IN THE never ending winter of the Arctic local explorer Jim McNeill and his wife Sam McNeill are training 17 future polar explorers.

The team are amateur citizen scientists for an environmental expedition next month

They are acclimatising themselves in snowy Svalbard in Norway with three weeks of intensive polar training with the Ice Warrior Project which has its UK HQ at Ice Warrior Expedition Basecamp in Princetown.

Sam said: ‘The culmination of the polar training is an eight-day training expedition with their experienced Ice Warrior instructors Michael Petit and Alan Thompson. They are practising all they learned on their Ice Warrior training journey.

‘This includes medical critical crisis management, polar bear watch, search and rescue, building rope systems, tent living and skiing with their ‘pulk’ sleds. These are ordinary people doing extraordinary thing.’

Ice Warrior and the couple’s ship-based summer Ocean Warrior project measure climate change on our oceans and ice. Details at www.global-warrior.com

Photos by George Reese (Instagram: ice_warrior_george)