Partners Meeting

Jan’s Adventures (or ‘Life begins at 50’)

Jan Meeks, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, recently came along to recount some of her adventures to members of Bexhill-on-Sea Rotary Club.

She started by giving a brief life history. When young, she spent many of the school holidays with her grandfather in Sweden where they enjoyed messing about in boats. She left school at 16 and took a part time business studies course after which she got a secretarial job at the Elstree film studios near to where she lived. Whist there she met and worked with lots of famous actors including Roger Moore, Patrick McNee, Sammy Davis Junior and Bing Crosby; all the time progressing in her career becoming a Production Secretary and then a Continuity Girl. 

The last film she was involved in was Pope Joan. After which she took a few years off to have her family. There followed a spell in Saudi Arabia where the family moved for her husband’s work however, on her return they split up and she went to live near her parents at Chipping Norton. Whilst here she started a small business and became heavily involved in local politics including a spell as mayor.

After several years her parents moved to France and her second husband died. This was when her adventures really began.

Her motto in life had always been not WHY but WHY NOT? So as an antidote to her grief she spent a year travelling in the Far East On her return, now in her early fifties, she paired up with her son, an army officer, to take part in a rowing race across the Atlantic. To do this she had to raise money, learn navigation and learn to row. They took 101 days to row from Tenerife to Barbados and hit the headlines as a mother and son duo. They rowed singly in 2 hour stints and saw lots of spectacular sunsets and met lots of cetaceans on their journey. On their return she became a popular speaker.

However, this was only the start of her adventures. The next expedition was to ski to the Magnetic North Pole. To do this she had to put on a lot of weight as, during the journey , walking 350 nautical miles, she lost 10Kg despite eating 9,000 Calories a day. Again, they were treated to spectacular scenery as well as finding lots of Polar Bear footprints although, luckily, not the bears themselves.

The next journey was to the Geographical North Pole which involved trekking over ice which moved daily so they had to return to the Pole several times after the ice shifted in the night. They stayed at a pop-up village (Barneo) which the Russians set up each year to facilitate getting to the Geographic Pole.

And what to the future? As she nears 80, Jan is now training for a ski trip to the South Pole where and early 20 th Century explorer and hero of hers, Tom Crean, longed to go but never actually got to. She has assembled a team, the Polar Maidens (who include a descendant of Tom’s) and despite setbacks, which included Covid, she plans to get the expedition under way in the next year or so.

The club gave a rousing applause to a truly amazing women.