Category: Islands of the North Atlantic
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Travelling to Iceland
It’s been a big day, particularly since it was two hours longer than a usual day, thanks to the change of time zone. We had a cunning plan to have breakfast at the nice bakery 100m up the road from the apartment, after packing in the morning. Then back to collect our bags, check out,…
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Oslo
Walked into the main part of town through the gardens of the royal palace to find breakfast coffee and baked goods. Sunny day. Very pretty town, with a lovely feel to it. I wanted to get some more SD cards and a second USB hard drive, so we walked a few blocks to an electronics…
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Leaving Svalbard
(from 24th August) Up early, to pack. Breakfast. Farewells to the crew. Carted the luggage down the dock to be ferried up to the Wildphoto gallery for storage while we went into town in search of real coffee and perhaps a cinamon bun. The flight wasn’t until 13:25, and we had arranged to get the…
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Exploring in zodiacs
(from the 23rd) As we came into the last fjord, two polar bears had been spotted near the point. It was too late to get close then, so we left that until the morning zodiac trip. We boarded the zodiacs soon after breakfast, to head back towards the point, but couldn’t see anything of the…
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Blue ice foxes
(from 22nd August) After sailing all night, we made it into Konigsfjord, and past the scientific research station of Ny Alasund just before breakfast. The sky was clearing. Well, quite a bit of it was blue, and that gave everything a sunny aspect. The mountains, glaciers and the fjord itself were beautiful. We motored a…
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Blue ice, land bear
(from 21 August) The trip to Liefde Fjord, overnight was lumpy and the boat rolled quite a bit. Good to be rugged up in one’s bunk, asleep. In the fjord was flat, but the weather had come in again: limited visibility, some rain. We had a nice quiet breakfast, and then the crew up-anchored and…
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Walrus hunt
(from 20 August) We woke for breakfast to discover that we had parked quite close to a haul-out of upwards of fifty walruses. It was cold and misty, but not raining, and the water was calm. No wind to speak of. After breakfast the mist had started to lift, and we boarded the zodiacs to…
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Bird cliffs
(original from 19 August) By morning we were in calm waters, but the skies were leaden and there was light rain. Still, that was no impediment to a zodiac outing to see the bird cliffs, straight after breakfast (9:30). Got rugged up in all of the wet-weather gear, and stashed the cameras in the Yeti…
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Birthday cake
(from the 18th, of course) The day really didn’t start very well. I had a migraine that had come on around three AM, and the weather was bleak and the water lumpy and uncomfortable. Cath found me some aspirins, which I took, and then tried a cup of coffee. That turned out to be a…
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Midnight Bears, 3AM bear and seven islands passage
(written 17 August) Martin woke us around midnight to say that the bears had come back to near the boat. Got back into all of the thermal gear and headed out to have a look. At first it seemed to just be two of the cubs having another go at the remains, some way off.…