What it's like to... Trek across Europe's largest wilderness

He wanted to return there to complete a gruelling challenge and film it so he could share it with the world.

And that he did. In fact, his documentary Distant North – Hiking the Kungsleden, will be shown on the big screen at the Mac cinema in Birmingham tomorrow, where he'll be around to do a Q&A. But what did this adventure entail? And just how big a challenge was it? We caught up with him to find out everything.

"The documentary follows four friends who decided to hike 440km through arctic Sweden with the aim of completing it in 30 days," Theo begins. "The Kungsleden is one of the longest hiking trails in Europe and it's Europe's largest remaining wilderness. It's a beautiful place.

"I directed and filmed the documentary, and my girlfriend Bee Roper produced it," he tells us. "Our two friends Cody Duncan and Justyna Sojka are part of the film too."

Theo and Bee had travelled 23 countries and 27,000 miles before they discovered Scandinavia – all in their camper van. They enjoyed it so much that they stayed for three months, planning their huge hike.

"When we were researching the trail, there weren't any films of it, so we couldn't see what it was really like. So we thought what better way for other people who would like to do this trail to see? We wanted to provide something for them so they could know what to expect."

So Theo and Bee returned to the UK, saving money to self-fund the adventure as well as raising money through Kickstarter and gaining support from Visit Sweden. "Crowd funding helped us to buy things like memory cards for the camera to record on, and batteries for it too. I had to take 23 camera batteries with me because there weren't many places to charge up!"

The hour-long documentary follows the foursome on their hike, showing the ups and downs of what looks like very hard work, hiking every day through the mountains.

"We were hiking for the whole of September last year," Theo tells us. "It was hard – we had lots of ups and downs. It was unbelievably amazing, but there were some down points. My feet were ripped to shreds and I had to gaffer tape them up every morning just to carry on. I came down with a really bad ear infection too, so for a week I had no balance at all. But I managed to get through it.

"The best bit was forgetting everything – letting go," he says. "You know how it is when you're checking your phone. Logging into Facebook or checking the internet all the time – you just can't get away. I forgot the internet existed when I was out there, because my only thought each day was how I was going to get to the next leg of the journey. It was amazing – going back to basics in a beautiful place and seeing amazing landscapes."

As well as the sore feet and ear problems, the team also faced other issues.

"Bee hurt her hip so she was dragging herself along for half the trip. Not to give too much away, but not all of us made it to the end of the journey because it was just that difficult."

We don't want spoilers, so we avoid asking who. We're keen to know how Theo got into filmmaking in the first place.

He explains: "I started making films when I was really young, my parents got me a little camera and I started making skateboard videos with my friends. From there, it progressed into making films for small companies and councils and now I run a film production company. Most of it was self-taught. I did a BTEC in moving image at South Birmingham College, and after that I just did it every day to teach myself."

Theo's a natural born filmmaker, and his love for the great outdoors means that finding stuff to shoot isn't hard. He and Bee have been together for 10 years now, and they both love travelling and exploring new places.

He says: "We've always gone away hiking on weekends and heading out on walks – we love the outdoors. But when I told her we were going to live in a camper van, she just laughed at me! It took a couple of months to persuade her!

"We've done a road trip around the US, visiting different national parks – little projects really. Nothing as vast as this. It's definitely the hardest thing I've ever done. Mentally it's a lot harder than it is physically – your mind is throwing up obstacles, telling you you can't go on. But you have to keep pushing.

"We had to support each other through it, because there were definitely some lows but the highs definitely outweighed them."

It sounds incredible, and Theo is hoping people will head to the Mac to see the free show. "The MAC has been so supportive of it. We've got so many more ideas for different projects, but they're just ideas at the moment. But we want to keep pushing ourselves to see what we can do – just go bigger and better."

Sounds incredible – we can't wait to hear what's next.

By Kirsty Bosley