Dundee adventurer Stewart Stirling will be plucking and plodding all the way to the South Pole.
The former police officer and Morgan Academy pupil, who recently addressed Dundee Rotary Club, will set off in November in an attempt to follow Sir Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 planned route right across the Antarctic region.
Sir Ernest’s journey was stopped by pack ice, so the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Centenary Expedition team have “unfinished business” in Antarctica.
The team will be taking a special version of the Shackleton banjo with them on the extra-ordinary 1,200-mile trek.
Stewart, 49, will be given a Shackleton E100, super lightweight and super tough banjo which will need to be playable at temperatures as low as minus 55 degrees Celsius.
The Great British Banjo Company will make the instrument as close to 3lbs weight as possible and it will be made with advanced materials techniques.
Stewart said: “One important issue to contend with is that at the South Pole it is extremely dangerous to remove your gloves for more than one or two minutes.
“You don’t want your fingers sticking to frets so they are exploring a variety of fretting solutions.”
GBBC, one of the expedition’s sponsors, are planning to make 100 of the E100 Shackletons, with one going to the Antarctic and the others available for sale.
Ernest Shackleton and his polar explorers had a banjo to maintain their spirits as they sat trapped in the Antarctic ice.
The instrument, later valued at £150,000, was brought out each night by the ship’s meteorologist who played popular tunes to entertain the crew during their ordeal.
It was one of the last items rescued from the Endurance before it was crushed by polar ice in 1915. The banjo returned to Britain with its owner, Dr Leonard Hussey, and was given to the National Maritime Museum.
It featured in numerous exhibitions about the Shackleton expedition and later became the subject of a court battle over its ownership.