Random Writings

Goodness me, doesn’t time fly? I’ve been at Rothera for ten days now, and have only just got time to sit down and write another blog entry. “Freshers Week” here at the University of Antarctica is definitely a busy time – here are some of the things I’ve been doing:

• Base training: how to use the shredder and baler to dispose of waste; where to go to get toothpaste/suncream/razors and the like; first aid refresher; skidoo and Gator (wheeled buggy) driving lessons; health and safety
• Basic field training: ropes and harnesses; snow anchors; walking on snow slopes; ice axe arrests; linked travel (walking roped up so that if one person goes down a crevasse, the other can rescue them); use of crampons and ice screws. We also did basic campcraft, which involved putting up tents and staying overnight on the skiway, which is on the mountainside above the base. You can’t see the base from there, so putting up our tents in a 30-50 knot wind was a taste of the “real Antarctic”. But they didn’t blow away, and we were all pretty warm in the morning, thanks to the immensely warm BAS sleeping system.
• Learning the job: talking to field parties on the radio, talking to aeroplanes, passing messages to people and dealing with the computer system. We’ve been doing a lot of flying recently to put depots of fuel in for the start of the field season, so I’ve had a lot of time in the tower doing flight following. Several days this week I’ve been working from 0700 until 2130. Now that we have two more radio operators, Pete and Owen (they arrived on the Dash7 earlier this week) we should have a more reasonable workload.
• Skiing: I’ve had one lesson, and am enjoying it. I’ve not managed to get out since, due to work pressures and variable weather
• Wildlife spotting: I’ve seen one Adelie penguin (from a distance), and been introduced to Bubba, the “base skua” – skuas are large brown birds, looking like a big fluffy seagull sprayed mud-brown, and they scavenge whatever they can find – penguin eggs, carrion, whatever. Rothera’s had base skuas since it began – the original pair were called George and Mildred – but Bubba appeared last year to take over the territory after George finally passed away. They have a voracious appetite – apparently George was known to be able to eat 7 cold sausages and still just about take off!
• Co-piloting: this is a bit of a jolly, but for work reasons! The Twin Otters are certified to fly with a single pilot, but BAS rules say that no-one leaves the base perimiter alone. The solution: people from round the base get allocated to co-pilot on routine flights, keeping the pilot company and getting to see more of the world beyond Rothera Point. I went to Fossil Bluff on a fuel run: we have a hut there that’s manned during the summer (it was a wintering station in the 1960s) and a huge fuel dump that’s used to refueld the planes as they fly further south. Most of the journey was cloudy, but I did get to see the huge rock formations around Fossil Bluff as Alan (the pilot) wanted to do some recces for work later in the season. Flying low over big mountains and glacial valleys affords a pretty stunning view.
• Recreation: Saturday night is always a special evening at Rothera: there’s a more formal meal at 8pm, followed by general drinking and merriment. As it was a clear evening, we sat outside before dinner, drinking G&Ts on the verandah in our shirt-sleeves – the strong sunshine makes you feel warm even though the temperature was -5 Celcius. On Sunday evening, much later, I managed to speak to a chap in Alaska on the amateur radio frequencies, and he was having colder weather than us, much to his surprise!

Anyway, I’ll try and write more, and take more pictures this week.

I’ve been out and taken some pictures of Rothera this evening so you’ve got some idea of what the place looks like. The snow and sea ice is already beginning to retreat and so I thought you’d all like to see the place at its best – underneath all that snow is rock and gravel.

Well, after months of telling people that I might be in the Falklands for weeks on end, our plane flew on time – the Dash-7 took off from Stanley airport yesterday (Tuesday 1st) at around 10am and we arrived at Rothera in time for afternoon tea at 1500 – very civilised! I got to sit in the little jump-seat in the cockpit for approach and landing, so it was a very spectacular ride: the ice-covered mountains of Adelaide Island rising up out of the low cloud and then we descended and flew over the sea ice and down to a textbook landing on the runway at Rothera. The base itself is in a very scenic location – it’s on a little promontary (Rothera Point) surrounded by sea on three sides, with mountains beyond. Inside, it was very much like going back to university again: the main building (Bransfield House) was built in the 70s and is being refurbished, but the old bits (particularly the dining room and corridors) look a lot like Goodricke College at York. Everyone was very friendly and welcoming, and Jo the Doctor gave us a tour round. Our rooms are in the much newer Admirals House, which is very warm and comfortable. As we’re into the summer season, I’m sharing a room with Mark Laidlaw, but as he’s a Field General Assistant (or GA for short) he’ll be moving out to live in a tent for most of the season.
Food here is excellent, and the newly refurbished bar serves a selection of bottled beverages. Today we’ve been doing Base Training, learning about recycling our rubbish and driving skidoos and all-terrain vehicles. Anyway, must dash – I’ve got a safety talk to be at…

I’ve managed to upload some of my pictures of Ascension and the Falklands – I hope this’ll give you more of an idea of what the places are like.

I’m rapidly becoming very smitten with the Falklands – when we arrived the place looked bleak and forbidding under a leaden overcast sky. Saturday morning, however, was dry and bright with a light breeze, and the brightly coloured buildings in Stanley gleamed in the spring sunshine. Tom and I walked along Ross Road, the main road along the seafront, and looked at the various wrecked ships in the harbour: Stanley has long been the final resting place for vessels mortally wounded by gales off Cape Horn. We also found the Museum, which was closed, but looked promising. We then headed back to the hotel for lunch, with the intention of heading out for a walk in the hills that afternoon. Sadly, as we were drinking our coffee, the heavens opened and so we sataround in the hotel reading and downloading our photographs until a bus drew up outside and disgorged 26 BAS employees who had made the 30-hour journey to Stanley via Madrid, Santiago and Punta Arenas. Dinner in the hotel was followed by a mini-pub-crawl around three of Stanley’s hostelries, finishing in the Globe, where large numbers of young Falkland Islanders were having a good time, and we did, too.
Today we went out to Gypsy Cove, which is about four miles from Stanley, and has gorgeous white sandy beaches and a colony of Magellanic penguins, which live in shallow burrows on the headland. Although the sun was shining, the 30mph wind was keeping the penguins tucked up underground, but we enjoyed the view and the bracing weather! After getting a lift back to the hotel for lunch, Mark and I wandered down to the museum, which is a large miscellany of Falklands life, although the most interesting feature for us was the Caple Reclus hut, an old BAS hut used in the 1950s that was taken to Stanley a few years ago when it became surplus to requirements. It’s very eerie inside – stuck in a perpetual 1957, the last year it was used to winter three men. There are four wooden bunks, a tiny kitchen with two Primus stoves and a wind-up gramophone, and it smells of old newspapers (of which there are many) and dry timber.

Todays other event was the arrival of the James Clark Ross, which is picking up the team that arrived on the Chilean flight yesterday. They’ve all moved onto the ship this afternoon, so the hotel will probably be very quiet again this evening!

I’m in Stanley! We arrived last night and we’re staying in the comfortable Upland Goose Hotel, which is very conveniently adjacent to the BAS office…

Anyway, our flight did go from Brize on Thursday night, although it was delayed by two hours. The TriStar in use was a cargo-modified one: it had been fitted out with passenger seats but there were no overhead lockers and the cabin fittings were a bit basic. Nonetheless, the flight was smooth and comfortable, with plenty of legroom, and the RAF cabin crew in their green flying suits kept us fed and watered. We made our refuelling stop at Ascension, which was pleasantly warm in the morning sunshire and had an icecream and got our passports stamped. Then it was all back on the plane for the flight to Mount Pleasant Airfield. First impressions on leaving the plane were that the Falklands looks a lot like northern Scotland – rugged moorlands and few if any trees. It’s also quite cold (about 8 degrees) with a stiff breeze. An aged coach met us at the airport and bounced us over the 30 miles of mostly unmade road to Stanley. The landscape is very bleak, with isolated farms and scrawny sheep wandering over the raw grassland. This is the beginning of spring, but the landscape’s hardly showing signs of it.
Stanley seems to consist mostly of wooden and corrugated-metal houses arranged along the hillside overlooking the harbour. The Upland Goose is one of these, with the red-painted metal roof that seems to be the fashion here. Inside, you could be in a small seaside hotel anywhere in Britain – it’s very reminiscent of family holidays in North Devon. The rooms are comfortable and the food is excellent. There’s serious danger of putting on weight whilst we’re here! After dinner we went for a pint (just one for me, I was knackered!) in the Victory Bar, which is a popular local pub. Mark and I were surprised how many young local people there were in the bar – evidently they don’t have the problems with young people leaving that they have in other island communities. Today we’re planning to see what sights Stanley has to offer and I’ll let you know what we find!

Today I packed my bags up and headed off on the first leg of my journey. My parents took me to RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, where I was due to take a flight to the Falkland Islands. However, upon arrival at the air terminal at Brize I was told that the flight was postponed for another 24 hours. But I’ve met up with several of the other BAS staff taking the same flight and so we’re all in the Gateway House “Hotel” at Brize (it’s more of a barracks!) and waiting for the plane. I’ve had some of the all-time worst food I’ve ever experienced and looking forward to a day out in Oxford tomorrow in order to kill time. Hopefully the plane will go, but I’ve a feeling that this is the beginning of a whole series of delays in the long journey to the other end of the planet.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last couple of days putting stuff into bags and weighing it. 54 kilos of baggage sounded like quite a lot back in August, but now I’m regretting not having sent more stuff on the ship. In fact, the whole experience so far is very like Michael Flanders monologue By Air – weigh all the individual items including the cases, 50 kilos. Put the things in the cases, 60 kilos.
Anyway, I think I can squeeze the baggage allowance a little…

My plane has also been postponed by 24 hours, so I’m now leaving on Wednesday night.

Right, I’ve just had it confirmed that I am going on the 25th from Brize Norton, on some old TriStar they’ve dragged into service. That’s Tuesday! So much still to do between now and then. I’m at my parents’, sorting through my stuff and selling my car.

Today was my last day at the office in Cambridge – I had to go in for a briefing on metereology, so I can now roughly sanity-check the met. reports that come in from field parties without having to refer them to a proper metereologist. It’s been kind of strange saying farewell to various people that I’ve met during my training: some people I’ll see again in Stanley or at Rothera, but many others I’ll only speak to on the phone or radio.

My flight details are all up-in-the-air (so to speak) again – according to the immensely patient Julia, the RAF flights to the Falklands have been operated by a charter contractor over the last few years (the TriStars are busy helping with some war, somewhere…) who uses a Boeing 747. Brize Norton is also having it’s runway rebuilt, so the planes are operating from RAF Fairford (better known as the base that hosts the USAF’s British detachment of B52s). Apparently, some ground vehicle has collided with the 747 (how? it’s big enough!) and damaged it, so they’ve got a much smaller Airbus aircraft that’s replaceing it until the 747 is fixed. This means that some civilians are being bumped from flights because there isn’t enough room. The MOD are assuring us that the 747 will be fixed before we want it, but it may just be that I don’t fly on the 25th with the MOD, but on the 27th with Lan-Chile or some other route.

The other excitements occurred over the weekend. In addition to my little brother getting married off, I also survived talking to various teenage students at a secondary school near Hull, and enthusing greatly about BAS. Most were amused by watching their classmates try on Antarctic clothing, and some (notably the yr 12s – lower sixth) were very keen to find out more about jobs… The staff were keen, too, so I think I may be invited back when I return from the South.

In other news, I’ve bought a pair of evil-looking red alpine-touring ski boots from the father-and-son team at Backcountry UK in Ilkley. They’re Scarpa Denali TTs, and Andy spent a whole afternoon with me getting them thermally fitted to my feet and adjusting the footbed to give the correct support. I’ll let you know how I get on with them when I start learning to ski, but I’ve been very pleased with the service they offered in getting them fitted.