our goodbye was fast approaching, and I wanted to put a pause on our bliss.

My mother reminded me that I’ve never been good at goodbyes as Ben left for the South Pole and my face was a blurry sea of tears. When my holidays ended and I had to return to boarding school, my tears would start two days before I actually left. The anticipation was often worse than the actual goodbye.