It took 59 days for Kent explorer Felicity Aston to become the first woman to ski across Antarctica alone. Chris Price caught up with her ahead of a talk about her trip ahead of a talk about the experience in her home county.

Lugging 85kg of supplies through 1,744km of the coldest continent on the planet, Felicity Aston achieved a feat only two men had accomplished before her but in a much more gruelling fashion.

The two men used kite-power. Felicity, 35, became the first ever person to make the crossing purely on human strength, dragging her kit the equivalent of London to Rome. When you spend more than two months on your own – speaking only to report your position via satellite phone each day – it does strange things to your mind. “The only bonkers thing was I began talking to the sun,” said Felicity, who completed her expedition in January, almost 100 years to the day after Captain Scott reached the South Pole.

“It became important to me and when I got home I found it quite difficult not to say hello to the sun when it was in the sky. I couldn’t talk to the sun because I would look like a fruitcake but I felt incredibly guilty about that because it was my loyal friend who had seen me through this tough expedition. Now I was blanking my friend.”

Kent had been the training ground for the Castaway-like expedition by the ex-Tonbridge Grammar School pupil, who grew up in Hildenborough and now lives in Birchington.

She studied astrophysics at UCL, before doing a masters in applied meteorology at Reading. She moved to Thanet in 2006 – her husband works at the offshore wind farm off the coast of Whitstable – and lives right by the sea.

Physical training consisted of heading down to Epple Bay and then jogging the length of the path behind the sea defences on the Viking Coastal Trail, either east towards Margate or west through Reculver, Herne Bay and up to Whitstable and back.

Yet nothing prepared her for the moment when her Antarctic expedition began, as she watched the plane which had dropped her off disappearing.

“Although I had been preparing for being by myself for that length of time – seeing a sports psychologist and working on techniques for dealing with loneliness – I don’t think there was anything which could have prepared me for exactly how vulnerable I felt that moment.

“I realised it was only me who could get me out of any trouble now. I knew when the plane dropped me off there was no going back. To think that for the next 2,000km and two months I was going to be on my own was really scary. I remember shaking but not because I was scared of dying or injury but because I was scared of being alone for that long. I hadn’t expected that.”

What followed was two months of solid endurance. “I can quote temperatures at you but it is hard to imagine what -40C feels like,” said Felicity. “You have little ice blobs in your eyelashes and when you squint to see something in the distance, your eyelashes freeze together a bit. You end up having to prise your eyelids open again. The worst possible thing that happens is the hairs inside your nose freeze, which sends this horrible zinging sensation inside your brain. It is like an ice cream headache.”

There is a touching video on Felicity’s website of the moment her journey came to an end. Staring out at the Hercules Inlet, where the plane was due to pick her up, she begins to cry as she realises what she has achieved.

“It was perverse because I had spent the entire 59 days longing for that plane but also dreading it as well. When the plane did come I felt relief and a little bit of triumph. The sadness came from the fact my big adventure was over.”

Felicity Aston brings her debut show, Alone in Antarctica, to Tunbridge Wells’ Assembly Hall Theatre on Sunday, November 11. Tickets £13, concessions £12. Box office 01892 530613.