Last Weekend

Last Saturday, I went up the hill right behind the base with Alastair and Ashley; a beautiful day again - we tried to remake one of the most famous images of Shackleton which was taken right at the spot where they are standing above... The results are pretty excellent - Alastair took the shot, and i'll get a copy from him and post it with a link to the original.

From the top of Mt. Duse, with the base and King Edward Cove in the back and belowground. The lake on the right is good to run around, apart from the left hand side which is boggy and covered in plants with little spiky balls on them which attach to your socks and are reluctant to let go (burnet)... By the way, its not all walking, running, jumping, smiling and eating over here - there is plenty of working, thinking, organising, scientific endeavouring, boating, mooring, un-mooring, loading, unloading, shifting, looking, remembering, enjoying, noticing, writing, cooking, cleaning, representing, communicating and a little bit of blogging happening too. More on all that in the near future.

Walking back from a ceilidh practice in the Grytviken Norwegian church, the cove nicely reflected the hills and clouds in its glassy surface. Boatman George plays fiddle, seal and penguin friend Jon plays bodhran and we will be playing for entertainment and dancing next Friday evening. The acoustics in the church are very nice, echoey and full with a good solid wooden floor - ideal for dancing on we hope. I'll attempt to record some of the sounds of that ceilidh and post here.

Readers who followed the blog from my 27 months in the Antarctic will be gladdened as I have been to see genuinely GREEN things here in the Sub-Antarctic islands. Lots of them - mosses and grasses, lichens and seaweeds. The place is teeming with plant and animal life which is a welcome change from the almost total barreness of the continent of Antarctica. And flowing water! Water in it's liquid and most drinkable form! Plenty of that too, as the snows of the upper slopes continues to melt fast in the tropical heat - we've hit 12 degrees celcius in recent days...

Well, thats all for now - I have this week been lucky enough to be involved in a long boating trip round to Stromness bay to take the Government Officer for a work trip, and also a plant expert to do some work around the abandoned whaling station of Husvik, whilst we did some boat training and I drove round Stromness and Leith whaling stations which are now sadly falling apart and can't be approached closer than 200m by order of the South Georgia Government. Pictures from that to follow soon, and some general base and work related posts eventually.

Thanks for reading,

Rob