Tag Archives: pelly’s bay

Monday 26th February 2024 – IT LOOKS AS …

… if I’ll be back in hospital sooner than I imagined.

In fact, if the hospital had its way I’d be there now.

The nurse who telephones me every few days to find out how I am and so I told her, and that was that. She told the doctor and he issued the instructions, and left it to the nurse to find a date seeing as I turned down “today”.

Yes, it’s “all go” here in the apartment. I wasn’t in bed very early because I had things to do, even though I was tired. And so I didn’t have much sleep.

What sleep I had was quite good though and I wish that I had had more of it. There’s no doubt that I seem to be sleeping better these days than I have done but I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. As I have said before … "" – ed … my nocturnal travels are very important to me.

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed and went to take the blood pressure. A very low 14.8/8.9 this morning, compared to 17.1/11.8 last night.

After the medication I came back in here and had a few things to do before I could transcribe the dictaphone notes. We were at school last night. There was an issue about climate change etc. Our headmaster gave a speech to a certain organisation about something or other on this subject. It turned out to be a huge self-justification about all kinds of things. I somehow managed to access the meeting so I stood up and made a speech simultaneously criticising him for all kinds of different things that had gone on in the past in the school for which I considered him to be responsible but no-one took any notice of me at all. I thought “fair enough”. My life carried on as usual, I had a nice girlfriend (and I wish that I knew who she was). Then I noticed that there wee jobs for school leavers. A couple of them were really interesting. One was to go to Kenya for a couple of years as some kind of exchange of teacher or something like that. I must admit that that appealed to me. Anyway I wanted to go to sort out the headmaster. He had a meeting of people my year at school at the start of the afternoon so I went five minutes early and said “I want to talk to you”. He looked at me and said “and what position are you after?”. I had to be honest and explain that although I was after the one in Kenya I’d come to see him on another matter. He took the greatest amount of umbrage with me criticising him for his speech. He was really quite aggressive with his defence of what he said which I thought was way, way over the top and out of place.

It’s one thing that I’ve noticed about Climate Change deniers and the others of their ilk. When you challenge their “beliefs” the become quite aggressive and try to shout you out of their argument. Yet the facts are indisputable.

"Climate change is a natural phenomenon" – indeed it is, but that’s no reason for us to do nothing about it. It’s like saying that the Titanic was going to sink anyway so why bother pumping? The answer is that by pumping it gave them an extra couple of hours for Carpathia to come to the rescue. And that’s why we have to keep on trying to save the planet – to give us more time to find a solution.

"The Earth is simply rotating on its axis like it normally does". Indeed it does, but at a rate of 1° per 7,000 years according to calculations made by Sir Norman Lockyer, so we’re talking of arcoseconds in real terms. But if that’s what is going on according to the naysayers, why aren’t other parts of the World freezing as quickly as the High Arctic is melting?

But seriously, anyone who has been to the High Arctic can see the evidence for themselves. I was talking to an Inuit on Bylot Island who told me that he used to come to the spot where I was standing to fetch a block of ice for his old grandfather to make tea. And then he took me to the head of the glacier where it was in 2018 – a walk of 1.5 miles
"So how old were you when you did this?"
"Twelve or thirteen"
"How old are you now?"
"Twenty-four"

The glacier has receded 1.5 miles in 12 years.

In the memoirs of James Rae he writes about battling through the snow and ice around Pelly’s Bay in August 1854 when he met a group of Inuit who gave him information and relics about Franklin’s lost expedition. We landed at Pelly’s Bay to refuel on our way out to Mittimatalik in September 2018 and there wasn’t a fleck of snow anywhere.

The presentation that I did on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR was afrer we’d sailed several miles up a Fjord on Ellesmere Island and I showed a slide of an Admiralty chart of 1857 which showed no fjord there – the whole island was covered by an ice cap all the way down to the sea according to the chart.

Bylot Island, where I talked to that Inuit, wasn’t even an island. If you look at the map you’ll see that the strait that separates it from the mainland of Baffin Island is called “Pond Inlet” because that’s what it was when Europeans first visited it. It wasn’t until the ice melted that they discovered that Bylot Island was actually an island.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed, following on from the previous dream, the girl to whom the headmaster refused to talk … "which girl?" – ed … ended up teaching part-time at a college which was part of the story and in fact taught German to the guy who took over from her boss as whatever official position it was for which the girl was secretary, but she was still chasing her boss and trying to persuade him to either justify his speech or to withdraw it and the implications that it had against us, this particular girl.

It seems that there’s a chunk missing from these dreams somewhere, and that seems to be a regular thing. It makes me wonder what else I’ve missed, and I know that ON ONE OCCASION I missed a visit from Castor. Imagine that!

Having done that and pushed it out of the way I went to finish the radio programme that I was organising yesterday. It meant dictating the notes that I’d written last night for the final track that I’d chosen, and then editing it and adding it all in with the actual song.

And to my surprise it was exactly one second SHORT.

When they are too long, I can cope quite easily. I always include in my notes some things that can be edited out if necessary to bring them down to the correct time; but when they are too short it requires more inventiveness.

But one second isn’t too bad. That’s 20×0.050 second “silence generated” pauses in salient places and that’s the job done.

After that I chose all of the music for the next radio programme, paired it off and began to write the notes for it. I could have done much more too except that I … errr … had a rest

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper, with plenty of stuffing left over, thanks to having forgotten my mushrooms on Friday and a suspect tomato in the fridge. That will keep me going for a few more meals.

Tomorrow I have a Welsh lesson, and then there’s an order to send off to LeClerc as I’m running low on frozen vegetables. So tomorrow late afternoon will see me blanching carrots and sprouts ready to freeze. Still, there’s some chocolate cake left to see me through

Then I’ll have to think about this hospital appointment. Will it be for a stay or just a day visit? I know that it’s for a lumbar puncture which I dread, but I can’t believe that they’ll send me home on the same day.

But as Macbeth said, "If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly". And he was right. No point in waiting around because it will still be the same. It’s as Terry Venables once eloquently put it – "if history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again"

Or as Vivian Green sang, "Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain"

Tuesday 13th November 2018 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… just recently, I’ve had a profitable day and done a lot of work.

It didn’t start out like that though.

Waking up at 03:41 did me no favours this morning. And neither did reawakening at 05:46 I’m really going to have to do something about this.

But at least it’s taking me off on some astonishing voyages during the night.

Last night I was out in “The Wild West” in a homestead in an area where there were several other homesteads. And we’d been round o one of them for a bit of a hoedown, I suppose. We went home in our waggon in the dark after the event and reached home safely, only to find out that the people we had visited the previous evening had been massacred in their beds by the Commanches. And while we were looking around there for clues, we heard of another incident at another homestead so we went around there. I’ll spare you all of the gory details as you are probably eating your tea or something right now. Everyone started to talk about launching an offensive against the Commanche but I was busy loading my family into a waggon to take them to the fort. I was all in favour of launching an offensive but I wanted to make sure that my family would be safe before I went off.
Later on, I was round at Liz and Terry’s. We’d had a party of some kind and as Liz had to go off somewhere I said that I would do the washing up. Most of it was glass bowls and dishes and the like, and I was stacking them on the floor after I’d dried them, ready to put away. Someone walking past saw one of them on the floor and gave it a kick. He hadn’t noticed that it was the top of a huge pile of glassware, and ended up smashing a whole pile of the glassware. “Whatever am I going to do now to explain this to Liz?” I wondered. Anyway, after all of this, I went to bed. It was round about 700AD when I went to bed and when I awoke it was 1624AD – I’d been asleep for over 900 years. Liz was there by the side of the bed with an IKEA bag full of letters and post that needed signing and I had to go through them and initial them all. I apologised to Liz for sleeping so long but she said that I must have needed it and it must have done me good. In the bag were a few things that I hadn’t wanted Liz to see – after all, I’m entitled to a private life – so I had to distract her attention from them somehow.

With an early start like that, I had an early breakfast and then an early attack on Day Three of the High Arctic.

I had several breaks during the day – for a shower, a couple of walks, to make some muesli, lunch and so on, as well as a little … errr … relax during the afternoon, but nevertheless I’ve done about a third of the page. We’ve taken off from Yellowknife (twice in fact), refuelled at Pelly Bay and are now overflying Baffin Island well on our way to Mittimatalik.

Another couple of days like this and I’ll have this page finished. But can I keep on going?

bird in rock pool beach granville manche normandy franceLunch was taken inside again today, but maybe I ought to have tried to go out on my wall and eat it.

When I did finally go out for my afternoon walk today, rather later than usual, It was much warmer than it has been just recently and the wind had dropped dramatically.

I wasn’t the only one out there enjoying the beautiful weather either. There was some kind of seabird scavenging in a rock pool down below.

sun shining tidal port de granville harbour manche normandy france The sun was shining nicely too and we had some really clear skies to enjoy.

The view over the tidal harbour was really impressive this afternoon even if the tide was out and there wasn’t anything out there moving around.

Outside the building as I arrived back I bumped into one of the neighbours. We had quite a lengthy chat about nothing special at all. But I have to be sociable every now and again.

Tea tonight was stuffed taco rolls with rice and vegetables. With the stuffing that was left over from yesterday I added a tin of kidney beans, some olive oil, tomato sauce and hot cayenne pepper.

Totally delicious, it was.

moonlight place d'armes college malraux granville manche normandy franceOn my evening walk around the walls there was plenty of moonlight and with the skies being clear it was reasonably light.

From the top of the rise in the rue du Nord there was a view back down the street and across to the College Malraux at the back of where I live.

And this photograph has come out rather well too.

beach plat gousset granville manche normandy franceWhile I was out there I didn’t encounter a soul. And I mean that too. There was absolutely no-one around in the streets. They must have heard me coming.

The wind had dropped quite dramatically this evening and the sea was reasonably calm.

And with the tide not being quite fully in there were no waves tonight crashing up over the sea wall on the Plat Gousset

trawlers tying up port de granville harbour manche normandy franceThe tide was however in far enough that the gates to the innher harbour were open.

And so all on my own, standing on the top of the walls I was the only spectator of a beautiful nautical danse macabre as three trawlers came sailing in line astern into the inner harbour.

They swung round in a beautiful synchronised U-turn and went over to the quay at the back of the fish processing plant.

trawlers tying up port de granville harbour manche normandy franceI stood up there and watched them for quite a while as they tied up, presumably ready to unload their catch.

And I walked back to my apartment, musing on the fact that the amount of free and exciting entertainment that I’ve been having from the boats in the harbour while I’ve been has been rather impressive.

And now I might be going. To bed, I mean. I’ll be making the most of an early night, I hope. High time that I had a decent night’s sleep. I still live in hope.

Monday 3rd September 2018 – AND THE ANSWER …

… to last night’s question was almost “back in Yellowknife” because we took off, did a circuit around the town and landed again. Apparently there was a “maintenance issue”. And even I could smell the exhaust fumes coming into the cabin.

air tindi de havilland dash 7 c-guat yellowknife airport out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018And that’s because the plane that we are on is probably the oldest in which I have ever travelled (remember that the Avro Lancaster in Ontario
never left the ground).

You might think that this aeroplane here is a De Havilland DHC-7-103 Dash 7 registration number C-GUAT, and built as recently as 1978 but it’s actually the Vickers Vimy of Alcock and Brown recovered from the bog in Ireland specifically for the purpose of moving us on.

Piloted by Orville and Wilbur Wright, the flight attendant was Amelia Earhart and I had to move Charles Lindbergh’s sandwiches off my seat.

And that reminds me – who was first to fly the Atlantic non-stop?
“Mike Tyson”
“No, it was Allcock and Brown”
“That’s what I said, wasn’t it?”.

But returning to our moutons as they say around Quebec, I’m not sure whose idea it was for The Vanilla Queen to take me out at 23:30, long after we had all been tucked up in bed, to go to look for the Northern Lights.

We tramped miles but without very much success. A faint glimmer in the sky was all that we saw – nothing like the multi-coloured spectacular that you can see(but I have never seen at all) on occasion.

So we went back to the hotel.

The alarm call was due at 04:00 but I was wide awake at 02:35 – sleep issues again. And when I finally left my stinking pit I had a few things to do;

I’m not relying on coffee at the moment but I had a beautiful, warm shower instead. And not having unpacked my suitcase I was ready in moments.

A brief moment of hilarity when the shuttle bus collided with the canopy supports outside the hotel and knocked the brick fascia flying, and we were loaded and off to the airport.

first aid station coffee yellowknife airport out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018First thing that I noticed in the departure lounge was a sign saying “First Aid Station” – and underneath it was a large flask of coffee with a collection of paper cups.

“How very appropriate” I thought. But as you might have expected, it was empty.

Our spirits were somewhat aroused when someone came to take it away, but dashed when it never returned. We are of course only a couple of hundred miles from the Arctici Circle and even the basic necessities of life here are luxuries

mackenzie highway yellowknife northwest territories out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018 We’d been told that the earlier we arrived at the airport, the earlier we would leave, and so earlier we arrived we did. Our flight was due to depart at 06:15 but that was clearly a Spanish 06:15. Despite our early arrival it was in fact closer to 07:00 when we set off.

We did a lap or two around the airport and had a good view of the Mackenzie Highway underneath us – probably the nearest that I’ll ever come to it – and then we had to come back to Yellowknife Airport for repairs.

air tindi de havilland dash 7 c-guat yellowknife airport out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018It would come as no surprise to learn that the interior of the plane is quite primitive.

We are told that it was originally owned by Air Greenland and the livery would bear that out, and so it’s probably outfitted for hunter/trappers, Inuit and komatik teams rather than commercial passengers.

Huskies, muskoxen and courreurs de bois would certainly be much more at home in here than the likes of us.

air tindi de havilland dash 7 c-guat yellowknife out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018While I was wandering around in the aeroplane I also had a good look at the controls that the flight attendants would use in the passenger cabin.

We had rocker switches of the kind that you might have found in an up-market car of the early 1960s and a bakelite telephone that looked as if it dated from the 1950s.

Still, it’s one step up from baked bean tins and string, I suppose

Not only that – the on-board toilet is an Elsan chemical toilet – and I haven’t seen one of these fitted on board an aeroplane for centuries.

But we have to make the best of it. We were told (and I don’t doubt this for a moment) that we were lucky to find this plane for hire.

Mind you, after we had been flying for an hour or so the exhaust fumes in the cabin seemed to clear. Either that or I’d become accustomed to them.

And no special meal for me either. I’m not so much annoyed that I didn’t have my meal because this is rather an ad-hoc arrangement – but what annoyed me was that no-one had said anything about it. Had they done so, I could have made my own arrangements. I have stuff in my suitcase that I could have eaten.

air tindi de havilland dash 7 cockpit controls  c-guat out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018One thing that was quite surprising was that we were given a visit to the controls. You don’t get that these days on a scheduled flight of course.

The captain was there rather nonchalantly looking at a video on his phone while the autopilot was doing the work. No idea where the co-pilot was.

This would have been an ideal moment for Strawberry Moose to have had a photo opportunity by taking over the controls. And he would have done well too because there is nothing hi-tech about this machine.

But he’s locked up in the hold with his bottle of whisky – and you can hear the sea shanties from here.

air tindi de havilland dash 7 c-guat out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018After all of this, I needed a coffee. And I wasn’t the only one either, with The Vanilla Queen making frantic coffee-like gesticulations.

But, quite unsurprisingly, we had run out. No more coffee at all and that filled me with even more dismay, gloom and foreboding, especially as we still had four hours of flight to go.

I settled down for a snooze instead, and I can’t say that I didn’t need it after all of my nocturnal ramblings.

out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018Wherever it is that we are heading, we aren’t going to make it all in one go. These Dash-7 aeroplanes aren’t made for long-hail flights and the range is not what you might expect from a modern aeroplane.

We had to put down for refuelling and there’s a suitable airstrip at the foot of the Simpson Peninsula at a place called Pelly Bay

And I’m glad that I managed at least to reach Pelly Bay, because it is one of the most famous, if not controversial places in Arctic history. It was here in 1854 that the first definite news of the lost Franklin Expedition came to light.

pelly bay Kugaaruk out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018When the British Government finally stirred its stumps to send relief expeditions to look for Franklin, they were all sent spectacularly in the wrong direction.

It was Doctor John Rae, with no connection to any of the expeditions but leading a surveying party on behalf of the Hudsons Bay Company, who on 21st April 1854 encountered a wandering band of Inuit carrying relics of Franklin’s expedition

They gave Rae an account of the final days of the sad remnants of Franklin’s expedition including graphic descriptions of cannibalism amongst the party.

Rae made his report accordingly, and which was picked up and published by The Times on 23rd October 1854. And for daring to suggest that White Men had deliberately stopped so low as to eat their fellow human beings, he was abused and shunned by Society.

However, subsequent expeditions that followed up the report of Rae found the observations of the Inuit to be perfectly correct. Modern re-examination of several remains has only served to substantiate the case.

kugaaruk pelly bay out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018We put down for fuel at Pelly’s Bay – otherwise known these days as Kugaaruk (the little stream) – at the western foot of the Simpson Peninsula.

This had been one of the potential sites for us to have been rescued, but it’s at the head of a bay and the north wind has blown a pile of pack ice down to jam up the entrance, so we’re having to go on elsewhere.

We could have waited here for the weather to clear but as you can see, there’s nowhere here to wait.

pelly bay Kugaaruk out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018While the aeroplane was refuelling we had a wander around the airport terminal, such as it is.

There is nothing in the way of food or coffee here, and the queue for the two washrooms was enormously long. To such an extent that it took much longer for everyone to visit the bathroom than it did to fuel up the plane, and the plane had to wait for the passengers.

And a visit to the bathroom was necessary because the Elsan on the plane is now full and out of bounds.

calm air atr 72 c-fcrz pelly bay Kugaaruk out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018There was a cargo aeroplane unloading, a Calm Air (whoever they are when they are at home, if they ever are) aeroplane C-FCRZ, whatever that might be, and I’ll check that when I can find a decent internet connection… “it’s an ATR 72-202(F)” – ed.

It had brought in a rather banal pile of supplies that were being taken away in the back of a pick-up truck.

This shows you the immediate supply difficulties of communities out here in the wilds of Arctic Canada and explains some of the high prices that you see.

Because, believe it or not, we are now beyond the Arctic Circle and I bent down and rubbed my hand through all of the gravel in celebration, because this kind of thing is important to me.

Once we were all ready we took off again again again.

Apparently our next stop is going to be Pond Inlet on Baffin Island, and we might even get there too because we did actually manage to take off again – and flew out over Pelly’s Bay and headed out north-west across Committee Bay – the stretch of water that separates the Boothia Peninsula and the Melville peninsula

And if anyone is in doubt about global warming, all they need to do is to look at my photographs of the area here, nice dry weather with no snow whatsoever, and then read the accounts of the 19th-Century explorers as they struggled through the ice and snowdrifts with man-hauled sledges at a similar time of year.

icebergs gulf of boothia out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018Way down below us, and we weren’t flying high (because you can’t in a Dash-7), over the Gulf of Boothia, we were starting to see icebergs in some of the bays down here.

These will have calved off the glaciers on the western coast of Greenland and taken north by the Gulf Stream

They will then have been picked up and then brought down here through the Prince Regent Inlet by the caprices of the Labrador Current.

floe ice gulf of boothia out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018It wasn’t long before we began to encounter floe ice. Not very substantial, it has to be admitted, but nevertheless it was there.

And from here it might not look as if it would stop a substantial ship, but we’d been shown a video of a ship being piloted through by an icebreaker, and how quickly the wind was blowing the ice back, closing in behind the icebreaker, making passage no more easy for the ship.

And this what what was causing us all of our problems.

fury and hecla strait out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018At one point we flew over a strait that was very narrow and confined.

It conformed to all of the descriptions that I had read of Bellot Strait – the key to the North-West Passage. But of course we aren’t going that way. That’s further to the north up the Boothia Peninsula

It’s actually the Fury and Hecla Strait that we are flying over, between the Melville Peninsula and Baffin Island.

baffin island out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018It’s not quite what I was hoping to see of course, and certainly not from the air, but it’s impressive all the same.

But 165 years ago we wouldn’t even have seen it at all, for we were now in, for Doctor Rae, uncharted territory.

His 1854 map of the area left the coastline and interior of this region totally unmarked. There wasn’t even guesswork or a rough estimation of whatever there might be around here.

cliffs baffin island out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018Amongst the many claims to fame of Baffin Island, one of the things for which itis famous is its magnificent cliffs.

And we were treated to them in all their glory. You can really understand why the Norse and many other subsequent explorers had failed to set foot on this point, and why it remained uncharted even in the days of James Rae.

Who would want to climb right up there after a landfall that would in itself be very uncertain indeed?

cliffs baffin island out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018Our pilot offered us a treat. He told us that there were several ways into Pond Inlet, and one of them was to circle around the mountains and come in up the channel – Eclipse Sound – that separates Baffin Island and Bylot Island.

And as we rounded the headland and were hit full force by the turbulence of a strong wind that was roaring up the cliffs and causing us to bounce around like a rubber ball,

I was reminded of the pilot of Air New Zealand Flight 901 who offered his passengers a scenic circuit of Mounts Erebus and Terror in similar conditions and circumstances in November 1979. Of the 257 people on board there were no survivors.

And I’m not sure about the wisdom of doing this with an overflowing Elsan either. I’m glad that I wasn’t sitting by the toilet door.

iceberg eclipse sound baffin island out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018But we survived, which was just as well, and I’m glad that we came this way because our pilot spotted a rather large iceberg floating down the strait.

The pilot offered us a circuit of it so that we could photograph it, which was rather a tall order at such a low level in a rather elderly, creaking Dash-7 and I had a feeling that all of this was going to end in tears.

But circle it he did and we could see it in all its splendour and it looked magnificent.

russian cruise ship eclipse sound out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018As we approached the coastline, a cry went up from two different parts of the aeroplane.

Someone had seen what they reckoned would be the ship that was going to take us off on the next stage of our adventure (because, if you haven’t already guessed, this flight is merely the beginning).

However, on closer inspection it turned out to be a Russian cruise ship that was navigating the waters around here.

And The Vanilla Queen let out quite a cry too, and almost blew out my eardrums. She has a thing about narwhals and sure enough, there was a school of them swimming about below.

I wouldn’t recognise a narwhal if I were to trip over one in a floodlit football stadium, but by the time we came into land I think that everyone on the ship was a narwhal-spotting expert thanks to her.

And this is the beauty of travelling in a well-informed and well-educated group of diverse people.

mittimatalik airport pond inlet out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018So here we are then at Pond Inlet, or Mittimatalik as it is called these days. It’s on the North-East tip of Baffin Island, deep in the Arctic.

We have to have the obligatory photo of the airport of course, just to say that we finally arrived, even though this wasn’t anything like where we were supposed to be.

The Vanilla Queen wanted me to take one of her next to the sign – but that’s on her camera so you won’t get to see that.

mittimatalik airport pond inlet out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018The party that had been stuck on the ship for a couple of days waiting for us to relieve them gave us all a resounding cheer as we entered the terminal.

Whether it was to reward us for our perseverance or whether it was a cheer of relief that they could all now go home I really don’t know.

But it was totally unnecessary and rather overwhelming.

An ancient school bus – even more derelict than our aeroplane and that’s saying something, took us down to the waterline.

zodiac mittimatalik pond inlet out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018There’s no dock here and it wouldn’t ordinarily be a stopping point, but it’s ice-free and has an airport, and that’s so important when you are considering this kind of thing.

Instead, there was a fleet of inflatable zodiacs waiting to take us out into the Eclipse Strait.

While we were kitting ourselves out in our wet-weather gear, three little Inuit girls came to say hello to us and show us the little baby puppies that they had hidden inside their jackets to keep them warm.

ocean endeavour eclipse sound mittimatalik pond inlet out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018As we were about to climb into the zodiacs, the wind shifted dramatically as it does in the Arctic, and we had to move a short distance down the coast and behind an outcrop of rocks to shelter.

And there we were treated to the sight of our ship.

She’s the Good Ship Ve … errr Ocean Endeavour and it’s quite clear, as we came closer and closer towards her that she is a former car ferry – with a welded rear drop-down door.

eclipse sound out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018That makes her at least 25 years old if she was formerly an EU ship, as their commercial licences are usually withdrawn at that age.

The zodiac ride was exciting. The winds were such that we were thrown around on top of the waves and it was much more interesting that anything that you would pay for in an adventure park.

I was all for going back and doing it again.

mittimatalik pond inlet eclipse sound bylot island out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018While you admire a few more photos of Eclipse Sound, with Bylot Island in the background, let me tell you a few more things about the ship.

We were welcomed aboard by the reception staff, and then our floor steward took me to my room. it’s a tiny 4-berth cabin – and I do mean “tiny”.

There are two berths side by side, two fold-down booths above, a table and chair, a wardrobe and a tiny shower room with all mod-cons.

mittimatalik pond inlet eclipse sound bylot island eclipse sound out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018And I am on my own, which is just as well because I don’t do company as I’m sure that regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Except for Strawberry Moose of course. And he’s quite happy with his bed anyway.

One day he’ll get to meet the rest of the passengers.

mittimatalik pond inlet eclipse sound bylot island eclipse sound out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018And of course, if the company is young, female and friendly. And then sleeping isn’t all that much of an issue, is it?

There was a reception organised for the passengers. And once more, there was nothing vegan on offer. I buttonholed the Captain and complained about the whole set-up.

The service manager came to meet me and he was most gracious in his apologies and told me that he would make it up to me. Would I like a complimentary bottle of wine?

He was most put-out when I mentioned that I didn’t drink.

mittimatalik pond inlet eclipse sound bylot island eclipse sound out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018As for the evening meal, I made myself known to the restaurant manager who comes from Budapest (so we had a good chat about Budapest and Hungary). He asked me all kinds of questions and we arranged that when there’s a set meal, I should speak to him and he would speak to the chef.

I ended up with lentil soup, a salad with bulghour and some kind of black beans, followed by fruit. That suited me fine.

We had a lifeboat drill and were introduced to the team. I made the acquaintance of a team member called Latonia who is a specialist in Labrador and the High Arctic and we had a chat.

mittimatalik pond inlet eclipse sound bylot island eclipse sound out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018And then I went off to take some photographs before we lost the light.

Not that that’s something over which anyone needs to lose much sleep, if you pardon the expression, because at this time of year at these attitudes, the light isn’t totally lost.

This photo was taken just before 23:00 and there is still some light left as you can see.

eclipse sound out of the north west passage adventure canada september septembre 2018So now I’m alone in the bar writing up my notes.

I’ve taken Strawberry Moose for a good walk around in search of some exciting places for him to be photographed.

This was a likely spot, suitable for him to make his debut appearance on the ship.

After all, just like any important celebrity, he needs to spread his fame about.