The nights are drawing in

Before I start: the traditional Easter Joke which we tell every year in my family: “What do you get if you pour hot water down a rabbit hole?” “Hot cross Bunnies”. Infantile but little things please little minds.

As the Northern Hemisphere edges slowly towards summer, with the clocks going forward in the UK today; our descent into winter is becoming ever more noticeable. When I first arrived I could almost guarantee that every morning I would wake up at 0400 as the sun lanced over the mountains, through my thin curtains and into my sleeping eyes. Now, I am assured of an undisturbed night’s sleep since dawn is more and more tardy in sending her rays over the Barff peninsula. For the first time since I got here, and I was up at 0600 for earlies, I found the world dark. Having to use a torch for earlies feels unusual but I suppose it will become more and more a common occurrence.

On Monday, as you may remember, Hazel and I returned from holidays to find that since it is Easter this weekend there would be a ½ day on Thursday and we would get Friday and Monday off.

On Tuesday we got a large load of Freshies in, the last we will have till late May, early June we think. Unfortunately  we also got a large crop of biosecurity breaches, with earwigs arriving in lettuce from the Falklands.

On Wednesday Hazel and I took Sue and Keiron over to the Greene Peninsula for their holiday. The difference between their packing and ours was impressive. We had only dehydrated food for breakfast and dinner and oatcakes, MOD tubes of marmite and a block of cheese for lunch and that was it. They took wine, bacon, we heard of them making risotto, everything. That is the difference between a walking holiday and a hut holiday though. I took the opportunity to assess Hazel on her RIB cox and am pleased to say that in slightly swelly conditions, she passed with flying colours. Not many more to pass out now, then we will be able to concentrate on Jet boat training. During the assessment I was very selfish and took over for a couple of minutes, just to get the feel of the RIB again and feel the wind in my hair. There are few better feelings than when you wave ride correctly (wave riding is controlling the boat so that it doesn’t fly off the top of one wave into the trough of another, as the ensuing bang can damage both crew and vessel). The feel of skipping over the tops of some waves and smoothly bringing the RIB over others is one of the most satisfying in the world when you do it right.

Thursday and Friday were mainly taken up with me making and affixing an elephant trunk (a self draining device for the RIBs). By the end of Thursday it looked like a blond frog had been let loose to do arts and crafts in the boatshed and I am still picking the glue off my fingers. Anyway, it is done now, not the prettiest job in the world but I sincerely hope it is functional.

On Saturday I did Sue’s earlies for her but since it was foul weather and I didn’t have to make bread I put my clothes on over my pyjamas and was back in bed exactly 22 mins after getting up, the quickest rounds ever. At midday Daniel and I brought Sue and Keiron back and Sue, being the wonder that she is, spent the evening preparing small bags of Easter eggs for everyone. It was lovely. Then, after a delicious dinner cooked by Joe ‘Sparky’, Paula arranged a quiz for everyone. It went down very well and even though I was in a team of only 2 of us (rather than the normal 3) we didn’t come last which was a shock.

Easter Sunday dawned bright and beautiful. Jo Cox (the new GO) very kindly made and brought over Hot Cross Buns for everyone. A lovely start to the day. Because it was so beautiful Rod, Hazel, Daniel and I set off to climb Minden Peak, the highest peak in our travel area. Hazel and Rod obviously were on a mission because they shot off, leaving Daniel and me trailing, but we caught up with them eventually.

Off to Minden Peak (in the middle)

Two weeks before Rod and Daniel had attempted to summit Minden and had been defeated by what Rod called “The ridge of doom”. We determined not to be put off again. We walked up to Echo Pass and then had a choice of straight up or up to a ridge and along that. We decided straight up would be quicker. We would have been right if the climb hadn’t been pretty much vertical and then the ridge when they got up to it hadn’t been impassable (I stayed at the bottom of the final bit so as not to reduce myself to a gibbering wreck). It wasn’t just that the way up was steep. In the UK it would have been a fine scrambling route, the problem was that very large and solid feeling flakes of rock would come off in one’s hand at the same time as the flake one was standing on also crumbled. It was a little nerve-wracking I can tell you, especially for those not fond of heights!

The Ridge of Doom

We were turned back by that ridge and had to traverse some unpleasant scree (although when is scree ever pleasant really?) to get to the shoulder of the ridge. We gained the false summit that way but decided that it would in fact be suicide to actually climb the last block and reach the real summit. We had a lovely lunch looking over West Cumberland Bay and the Lyell glacier. The clouds rolling over the glacier were menacing but beautiful. They seemed to stop at the edge of the Lyell though, as if a force field were protecting us and our peninsula.

Lyell Glacier from the summit

West Cumberland Bay from the summit




Made it ....

.... all the way to the top!


As we came down the wind was absolutely frigid - or as I learned from Rod today: “nithering” (it only sounds correct in a Scottish accent) -  and although it was sunny there were snowflakes in the air. I made a small error going down and slipped on a fairly steep snowslope. I decided that it would just happen again so I didn’t get back up but bumslid all the way to the bottom, I hadn’t anticipated the increase in speed and I am not sure who was more nervous, me, or Hazel at the bottom as she gamely prepared to stop me. Luckily I missed a couple of rocks that would have caused my coccyx a fair bit of pain and managed to dig my heels in and slow down enough to stop before I hit the scree at the bottom, a much faster but more exhilarating method of descent.  The rest of the walk home seemed rather longer than the walk out but it was still lovely with the sun on the bay below us and that peculiar smell that only South Georgian scree can give off filling the air as we slid down.

Home for a well earned cup of tea and one or two Easter eggs as I contemplated what to have for dinner.

Happy Easter