This remarkable series starts Thursday 10th September at 9pm and it shows that exhilaration, fear, liberation and loneliness are just some of the conflicting emotions Ed Wardle experienced as he took himself to the limits of his physical and psychological capabilities.
Ed didn't go into this experience unprepared. In addition to comprehensive survival, medical, hunting and Yukon specific training, Ed is a specialist in making TV in extreme environments. However, despite this wealth of experience, Ed is not a survival expert. A survival expert would tell you how to survive in the wild; Ed wanted to tell you what it actually feels like.
After a phenomenal 50 days surviving alone in the wild, it was decided that Ed Wardle should be pulled out of the Canadian wilderness on Saturday 22 August. Following his removal, Ed saw a doctor immediately before returning to the UK on Monday. He is in good spirits and happy to be back with loved ones.
From the outset, Channel 4 and Ed aimed to explore whether it was possible to survive in the wilderness without human company and in this knowledge established a detailed safety protocol. This involved a back-up team on hand 24 hours a day, local emergency services, a GPS tracking system, emergency satellite phone and a SPOT alert system to monitor his movements and which he manually triggered every 24 hours to indicate that he was OK. You can read full details in How the Programme Was Made where you'll also find a map detailing his movements, a Twitter diary and interactive diagram of his camp and safety equipment.
You can continue to hear from Ed on Twitter, watch his weekly video diaries and browse the site to explore the nature of solitude and how others managed to survive in extreme circumstances: from Terry Waite who was held hostage for five years in Lebanon to psychologist Cynthia McVey, a lighthouse keeper, 'Book of Silence' author Sara Maitland and British adventurer Alastair Humphreys who canoed down the Yukon River in 2004.
