Expeditions & Exploration

Honesty and integrity are hard to find but this gentleman has it in spades. great team too, felt “safe” in their hands.

This is the point on which the world spins - its axis. Everywhere else from here is South. It is hard to explain but standing at the top of the world with the whole world spinning at a 1000 mph beneath you is indescribably. The Top Gear show went to the 1996 positionMagnetic North Pole, in Canada which is on land c 900 Miles South of the Geographical North Pole. They started from Resolute - which we have also been to. They didn't make it. Polar exploration is tough.

We dedicate this to our mother and mothers all around the world. Most of us never amount too much, but we keep on striving. This saying comes from a 1949 film called White Heat with James Cagney, playing a ruthless gangster when he utters (ironically as he blows himself up) these words. Apart from the “phrase” the similarities between us end there.

Well there you are - Ma - Made it - On Top on the World. Spinning at 460 meters per second--or roughly 1,000 miles per hour. it is a dizzying experience!

OK so it way a “Garmin” but you don’t expect a car type GPS on a jet aircraft. Apparently the AN74 “Coaler” Nato name for this specialist Polar Aircraft didn’t come with one, so why not? Expertly flown and (more importantly) landed at Ice Camp Barneo by Ukrainian pilots. It’s not often you get to fly in the cabin. They had navigator and charts as well.

Hang the expense! Everything we bought here - worked - a lot of the stuff we bought with is didn’t. Kit that worked well was mainly Norwegian - you think us Brits would have learnt something from 1912 - well we did we bought your clothing! Norrona and Devold worked great and we would recommend along with Brynje. For gloves we ended up using thirty year old woollen mittens from lapland with a pair of OR overmitts. kept music warm. Gator facemask an essential.

Sure they cost a bit more but we would have saved ourselves at least a £1000 if we had of done. We live and learn. We did eventually wise up and went flex.

Part of the problem was we didn’t book a hotel for when we would be at the Pole, on the basis that we didn’t need it. Well of course with all the delay we did. We should have allowed more time at the end eg at least 3-4 days and less at the start.

For standing around you need good boots. Our Sorrel ones weren’t up to the job, and if you sweated in them your feet froze. You also had to remember to take the felt liners out to air. We know have better boots - still Sorrel but much better insulation. With boots the bigger they look the more likely they are to work. Our PHD Polar suit performed brilliantly and kept us warm on the standing around days. We wore it at the North Pole as well.

Polar travel is unbelievably expensive, and doing it two years on the trot really broke the bank. Delayed flights, canceled flights and additional hotels and food soon racked up the bills. Can’t thank Mr Donovan enough for being true to his word and covering the cost of flights. It is a lot of money. :-). Thank you.

Let’s face it - its not like Amundsen spending 2 years drifting to the pole, its a few days - weeks. But when you are regular folk every day in Svalbard is a lot of money. Still we made good use of the time by having the adventure of a lifetime in Svalbard - by spending more money on day trips! Still you can’t win them all, but there is not much of Svalbard we haven’t now seen.

The bit that did it for us was the excitement of go go go - final packing in the early hours of the morning and getting to the airport to find the aircraft (An AN70) with it’s engine covers on and obviously not going anywhere. We had so many false alarms, and no communication with forward base, so no one had any idea what was happening. In 2016 the first group go in, and we got there bit couldn’t land due to a massive crack across the ice runway - there is no land mass - it’s just sea ice. When the pilot came out and said we were turning around - it was like the biggest joke ever! We all laughed. Except he was serious. We waited days after and eventually ran out of time and money - and had to leave for home with the last remaining amount on our now maxed out credit cards. The disappointment was palpable. I just sat in the corner of the room on the floor with my head in my hands. Dream over - or so I thought.

2017 - Dream on again!! and yes more delays more disappointment - but that is the realities of polar travel. We did of course eventually get there. having emptied savings / bank accounts and even the piggy bank. Was it worth it? Absolutely!!!

Using it at the North Pole is in context the correct use of it - AWESOME - AWSUM - AWSOME - there said it. And yes it was.

That’s right it comes up on or around the 21st of March - the start of polar summer and 24 hours daylight and sets on the 21st September the start of Polar winter. This results in only two polar seasons—summer and winter. In summer at the poles, the sun does not set, and in winter the sun does not rise. We have a Russian 24 hour watch in the Museum for use at the poles / submarines when you can’t tell if its 2am or 2pm.

There is no land mass just 5ft or so of ice between you and 4000 meters of seawater. We got stuck at the pole for a while so we started the North Pole swimming club. The “pool” courtesy of the Russians was less than a meter deep as any deeper and there is a danger you would into the sea and swept under the ice. To get water into it the Russians used an ice auger for the last two foot. The water steamed as it flooded in, although it was c -4 degrees c, the air temperature was -43c. Swim anyone?

When we ran he Marathon we had armed guards around the course, which seems a bit over the top given the location. But Polar Bears have made it camp before and one was spotted by helicopter just 35km from us. They may even have been able to smell the camp from there, cooking, jet A1 fuel, humans. I think they would have been very happy to find human sushi bar running around, now how about that little fat one at the back!

We have a lovely chart somewhere showing the anti cyclonic polar drift which takes place at the pole. The ice sheet is constantly moving and via our “Yellow Brick” satellite tracker you can see how each lap of the track steps out from the next - showing the drift. Also whist we slept we moved some considerable distance from our origin point. If you approach the pole from the wrong location you may drift away from it whilst you sleep or struggle against the ice flow. Knowledge in this part of the world is everything.