Claire of the Antarctic

Celebrating your birthday in Antarctica is quite special. Despite being thousands of miles from your friends and family back home a good group of friends can help assuage the homesickness and in addition this year the weather gods smiled upon me and we had glorious sunshine in which to celebrate my birthday in style! Friends from home were with me in spirit, quite literally with the gifts of Pimms adorned by maraschino cherries in lieu of cucumber and strawberries which helped the birthday tea go with a swing.

It has been a remarkably busy time on base of late; we have received visits from the American Science Ship The Gould, the German Polarstern, HMS Scott and a tourist vessel The Ocean Nova. Consequently the doctors at Rothera have been remarkably busy in their roles as tour guide, shopkeeper and most importantly being Mrs Goggins, the Rothera Postmistress.

The visit from HMS Scott was particularly good fun as it was the first time the vessel has visited Rothera and so the crew aboard were all particularly enthusiastic to see around base. It was really quite surreal to see the huge ship manoeuvre into Ryder Bay just South of Rothera and for the small RIBs to be used to convey camo-clad passengers across to Rothera. The crew appeared to enjoy their brief sojourn onto land. Whist we were waiting at the end of the day for the departing guests to embark their RIBs from the wharf it was an impressive scene, the bulky grey vessel against the ashen sky and a beautiful iceberg off in the distance, when I noticed something moving in the foreground, a pod of about eight Killer Whales. Again ” All stations, All stations, Orcas at the wharf!” and we sat and watched the pod head off into the bay. This was particularly fortuitous for the artist in residence upon the HMS Scott who is specifically a wildlife artist and zoologist by training, quite perfect!

Sometimes I have to pinch myself to realise how fortunate I am, and the past weekend certainly stands as evidence of this.

On Friday evening John, our Base Commander, wondered whether I would be happy to act as crew on one of the RIBs. We were dropping a couple of people at Lagoon Island to spend the night there, before heading on for some recreational boating taking advantage of the beautiful sunny evening. Over the preceding few nights we had been treated to a series of visits from a pod of Orca, and so it was possible we may also be doing some whale watching, not an offer easily refused, so I donned by boat suit and life jacket and hopped aboard.

Our first port of call was Lagoon, where we negotiated the narrow channel to bring the boat close to shore for our happy campers to disembark. There is actually a little hut on Lagoon which has been there for years, complete with bunk beds, a table and stove, rather like Bluebell Cottage at Fossil Bluff. Elephant seals abound at Lagoon, burping and belching away, however on Friday there were also some Fur Seals, nesting Skuas with chicks, which look like grey mop heads on cocktail stick legs running around whilst the protective parental units dive bomb the visitors, and a particularly talkative Adelie Penguin. I steered clear of the Skuas and struck up conversation with the Adelie instead.

The chefs did a fabulous job with the meal of haggis, neeps and tatties, complete with a dram of whisky and cranachan for pudding. The petit fours were truly Scottish… deep fried mars bar and blue St. Andrew’s flag shortbread!

I had flown out from Rothera on 2nd January thus technically still in the twelve days of Christmas, consequently Bluebell Cottage was awash with decorations from yesteryear. I am particularly fond of these paper decorations, and will be on a mission to find some for 2011!

I spent a fortnight at Bluebell Cottage last year with Alan Hill, Dave Wattam and Glyn Henry. This year Karen, the communications officer who has just finished a winter at Halley, and I persuaded the Field Operations Manager that a female only crew in charge of Fossil Bluff would be fabulous, and indeed it was.

It is amazing how much the snow has melted this summer, particularly considering the bumper snowfall we received over winter. As a result the route from Fossil Bluff Ski Runway to Bluebell Cottage has become a mini-trek, complete with melt pools to avoid, glacial streams to be crossed and fossil-rich terrain t in order too be traversed in order reach our destination, Bluebell Cottage. Karen had been experimenting with baking bread and I was the happy soul who arrived to a freshly baked loaf! Yummy!

Again the buzzing life of an Antarctic Research Station in the middle of summer has put paid to prompt blog entries, so please forgive me a slighty time delay in my tales of derring do… actually thus far in January it has been more a life of being a domestic goddess! Although in order to exhibit such tendencies I did have to co-pilot a flight in a Twin Otter down to Fossil Bluff, through ridiculously thick cloud, thus the only glimpses of land seen from the cockpit was this shot of Rothera base, looking across to Reptile Ridge, and later on some aerial geology lessons as we descended through the dreak clouds to land on the snow runway at 71 South.

Just a quick photograph of Mike the mechanic and me from our New Years Eve festivities, a night of live music and DJing from Nathan, Wedders and Ian, culminating in the traditional rendition of Auld Lang Syne out on the veranddah of Old Bransfield House. A good evening was enjoyed by all, and the most exciting thing is that I shall be home this year!

For now however I am literally about to jump in a plane and fly off to Fossil Bluff, where Karen and I will be custodians of Bluebell Cottage for a while, so apologies in advance for the radio silence.

As depicted in this photograph taken just after midnight it is as light as day in the middle of the night here, although on this occasion the moon was also out too. It is quite strange how easily accustomed I have become to the extremes in light, from complete darkness during winter to constant light in the summer, it is also rather bizarre to think that despite the fact the solstice has now passed and our days are shortening again here, that by the time I return to England in April the days will be lengthening again and hopefully I shall be celebrating the next solstice at Stonehenge.

This photo was taken from the veranda outside on the top floor of New Bransfield, it has provided a useful dancefloor on a few nights. A few weeks ago we were dancing around outside whilst also trying to catch falling snowflakes on our tongues, we really must have looked quite unusual to passers by. On reconsideration there are not too many passers by, merely the local seals and penguins, who quite definitely would have thought our behaviour bizarre.

Following the radio scheds to some of the field parties we took the opportunity to open a few Christmas presents around the tree in the tower… some presents were more appropriate for opening in a communal sitting than others… something I have duly noted for next Christmas! Vicki fortunately received photograph friendly gifts, particularly popular was the wind-up penguin and the lego-man head torch which we are hoping will be as effective as a petzl.

Presents opened it was time to run across for a brunch of bacon and sausage baps to sustain us through to Christmas dinner. The chefs, Lorna, Issy and Al truly surpassed themselves in creating a six-course meal, complete with the traditional turkey and Christmas pudding. Thereafter everyone retired upstairs for an evening of dancing and entertainment. I never fail to appreciate the surreal beauty of dancing around at 1 am outside on the verrandah overlooking elephant seals and penguins with a backdrop of icebergs and stunning mountains.