Tag Archives: glacier

Thursday 21st April 2022 – GLOBAL WARMING ANYONE?

When John Ross, the leader of the first European expedition credited with exploring the north coast of Lancaster Sound, came by here in 1818 and when William Parry examined it in 1819-20, they noticed what might have been the entrance to a bay, which Parry called Croker Bay after the then-Secretary to the Admiralty.

They weren’t actually sure about whether it was a bay or not because the whole coastline was covered in impenetrable ice so they couldn’t sail in to make sure.

And there I was 200 years later, 25 kms deep into what is quite clearly a fjord rather than a bay, at the mouth of a dry valley where a glacier once flowed and where there isn’t a single trace of ice.

If you want to look for the “Croker Bay Glacier” you need to travel another 5kms up the fjord and eventually you’ll reach it. Over the last 200 years or so, a belt of ice 30kms deep and heaven alone knows how thick has melted.

Anyway I digress … “yet again” – ed.

Outside this afternoon we’ve been having an aerial day but while you admire the light aeroplane 54AAY that flew past overhead making its debut on these pages, I’ll start at the very beginning … “a very good place to start” – ed.

And once more, it was a struggle for me to crawl out of bed again. I didn’t beat the second alarm, having gone back to sleep after the first one, but I was still up before the 3rd, even though it was “only just”.

And after the medication and checking my mails and messages, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. And to my surprise I found that I’d stepped back into a dream not once but twice.

It’s becoming something of a habit.

One of my former work colleagues starred in this one. It was something to do with his retirement. He’d been called out for overstaying his retirement by some kind of sea creature so he went down to attack this sea creature and had a fight with it. He was stopped and they arranged a proper bour of either boxing or wrestling between the two of them. it was rather unfair because this sea creature had 4 arms instead of just 2 and it had to have its gills reinforced. The fight took place and eventually the sea creature won it. The person commentating said that it was a really good fight but he reckoned that every non-human and probably one or two humans as well really enjoyed the result and how it panned out

And then I started dictating the next dream in French. I was at home and had invited some friends round. They were actually grown-ups and I was only quite young. We ended up playing cards which I thought was a good game. They were 3 middle-aged men and one had a wife but she didn’t want to come. We dealt, and dealt for partners etc. They asked what I had to drink. I had a bottle of beer on the side from yesterday that I could drink. I looked in the drinks cupboard and they had one of these boxes of wine and there was some whisky etc so I started to put everything out ready for people to help themselves to alcohol

That dream continued afterwards and I’d actually met the wife. They were living in a big detached house very much like UK 1930s but it was in France. She was dreading the start of the French school year because her kids were going to school. I asked her if her move to France was permanent. She told me 20 good reasons why it was. We were having quite a chat when her husband came up and said that when he had the house tidied up and the kitchen arranged I would have to come over for a cup of tea by the fire

Later on I was talking to Percy Penguin, and it’s been a while since she’s put in an appearance. She was being very cagey on the telephone about something. I could tell that there was something going on but she didn’t seem to want to expand on it very much. I couldn’t seem to chisel it out of her. At the same time I was talking to a footballer who lived on the continent. We were planning some kind of event together. My family came on the phone and I started to chat to them and happened to mention something about my youngest sister. They replied “haven’t you heard?”. I said “no” and they answered that she’d died. I was appalled. I asked how. It seemed that she and her husband had gone for a breakfast brunch somewhere. Some security guard had knocked her husband’s cup or something onto the floor so they had “had words”. A fight started and my sister had tried to join in but the security guard pulled out his revolver and shot her 4 times in the groin. At that moment he had been arrested.

We haven’t quite finished yet, but we’ll have an interruption to watch F-HTRE go past overhead.

She’s an Airbus A350-941 owned by Air Caraibes and first took to the air in July 2019. She’s flying TX514/FWI14J from Orly to Fort de France in the Caribbean and went past me at 38,000 feet and 498 knots at vector 272°

But in the meantime I was stepping back into the dream involving my youngest sister. Everyone was now round at my house collecting her stuff to take away. I was busy writing a note to my brother expressing my condolences etc.

Once again it took me a couple of hours to come to my senses, which is a surprise seeing how few I have these days, but when I’d come round I made a start on the photos from the High Arctic of 2019. By the time that I’d finished this evening I was up the end of Croker Bay pinned against a glacier.

There’s a huge batch of photos that I’ve dealt with over the last couple of days. But I’m not out of the woods yet. I have simply moved into different woods.

We had a whole variety of interruptions today, coffee and breakfast being not the least of them.

But on the subject of fruit bread, I had the last slice today.

That’s the cue for another load – this time it was fruit buns because there was nothing else to bake in the oven so I had the room.

And here’s the results. Enough to keep me going until I clear off next Friday, with a few in the freezer for when I come back too.

It’s basically a bread mix of 250 grammes with a pile of brazil nuts ground into a coarse flour, some dessicated coconut, raisins, sunflower seeds, chopped banana chips, some of those mixed dried fruits and a fresh banana all mixed in. And probably a few other things too that happen to be lying around.

And then when it’s all proofed, cooked for 40 minutes on a medium-high oven.

For lunch I took the remaining half-loaf out of the freezer this morning and it had been defrosting. And there’s nothing like fresh bread like that. I’ll have to make another loaf on Sunday, I reckon, while I’m doing my pizza and I’ll freeze half of that too.

There was of course the usual afternoon walk around the headland.

However today I didn’t go very far before I came to a stop. Just outside the front door in fact.

There’s something afoot here just outside the building, and I’ve no idea what because I haven’t heard anything at all. But whatever it is, they have most of the front of the building taped off, presumably to prevent access.

The plot thickens, that’s for sure.

But anyway, we can leave that for a while. Let’s go and have a look down on the beach.

It was another quite nice day today and the crowds were out enjoying it. Down on the beach too there were plenty of people taking the air including a group of young women playing with a frisbee.

There were other folk down there too, poking around in rock pools, scavenging amongst the rocks and the like. We can tell that the tide is on its way out this afternoon.

And they had beautiful weather for it too.

While I was up here looking down onto the beach I also had my roving eye wandering around looking at what was going on offshore.

There was quite a haze today so I couldn’t see all that far but I did notice a couple of fishing boats out there. One that we can see here but there was another one further out as well.

And presumably they were working too because they were pointing away from the harbour and following the coast.

Of course, they are far too far out to sea for me to be able to identify them, especially in these weather conditions when I had to peer through a sea mist to see anything at all.

That wasn’t everything either.

Just down there offshore is a collection of marker buoys. It looks as if someone has dropped a few lobster pots into the water just there.

Mind you, that’s not all that far out and I suppose that they will just come along later this afternoon walking across the sand to collect them and their catch because I’m pretty certain that where they have dropped them is out of the water when the tide is right out.

That speedboat roaring past didn’t have anything to do with them anyway

However that’s not my problem. Armes with my face mask, I went to fight the good fight amongst the crowds of people on the path.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a recurring theme that runs through these pages as that oe me taking photos of people taking photos.

But here’s quite a new twist on the subject. Down at the end of the headland I looked back and saw a guy setting up a tripod with his camera perched thereupon.

And having done that, he took up station with his beloved and the self-timer did the rest, much to the chagrin of one of the workers at the coastguard post who wanted to drive past there in his car and who was obliged to wait.

But they did make a handsome couple.

It wasn’t just with lobster pots and trawlers that people were out fishing this afternoon.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen someone perched on the rocks with rod and line at the end of the headland but today we had one of the aforementioned.

And it still bewilders me that these fishermen don’t have a basket or anything in which to put their catch. However, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in all the years that we’ve been watching them, we’ve yet to see a fishermen pull a fish out of the water with rod and line.

There were no spectators on the bench at the cabanon vauban either today. They must have known that I was coming.

From the end of the headland I walked down towards the port to see what was happening there today.

And there has been another change in occupancy at the chantier naval today. Le Roc A La Mauve III is still there showing little signs of moving but Anakena seems to have finished her overhaul and she’s now gone back into the water, ready for her summer voyages to the frozen north.

And how I wish that I was going with her too, but I suppose that you are fed up of me moaning about that. It’s high time that I went out and got myself a life. I need to do something to start moving again but with these heart issues and knee issues it’s not so easy.

But I have the doctor to see next week and the heart specialist at the hospital to see on the 5th of May so who knows? Something might start happening soon, but I’m not holding my breath.

Over at the fist processing plant it looks as if there’s a very long and complicated game of “Musical Ships” taking place.

Briscard was there but she went and L’Omerta came in her place. And then they swapped places, and today they have swapped back again. The excitement here is terrific and I might have to go and lie down in a darkened room.

Instead, I came home for a coffee, a session on the guitar and then (regrettably) I crashed out for a good while. I don’t know what’s the matter with me these days.

Tea was a curry made with leftovers, and delicious it was too. Tomorrow I fancy sausage, beans and chips, especially now that I have my air fryer. I’ve no excuse now for rubbishy chips

But that’s tomorrow. Tonight I’ll have a strum on the guitar and then go to bed. I could do with a much better night and then maybe I’ll have a much better day to follow.

Tuesday 5th May 2020 – I THOUGHT SO!

For some reason or other, I had it in my mind during the night that we were having a rainstorm.

It’s one of those things that I’m not quite sure why and when day dawend, although it was a miserable morning it certainly wasn’t raining. But on my run around the walls in the evening I pass by a spot that always floods when there’s heavy rain. It’s been dry for a few weeks yet this evening we have a puddle on the path.

And so there you are. Yet you would never have said anything because once the day got under way it was quite pleasant.

And for a change, I had quite a pleasant night too. In bed relatively early and I actually managed to beat the third alarm, which is always a good sign of progress.

After the medication I went and had a listen to the dictaphone. And sure enough, I’d been on my travels again.

First of all, Castor put in an appearance again. Or did she? Because on the dictaphone I definitely use the name on several occasions but even in my sleep I made a note that it wasn’t her. So do I count her as Castor or as an unknown?

No idea myself. It’s the kind of thing that’s really confusing me.

But anyway we were at a party that I was helping supervise. But when it was getting towards the end she said “could you go and fetch me some paper because I need some paper”. I said “there’s some here in the printer” so I went to get some out of the printer but there wasn’t any. I had to go downstairs for it. She came downstairs with me and she started to talk about this game. She’s got to do this – this game has to be done right now – it can’t wait any later as it all has to be finished by midnight and we were getting very close to the time. So we got a piece of paper out. There was a third person down there but we ignored that person. It was a case of asking the questions alternately and doing the actions but the 1st question had been cut out. She was a bit mad at that because some other people taking part in the game had cut it out to spite her and she was not at all impressed.
At some other point during the night I was making sandwiches. I had four people with me doing different things and I had to make sandwiches. I had to buy a pile of strange stuff and the kind of pastry stuff that I had to use as a base had all gone off and gone manky so I ended up having to get some bread and making some sandwiches, but I was just getting completely and utterly confused. It took me ages to do something so straightforward as I was so confused about this. When it came to packing everything up ready to take down to the people I couldn’t find any plastic bags to put them in. It was now 13:30 and I guessed they would be wondering what on earth had happened to lunch. I saw a post on Facebook – one of my people had bought lunch and donated money to LIDL for his lunch and I thought to myself it’s going to be an awful row when I get these sandwiches downstairs. But I had a bit of food everywhere that I couldn’t get organised as to what went on where, anything like that. It was all really confusing and it was taking place on the playing field at Nantwich Grammar School as well.
There was more to it all than this but as you are probably eating your evening meal right now I’ll spare you the details. But the interesting thing was that there was some kind of mix of circumstance – the usual confusion and indecision was there of course, but also for once (and which doesn’t happen very often) something was going right for me until, once again, someone comes along in the night and spikes it. That happens far too often – in real life as well as on a nocturnal voyage. The whole story of my life is that people can’t bear to see me being happy and do whatever they can to spike it.

But anyway, I digress … “again” – ed.

After breakfast (which was late due to the amount of stuff I had to type) I carried on with the radio project and that was done well before lunchtime.

Next task was to sort out the music. All of the irrelevant music (from the radio point of view) was moved into a separate directory so that they are excluded from selection for the radio programme.

The reason for this is that with the 6 directories that I have (AA-FF) next week it’s the turn of music from directory CC to be selected for the radio so I have all of that (50-odd artists with however many albums) going round on a continuous random loop for the next week and I’ll be making a note of likely possibilities.

There’s so much music these days in my collection that it’s easy to lose track of what I have and some really good stuff will slip though my fingers if it doesn’t spring to mind.

So moving the irrelevant stuff out of the way means that I don’t waste my time with it popping up on the playlist.

Another task that I have set myself concerns the updating of the web pages.

That’s a task that I started ages ago and which fell by the wayside as I started back to work on the radio. But now that I have the radio work under control (for the moment) I can return to the programme.

When I started MY WEBSITE it was in 1997 as part of a project for my technology degree. It was completely hand-coded from scratch and pretty basic but over the years it slowly evolved.

The last major upgrade that it had was back in 2007 and I’ve learnt a lot since then. The menus were all handcoded *.css, individually for each page and when the number of pages passed 50, I realised that this would present a problem if ever I had to update anything on the menus.

So while I was laid up in Canada recovering from my exertions in the High Arctic, I taught myself some basic javascript, designed a few javascript menus and some iframe procedure and set about changing the menus over from individual *.css stuff to one common set of menus that can be inserted as a javascript script.

Today, after lunch, I carried on with the project and amended 20-odd pages. I’ll do some more tomorrow too. As an aside, I was impressed with my bread. It’s a much better attempt than the last one.

That still left an hour or so , thus I attacked the photos from July 2019. I managed about 20 of them, spending more time wrestling with a recalcitrant mouse than anything else.

And despite that, I’m still in an inflatable rubber boat in a lagoon amongst the icebergs at the foot of the Vatnajokull Glacier in eastern iceland

After an hour on the guitars, I went to make tea. I had an aubergine and kidney bean whatsit with vegetables, all out of the freezer, with pasta. And having taken stuff out of the freezer, there’s still not enough room for the half of the pie that’s waiting in the fridge for a space.

As I mentioned earlier, it was another pleasant evening.

The wind had died down somewhat and there was a beautiful sky and sunset out there tonight. I went to take a photo of it and then ran off up the road to my marker at the end of the hedge.

Having gathered my breath I ran on down to the clifftop past an extremely concerned pedestrian who gave me a weird look. I suppose that I really am a sight, running around the place at my age.

Walking around on the bumpy bit past the demolished bunker of the Atlantic Wall, I startled a woman having a relax in the bushes watching the sunset. Yes, I would give everything that I owned, and more besides, to be able to sing.

Out in the Baie de Mont St Michel it was really busy tonight.

A brief perusal of the bay showed no fewer than four (and maybe more) fishing boats out there over towards the Brittany coast, and this one on its way out there to join0 them.

And that will come as a surprise to someone who posted this morning another one of these “news stories” about how the small fisherman is banned from fishing while the big industrial concerns are free to come and go as they like.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall having seen enough evidence to know that that is total nonsense.

Carefully avoiding the big puddle I carried on with my run along the tp of the walls.

No change in the chantier navale today, but there is something bizarre going on in the ferry terminal. It seems that a fishing boat – one of the trawler-types – has decided to tie up there.

And I’ve no idea why that might happen either. I didn’t think that they were supposed to be over there, and for all kinds of reasons too. The pontoon to which it is tied is for foot passengers for the ferries.

Off on my long run down the Boulevard Vaufleury and round the corner to my marker, and then I walked back to see what was happening in the port.

There’s been quite a lot going on today by the looks of things. We actually have some of the new floating pontoons in place attached to the pillars that they have spent weeks piledriving into the ground.

And across on the other side, they’ve fitted a few new anchorage mounts on the wall. I’ve no idea what they will be anchoring to them, but we’ll probably find out over the course of the next few days.

But it’s all exciting stuff.

From a standing start I ran off up the hill and round the corner to the viewpoint in the rue du Port.

No-one else was there but me but that’s no surprise because the low cloud on the horizon prevented me witnessing the sun sinking below the horizon.

Instead I had to content myself to watching in pass through a gap in the clouds.

My final run was back to the apartment where one of my neighbours was disinfecting the stairs. They are a friendly, sociable bunch of people here, not like anywhere else where i’ve lived, that’s for sure.

It’s late now. There was some good stuff on the playlist. So not much of a sleep tonight but we’ll see how the day unfolds. It’s a bank Holiday on friday so at least I can catch up with my beauty sleep then.

Friday 1st May 2020 – A STRANGE THING …

… happened to me during the night.

There was a group of us living in a house in Crewe and I had to get up and go to work to start a new job. But I was lying in bed and it suddenly occurred to me to get up and get dressed because the bus would be going in a few minutes time. I had to get dressed, and my fitbit came off somehow in all of this. I couldn’t find the tie that I had put aside. I was hunting high and low for this tie. In the end I went to the cupboard, opened it and chose another one. There were about 200 ties in there and everyone was looking at these ties and I said “yes I need to get rid of a few clothes, don’t I?” Someone said “oh yes. I haven plenty of stuff”. I actualy awoke at this point and found myself sitting upright on the point of getting out of bed to go to work.

There have been some really realistic voyages during the night here and there over the years, but this was certainly one of the best.

It had been one of those nights last night where I’d been running really late and I ended up going to bed instead of finishing off my notes.

And so in a break with usual tradition I set an alarm call for a Bank Holiday (it’s Labour Day here so everyone celebrates it by … errr … not doing any labouring) and in a break with even more usual traditions I actually beat the third alarm to my feet.

And this time it was for real too. I felt like that guy about whom Tommy Cooper used to talk –
“I knew a guy who dreamt that he was awake. And when he woke up, he was!”
But it wasn’t half a weird thing that in the middle of the night.

So after the medication I attacked the notes to finish them off. And that took much longer than I was expecting too. I’d resolved not to go for breakfast until they were finished and by the time that I was ready my stomach was thinking that my throat had been cut.

After breakfast it was the turn of the dictaphone to receive attention. I’ve already mentioned something of it but a little later I had someone staying with me overnight. It was another one of these panics to get up in the morning. I cooked a breakfast, toasted cheese, stuff like that and I was getting everything ready while whoever it was (and I’ve really no idea who it was either) was getting ready to leave. I made breakfast in my tiny room which was just like the cabin of The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour which was so small that I had to sit outside – there was only room for one at the table. However as a gesture of solidarity we both ended up sitting outside in the corridor. But my place quite clearly aroused some appreciation. “Yes, I wouldn’t mind retiring to a place like this at all either” so i was explaining the benefits of these homes and how there were people round but they only came if you needed them and apart from that they only came once a week to clean your room, emergency bell pulls, all this sort of thing. And there was general agreement on this.

There was something else on there too but you’re all probably eating your tea right now so I’ll spare you the gory details. But it concerned another voyage on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour, which certainly seems to be receiving an awful lot of my notional custom right now. It’s a good job that I don’t have to pay for these trips for real.

Having done that, I attacked the digitalising of my record collection – the last two albums as well. Whatever is left will have to be done by hand by me. One of those two albums almost ended up in that pile too, seeing that the only copy of one of the tracks was an *.mkv, which is something that I’m trying to keep off my computer, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

However, the light went on in my head, like it does on the odd occasion here and there, and I came up with a very ingenious solution to the problem. And to my surprise it actually worked!

So bearing in mind that one or two albums were shelved because all that I could find was *.mkv stuff, I might go back again and have another run through and see what I can do.

It’s a long process but probably quicker than digitalising them manually.

All of that took me up to lunchtime, would you believe, and there was time to do 30 or so photos. I’m now sitting in a zodiac in a lagoon at the foot of the Vatnajokull Glacier in South-East Iceland.

The hummus that I made yesterday was really nice and worth the effort that I put into it. And so was the apple and pear purée for breakfast by the way.

This afternoon has been somewhat … errr … leisurely. I’ve tidied up a little of the hard drive in here (only a little) and dealt with some outstanding correspondence. I’m not sure if I mentioned it but someone wrote to me about my University thesis for my “Historical Technology” module of my degree.

When it was finished I PUT IT ON LINE (I think that all research should be put on line for future scholars) and someone well-known in that area has written to me to give me some further information and to express his admiration (really!) for what I had written, which was certainly very nice of him.

As well as that, there’s some more radio stuff simmering away in the background, including something that might involve HIS NIBS, and so that required a little thought.

There was the hour or so on the guitars too during which I almost fell asleep, and then tea, which was a stuffed pepper followed by the final slice (not really the final slice because half of it went into the freezer) of the delicious blackberry pie.

And here’s something surprising (or maybe in isn’t). I’d sat down after the washing-up to digest my meal before I went out running and suddenly the football came on the internet. I’d completely forgotten that it was Friday.

A historical match – Port Talbot Town against Bala Town in a Welsh Premier League European playoff from 2013.

And how the standard of football in the Welsh Premier League has improved since then too. This was a “top 5” game yet you would never have thought so.

It ended 1-0 for Bala which was about right. Port Talbot were denied what looked from my viewpoint like two stonewall penalties, but Bala were denied on several occasions by some heroic stuff from my namesake in the Port Talbot goal and had already had a goal ruled out for a foul that was much more innocuous than the one committed on Cortez Belle in the 87th minute at the other end for which the referee waved “play on”.

But it was a very poignant match in one respect. The Spuds couldn’t maintain the momentum following this defeat and slowly slid down the table.

And then down the pyramid. Now they are in the third tier and the glory days of European football in the season 2010-11 when they went to Finland in the Europa League are nothing but a distant memory.

But here’s another thing. Bane of Britain has struck again!

Because of the football I was late – like 22:30 – going out for my runs. It was dark so I decided to swap over the lenses – put the f1.8 50mm lens onto the big NIKON D500 and the 70-300mm LENS onto the old NIKON D3000 and take the big Nikon with me.

So Bane of Britain swapped the lenses over well enough – but then took the wrong camera, as he discovered when he went to take a photo.

So no photos tonight, but at least I managed all of my runs which was good news.

It’s late now, so it’s bedtime. And shopping tomorrow – not that I need all that much but never mind. I wonder of the supermarket will be packed.

Wednesday 29th April 2020 – I MISSED …

… a few things that I intended to do today.

Perhaps the most important was the first run of the evening, but there’s a good reason for that and if you’ll look at this image just here you’ll understand.

Not only do we have the rainstorm, we have a howling gale blowing outside, right down the road towards me where I do my first run. And it was difficult enough to walk, never mind run up the hill in this

The second thing that I missed was the third alarm. I definitely heard the first two but I must have gone back to sleep again because when the third alarm went off I was still deep down under the covers.

But I wasn’t too far behind myself which was good news.

After the medication it was the dictaphone. For some unknown reason last night I was in my cabin last night on The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour playing acoustic guitar to a Creedence Clearwater song but I can’t remember which one. But when I looked I could see that the doorway was blocked and I realised that someone had put outside the doorway a sack with everything – all my food and everything in it that I needed for the next few days while this virus went round. And that’s all that I can remember of it anyway.
But here’s a thing. Yesterday I was writing something for the radio and the subject of a certain former girlfriend turned up, so I included in my article a little anecdote about her.
So who should turn up in my night-time meanderings but the aforementioned. I’d been somewhere and I’d bumped into her although I hadn’t, because she walked right past me as if I wasn’t there. I hadn’t given the matter a great deal of thought but a couple of days later I was sitting in Woolworth’s in Crewe and she was walking through Woolworths and went out of the door that was about 10 feet away from where I was standing. I waved as she went past but again she totally and utterly ignored me. I went to write her an e-mail to ask if I’d done anything to upset her or whatever. In the end I thought “sod it” and I telephoned her. She answered and she was down the street somewhere in Crewe and we ended up having a chat. It was a friendly-enough chat but you could feel that there was something there and I couldn’t understand what it was. This gradually evolved into one of the daughters of my niece and she said something to her mother on the telephone about she won’t be home for supper so could Eric bring it round in his van? Seeing as I was going to a place that evening that was near there. She had never asked me but seeing as it was near the place where I was going it didn’t really bother me that she was proposing me to do something without even asking me first.

After breakfast I made a start on the file digitalisation. For one album there was only one track that I found, which was a surprise because it’s a quite well-known album.

However I found another two to do and it didn’t take long. They were quite quick in digitalising and there were only one or two that “stuck”. But so quick were they that I only had time to do 20-odd photos from July 2019.

But now I’m just pulling up at the Vatnajokull Glacier in Iceland.

One of the photos was a very good one of Rosemary so I posted it to her. As a result she rang me up for a chat and we were on the phone for ages.

All of the time that I’d saved evaporated just like that, but isn’t that just life? Still, taking time out to talk to friends is very important and shouldn’t be overlooked.

Most of the day after that was spent mainly in finishing off the radio project. I finished editing the speech, chopped it into segments, assembled everything together, worked out the time remaining, knocked off 30 seconds for the final speech and then found a final track to fill in the remaining time.

And much to my surprise, it all went together like clockwork and fitted to within a second or two, and I soon fixed that. I could have fixed it earlier too but I was … errr … away with the fairies for half an hour or so, which was quite disappointing.

There was cooking to do too – well, cooking of sorts. I didn’t do the hummus as there was enough for lunch so I’ll do that tomorrow and it’ll be nice and fresh for lunch. It’ll be roast pepper in one batch and sun-dried tomato and olives in the other

But there were the 2kgs of carrots that I had bought on Saturday.

They are all peeled, diced, blanched and in the freezer. I don’t know what it is about shop-bought frozen carrots but they taste ptetty miserable. Mine, or any other home-frozen ones always seem to taste better.

While I was putting stuff away (yes, putting stuff away!) I came across a 2gb memory stick that I had somehow managed to overlook. I copied a pile of music from the recently-digitalised recordings onto that to play on the hi-fi in the living room, and then merged the sound files into the general fun of music.

Once the new memory sticks come out of quarantine there will be some more being moved out of the temporary diirectory so while I was at it, I made a start on a new collection, labelled FF, with the “new” artists who weren’t in any previous collection.

That’s 6 collections with different groups and musicians in each, which means basically that there’s now 7 or 8 weeks (including the monthly live concert) before we complete the circle so a group is only featured at the most once every 7 or 8 weeks.

For my hour on the guitar I tried a new track. I did the bass first followed by the six-string and that seemed to be a better way round. Before I put them away I can have a run through a couple of numbers that I know well and that lifts my spirits.

Tea was lentil and tofu pie with vegetables and gravy followed by the blackberry pie with almond soya. Really delicious stuff, it was too.

And then “once more unto the breach, dear friends!”

Just me out there tonight, not another soul about. So I struggled up the hill at a walk and then ran down to the clifftop to see the sea. Not as wild as I was hoping, unfortunately, but the tide is a long way from high – not until almost midnight – so it should be good by then.

And 10.3 metres high too. A long way from the highest of course, but good enough to put the wind up the sailors.

Yes, if this is what the storm is like now with the tide three hours out, imagine what it’s going to be like later.

It’s a shame that it’s going to be dark at high tide because I won’t be able to see it.

So instead I carried on with my run. There was no change in the situation at the chantier navale. Still the same four boats, including the new black and green one, so I didn’t trouble anyone with a photo.

This was worth a photo though. In the dark and way out in the distance out to sea so it’s come out rather blurred but that can’t be helped.

It’s one of the little fishing boats right out there in the baie de Mont St Michel struggling against the waves as it slowly tries to make its way towards harbour.

And I have said before … “on many, many occasions” – ed … my hat goes off to those out there in weather like this trying to earn a living in boats like that. It’s not easy by any means.

This is interesting too.

On the quayside over there by the crane is a pile of builders’ material – wood and these bags that have sand or gravel or stuff like that in them. That can only mean one thing and that is that we are about to have a visit from either Thora or Normandy Trader.

It’s quite likely that I won’t know about it either. What with current developments, their turn-round in the harbour is quite rapid, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall and with me only being allowed out for an hour every day, I’ll almost inevitably miss their visit.

Something else that I’ll be missing from now on will be the floating pontoon.

It’s not there now – the ground’s all flat – in the water but dismantled into its sections and hoisted out on the quayside over there ready for removal.

The big crane isn’t there either. Gone! And never called me mother! Whatever they will be doing now isn’t going to require too much lifting by the looks of things and all of the supporting pillars are now in.

Or are that? What did they do with that offcut that was around there?

But I’ll find that out another day because right now I’m off to bed. It’s not early but it’s not late either, but I have to go shopping tomorrow. Supplies are getting low. So I need to be on my best behaviour and on good form.

Wednesday 21st August 2019 – WE GAIN …

… an hour tonight.

Well, we don’t actually. We really gain two hours tomorrow night but seeing as we are not going near any community tomorrow during the day we will put our clocks back one hour tonight and we’ll do the other hour tomorrow night.

And I can’t say that I’m sorry, because I’m exhausted. And for once I had a decent night’s sleep too. Took me a while to drop off but once I was gone I was gone and I remember nothing at all until the alarms went off. I only just beat the third alarm – and by a matter of seconds – too.

It was a late breakfast but I didn’t take advantage because we are now in another fjord hard by Disko Island with the Eqip Sermia glacier at the end of it. Only a small glacier but a very lively one – one of the fastest glaciers in the world apparently.

Too fast in fact, for just as we were unloading the ship a large piece of ice broke away and calved, causing a tidal wave that crashed one of the kayaks against the rocks and damaged it before the crew had time to secure it..

The resultant chaos took ages to sort out and a 09:00 departure was more like 10:30.

We had a good sail around the face of the glacier watching some calving while they prepared a decent landing for us and eventually they were ready for us at the landing site.

An easy landing, and a beautiful environment but due to the earlier mishap not enough time to visit it properly. By the time that I’d had a geology lesson from Marc and a lengthy history chat with Rachel I was struggling to reach the waterfall.

But when I did – drat and double-drat! I’m not sure how many waterfalls I have visited just recently but I don’t recall visiting even one that didn’t have the sun shining directly over the top spoiling the photos. And this one was no different.

For the money that we are paying for this voyage, you would think that the company would have turned the earth around 90 degrees to give us all a sporting chance.

Back on board The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour we had a barbecue and then I had a shower and washed my expedition clothes. They’ll dry quite quickly. And I … errr … closed my eyes for a second or two (or maybe more.

We had some more lectures (during one of which I fell asleep) and then tea time. I sat with Jerry Kobalenko the explorer and we had a good chat too about all kinds of things, especially diet in the High Arctic.

Another good day for photo editing though. I’m now on 19080785 and just leaving South Pass on my way back to Montana and Winnipeg. So it’s not going as quickly as I would like it. But I’ll get there somehow some day.

Although I’ve a feeling, comparing my screen with a known photo that I took a while ago, that I might have to do all of this editing lark again when I get to a decent screen, whenever that might be.

Only time will tell.

Wednesday 24th July 2019 – OUR LAST …

… complete day on board ship – for now anyway – and what an interesting day it has been.

The day started off with, probably for the first time for quite a while, some uninterrupted sleep. And although I awoke at about 05:20 or thereabouts, uninterrupted it was. And for the first time for quite a while, I actually felt almost-human when i awoke.

It was a much better start to the day.

Outside, there were things to see too and that made it so much better. Much better than being totally shrouded in fog and mist

We’re sailing down a fjord, the name of which I forgot to note, somewhere round near the settlement of Qeqqata. And I made a discovery too, and I was lucky enough to photograph it.

It might well be a haphazard pile of stones but from the angle from which I took the image, it looked just like a ruined stone house (and I’ve seen a few of those – even lived in one too – in my time). It was on a spit of land sticking out at the junction of two fjords, in exactly the spot where one might expect an early settler, even of the Norse era, to erect a dwelling.

I showed it to the on-board archaeologists, and they seemed to think that it was something man-made. And who am I to dispute that? After all, we are somewhere in the vicinity of the limits of where the Western Settlement of the Norse might have been.

After breakfast I edited some photos for a while and then later on we had a talk on geology. And shame as it is to admit it, I dozed off in the middle of the discussion. I don’t know why, because up to that point I had been feeling quite good.

Once the talk was over we donned our wet-weather winter gear and clambered aboard our zodiacs for a final cruise. Past various nesting colonies of kittiwakes and guillemots up to the head of the fjord where a glacier was busy calving off into the water.

Strawberry Moose came along too and he went for a short kayak trip with Genevieve. He has more luck with the girls than I do.

But my luck held out today, just for a change.

My camera was in the right place at the right time with the right settings just as a huge pile of ice calved off the glacier. It made the most enormous splash although by the time the tsunami reached us it was pretty miserable.

By now the old Danish guy was feeling the cold so we headed off back to the ship. And that turned out to be lucky too because we caught sight of a young bearded seal sunning itself on an ice-floe. Baldur called up the other zodiacs to come to see it, and so it chose that moment to slide off the iceberg into the water.

But not before I took a photo of it. And what a stunning photo it was too and I’m well-pleased with that one. It’s definitely one for the family album.

Lunch was a barbecue on the rear deck and then we had all of the usual housekeeping stuff and instructions for our disembarkation tomorrow morning. That was followed by a packing session as we need to vacate the premises, and I can’t find the hood for my camera lens. And that’s a disappointment and no mistake.

There was another photography session dinner this evening and we had quite a discussion, which was punctuated by the ship making a severe U-turn as if it had missed the turning into our fjord.

And as Rosemary and I were leaving we were accosted by one of the Québecois women who wanted a chat. An elderly woman who is travelling alone and by the looks of things hasn’t made any friendships. We all had quite a chat in French.

On the deck, the views were spectacular as we entered the fjord and I took quite a few photos before the cold wind from the interior drove me inside. I wrote my notes, has a chat and that was that. I’m off to finish packing and then to bed ready for an early start in the morning.

It looks as if it’s all over for another trip.

Wednesday 17th July 2019 – THIS EVENING …

… I was standing at the top of the stairs, lost in Space
“Do you need any help?” asked the waitress
“I’m thinking” I replied. “I need all the help that I can get with that!”.

Last night was another depressing night. I’m certain that the ship’s engines stopped at something like 04:00 because the silence awoke me and I didn’t hear the familiar rumble. In fact, I wondered where I was.

A trip down the corridor later, I was back asleep but only for about an hour or so before I was awake again. But absolutely flat-out tired and it was a real effort to beat the third alarm.

After the usual morning procedure I was up on deck. The sun was quite low, trying its best to peek through the clouds and so I took a couple of photos of what should have been the early morning sunrise to start off the day.

Breakfast was rather later this morning and we were there for quite some considerable time having a good chat, before we attended to the business of the day.

It was a very strange morning. There was a very low sea-mist drifting around so one moment we were swathed in a thick mist with some beautiful rainbows, and the next minute we were bathed in a bright warm sunshine.

So warm was it that we actually sunbathed on the rear deck for quite a while in the company of another couple of people.

And then the fun began.

“Thar she blows!” came the cry from the starboard side. And there cruising along at the side of our ship was a bottle-nosed whale. He accompanied us for a while before disappearing down into the deep.

Five minutes later we had another “thar she blows!”, this time from the port side. And there, performing a couple of antics was a sperm whale. He swam along the surface for a while and then with a swish of his tail he plunged downwards too.

By now we were insight of the Greenland coast. Just briefly because the mist closed in again at that moment. So that was that.

We went to a lecture on glaciers which took us up to lunchtime.

Lunch was interrupted by a “glaciers on the starboard bow!”. The mist had finally lifted, for good too and there up along the Greenland coast were some rather large icebergs waiting to catch the current.

We had a briefing later, and then we all crowded onto the observation deck to watch the scene as we negotiated into a deep fjord. Kangerluluk or something like that, it’s called “The Awful Fjord”, basically because there is nothing here. No landing, no grass, no wildlife, nothing at all.

but I do know that since the installation of AIS systems in ships, only one other ship had ever been in this fjord. And with a name like that, it’s hardly any surprise.

But this afternoon while we were positioning ourselves, we were having some really beautiful sunshine, which is something of a surprise in Eastern Greenland, so it goes without saying that for a half-hour or so I was on the back deck of the ship on a comfortable chair … err … rather relaxed.

Tea tonight was a buffet, and quite early too. And while we were sorting ourselves out, they were putting the zodiacs in the water. We dressed up in our winter woollies and then went for a cruise. There were three-hour cruises and one-hour cruises but we opted for the two-hour cruise, for reasons that every male my age will understand.

This took us to the head of a couple of glaciers where we saw some small icebergs and we were lucky enough to see a calving. No spectacular icebergs, merely a few small blocks of ice, but it was a calving just the same.

We then went across the fjord to inspect a few more icebergs. These were big ones and here was plenty of evidence of frozen rainwater and silt. There was even a glacier with a perfect band of soil. Had I seen that in Iceland I would have immediately thought of a layer of volcanic ash at some time during the formation of the glacier, but I’ve no idea of its significance in Greenland.

The most interesting find however was one that vindicated the President of the American Public Enquiry into the sinking of the Titanic.

He had asked the question “just what is an iceberg made of?” and was ridiculed, and even lampooned, because of what many people considered to be a ridiculous question. But here in the fjord there was a glacier that was studded with large rocks. Just the kind that might split open the side of a large ship.

There was a pit-stop for hot chocolate laced with Bailey’s for those that wanted it, and then back here on the ship we had hot soup and bread for supper.

It’s time for bed now so I hope that I have a decent sleep. But at least I know that my winter gear passed its first test. I was quite comfortable out there until the driver put his foot down to return to the ship.

Quite a pleasant evening all round.

Friday 12th July 2019 – LAST NIGHT …

… I mentioned the overwhelmingly thick fog that we had encountered coming out of Seydisfjordur. This morning when we awoke, the situation hadn’t improved and we were swathed in a rather thick blanket of nebulous nonsense.

I heard the alarm go off at 06:00 and then again at 06:07. However I did manage to beat the 06:20 alarm, although there wasn’t all that much in it.

The weather wasn’t all that good for photography but I took a couple just to be on the safe side, and then went in to breakfast;

After breakfast we put on our winter clothing and headed out to the zodiacs. The sea was calm but visibility was pretty poor and it was trying to rain. We made it ashore at the small town of Djupivogur without any major mishap, but we aren’t staying here. There are a couple of buses waiting for us to take us onward. One of them was an elderly MAN-engined Bova Futura, tri-axle and 15 metres long. Quite naturally I leapt aboard.

After about an hour’s drive we stopped at the Foss Hotel for a toilet break as we were not so equipped on our bus. It gave me an opportunity to have a little wander around and take a couple of photos of the Icelandic scenery. Here on the east coast, the coastal alluvial plain is very good farming country, although it’s compressed up against the mountains in the same way that the land is on the western coast of Newfoundland.

Back on our bus we headed off to the glacial lagoon. Here at the foot of the VatnaJokull ice field, a glacier discharges its icebergs into a lagoon and we had come here to witness it. After all, ice fields, glaciers and icebergs won’t be around for much longer at the current rate of global warming.

We were really lucky too. A huge part of the glacier had calved off a few days ago and the lagoon was littered with icebergs waiting to melt down so that they would be small enough to drift out to see on the meltwater current. There’s a submerged terminal moraine that stops them floating straight out.

First item on the agenda was a good walk down to the lagoon and around its edges looking at the ice. It really was so spectacular down there; A little further around I found a ruined, collapsed bridge. It would be nice to think that it had been brought down by an iceberg or an ice field, but that is extremely unlikely.

Lunch was arranged for us too, and they did me proud with a vegan carrot soup followed by ratatouille. No complaints at all there, except that a second helping would have been delicious.

Once lunch was over we donned more wet-weather gear and headed off to one of their zodiacs. A young Czech student took us out for a ride around the lagoon to see the icebergs, the ice face and to tell us all about the place and the history. And it started to rain while we were out there.

Our zodiac was almost the last back so our bus was last to leave. And on the way back we were waylaid for 15 minutes by a pack of harbour seals on a gravel bank just offshore. One of them was having a whale of a time floundering and flouncing about in the water, giving all of us quite a performance.

With a pit stop too back at the Foss Hotel, we were definitely the last back at the quayside and the zodiac crews had gone to sleep. There wasn’t time to put on our wet-weather gear because we needed to leave our anchorage pretty smartly, so we all ended up rather damp, as by now it was raining quite heavily.

Back on board, I headed for a shower. Not because I needed one but because it’s the quickest way of warming me up. And I washed my clothes too. They were quite wet anyway with the rain so they would benefit.

After tea I lounged around for a while but there’s a late breakfast on offer tomorrow so now is the time for an early night, I reckon and I can catch up on my beauty sleep.

If only …

Monday 10th September 2018 – ELLESMERE ISLAND …

*************** THE IMAGES ***************

There are over 3,000 of them and due to the deficiencies of the equipment they all need a greater or lesser amount of post-work. And so you won’t get to see them for a while.

You’ll need to wait til I return home and get into my studio and start to go through them. And it will be a long wait. But I’ll keep you informed after I return.
***************

… at last. 76°07”N already and pushing on towards the 80°N mark. And who knows? With the progress that we’ve made overnight we might even make it too.

I took several photos of the midnight twilight too, but how do you take photos from a rolling ship into a fog with a zoom lens in the half-light? There’s no chance whatever of taking a really sharp photo that does justice to the view.

Just for a change, last night we had another Sleep Of The Dead. I wasn’t sure about this though for just after I had settled down my neighbour returned to his room, from somewhere I have absolutely no idea where, and decided to switch on the TV. That made more noise than I was wanting so it’s a mystery to me how I managed to drop off to sleep.

And also a mystery to me how I managed to stay out so long. A deep sleep too and my sleep patterns might be slowly starting to return because I was off on a nocturnal ramble last night.

And in something that will come as a surprise to regular readers of this rubbish, the first since I’ve been on board ship. However, I’ll spare you the gory details. After all, you’re all probably eating your breakfast right now.

While we are on the subject of breakfast … "well, one of us is" – ed … I had my breakfast in the company of an elderly woman. Now I know that I can talk … "surely not! Perish the thought!" – ed … but I’m afraid that I wasn’t any kind of match at all. It’s not very often that I have to admit defeat, but here I am today …

One thing though. Judging by the description of the arrangements that she has made in her room in order to accommodate her affairs, I can see that she is a kindred spirit.

And after the warning that we were given last night about the weather, I was half-expecting to find the dining room crockery scattered all over the floor and smashed into smithereens, but nothing of the sort. Something of a false alarm that was, I reckon.

Can’t have been more than a Storm Force 8

Somewhere over there in that vicinity is the settlement of Grise Fiord, Canada’s farthest-north civilian settlement. It’s an artificially-created settlement and it’s really a political thing. There’s this idea about the Arctic islands of “use it or lose it” and with the oil and mineral discoveries in the Arctic, possession of territory is of vital importance in order to give a country a right of claim.

And so the settlement here on Ellesmere Island, to confirm a claim to the territory.

We had a discussion about marine mammals in the Arctic, and I learn quite a lot, despite not really having a great deal of interest in animal life.

Chatting to the crew a little later, the question of the good sleep soon resolved itself. Apparently I’m lodged right over where the anchor is and when we are stationary during the night, they haul it up as first light, which is about 05:15 or so.

Last night though, we kept moving so there was no anchor-hauling at all – hence the silence.

We had a kind of multi-workshop thing going on this morning. about 7 or 8 different ones, and I wanted to go to about half-a-dozen. In the end, I settled for the one on the Inuit language and the one on photography.

And while the language one was interesting and I can now write my own name and those of my friends (both of them!) in Inuit, the photography one was in a sense a little disappointing because while the leader was teaching us how to organise and archive our images, I find that he uses the same technique as I do – albeit on a much higher level due to the nature and amount of his work.

Lunch was a mystery to me. I sat with Lois the Inuit guide and a guy who had been with me at the photography lecture. He gave me the names of a few freeware programs that are available that might help with my image-editing plans, and I’ll look those up when I return home, if I ever do.

But it wasn’t without its excitement because, having finished the lectures early, I went down to my room for a quick 5 minutes rest and awoke 20 minutes later. right out, I was. Definitely feeling the pain, I am.

This afternoon we had a quick briefing and then we were off.

We’re at South Cape Fiord and peninsula which is on Ellesmere Island. Although this is one of the most southerly points of the island, the farthest north point of this island itself is one of the farthest north masses of land in the world. So we are now really and properly in the High Arctic – nothing north of this island except the North Pole.

The ride out to the shore was much calmer than yesterday’s ride, and it was walmer too, so I brought His Nibs for a day out.

And he proved far more popular than I ever am – loads of people stopped to talk to him and have their photos taken with him, and I suppose that he enjoyed every moment of it.

The beach here is very interesting. With the land being heavily depressed by glaciers in the past and slowly liberating itself from the heavy weight, it’s rebounding. Our resident geologist reckons that he has counted as many as 10 raised beaches which were formerly washed by the tide at one point; And with global warming melting the glaciers even more, who knows how many are now submerged yet again?

There were still plenty of glaciers to see, and plenty of icebergs drifting into and out of the fjord. And while it didn’t quite have the same effect as yesterday’s leisurely stroll in the blizzard, I reckoned that it was one of the most beautiful places on earth.

One of the most wild too if you ask me.

We had our polar bear guards here again and I found myself in trouble … "yet again" – ed … for straying out beyond the bear cordon. If you disappear beyond the cordon, the guards can’t see you or what might be creeping up on you. There have been enough encounters, some of them rather terminal and not for the animal either, with people wandering carelessly out of sight of others in the High Arctic.

But I stood on a ridge overlooking the sea for quite a while admiring the icebergs, of which there were plenty, and taking photos of our ship silhouetted against the tidal glacier across the fiord. It was all rather spell-binding and somewhat emotional.

Not as emotional as it might have been for the passengers on one of the zodiacs. A fuel line burst and they were stranded in mid-fjord. A rescue party had to go out to recover them and tow them in.

Three hours was the time that had been allotted for our visit ashore. And in that time I had done about 108% of my daily activity scrambling over the rocks, and I was well-nigh exhausted after my exertions. I was warm too. All of my jackets were unzipped and I had rolled my hat back. I’d have divested myself of a few layers had it been practical.

There were some strange animal tracks that i encountered. Rather like a trident with a very long shaft. No-one could decide if they were lemming or bird. Bird was the general opinion but there were a lot of them and they walked for miles so I’lm not sure.

One of my fellow passengers is a Japanese guy. He doesn’t speak much English but he’s certainly adventurous. He started out on our series of walks by staying on the beach but as time has progressed he’s walking further and further along in order to enjoy the whole experience. I bumped into him up on the high ridge.

You won’t believe this either but as I neared the coast, with a beautiful view of the fjord and the icebergs, I disappeared into a fold in the ground. And when I emerged, one of the guards on the hill shouted to me “did you see it? Did you see it?”

Apparently in just that simple moment when I was out of the view of the sea one of the big icebergs had capsized. And I had missed it!

More tea was being served up on shore so I took advantage of it. And once again, it went cold in an instant.

Aaron the historian was in charge of our zodiac taking us back to the ship and he proposed a sightseeing visit to the capsized iceberg. Everyone voted in favour so off we shot.

Magnificent it was too, especially the bright blue bits which had until 20 minutes ago been under water. It’s hard to believe that all of this is rainwater or snow that fell to earth thousands of years ago long before there was any pollution.

And I can add that today is probably the first time ever that Fairport Convention and Liege And Lief has been played on Ellesmere Island.

I had a shower, a coffee and little relax for a few minutes and then came out to do some work. But ended up assisting in a promotional “arctic dip” sales pitch run by Michael and Breanna. That was quite fun, I’ll tell you.

For tea I was invited to sit with my American friends and a couple of others, and I ended up being involved in a silly argument. I’d noticed the other day that they had said on board ship that they need to bring the Inuit in more to benefit from the economic advantages of tourism, and yet the ship was crewed by Filipinos and Indonesians.

I commented on this fact this evening, and then was treated to a very long diatribe as to why this should not be allowed. Lots of colonial paternailsim in their argument (such as “it’s wrong to take them out of their environment” – which means that it’s right to leave them in despair and on welfare) but that wasn’t the point.

As they say, irony is not the strong suit of most North Americans, and this clearly was the case here,

There was a film later on – “Martha From The Cold” by Martha Flaherty, grand-daughter of Robert Flaherty, he of the Nanook of the North fame.

It concerns the resettlement of the Inuit from Northern Quebec to Grise Fiord and the injustices that surrounded it. Of course, it’s almost word-for-word the same story as that of the Inuit, Innu and Métis in Labrador, but I was interested just the same;

We had a round-table discussion afterwards and of course I interjected the story of Williams Harbour and Black Tickle to show that the policy is still going on, and much more insidiously too.

In the end there were just four of us left. John Houston the animator, Yours Truly, some Korean guy and a girl. The Korean had a large whisky in front of him and the further down the glass he went, the more animated he became;

In the end, there were just the girl and me remaining.
“He was sailing close to the wind” said the girl.
“Sailing?” I retorted. “He’s positively steaming!”

At midnight I went off for my evening walk. Outside we have another Midnight Arctic Twilight and 105° on the binnacle. However we are stationary so I might have some sleep tonight.

We can always live in hope, I suppose.

And I’ll sort out the photos tomorrow. I’m off to bed.

Tuesday 4th September 2018 – SO THERE I WAS …

… leaping out of bed at the first alarm (well, almost) at 06:00 to perform the usual morning ritual with the medication.

And then ten minutes later diving upstairs for the sightseeing in the Lancaster Sound – straight into that curse of all Arctic mariners – a rolling fog.

I couldn’t see my hands in front of my face at first. I had to wait a good two hours before the fog lifted and I could see anything at all.

But an Arctic fog wasn’t the only issue that we had to deal with this morning

During the night we had had snowfall too and some members of crew were busily sweeping the decks. Not a very big snowfall, but a snowfall all the same and it’s a sign of things to come.

So much for an exploration today, then. I can’t see us going ashore in a zodiac in this kind of weather if we can’t see what we are going to collide with.

The morning was spent editing all of the photos and I have a feeling that I’m going to be setting a new record on this trip. Day one of our voyage and I’m on 132 photos already. This is going to be a long trip.

Breakfast was acceptable – cereal and fruit salad with water (no soya milk of course) with toast and jam. Orange juice and as much coffee as I could drink and then more.

We had the usual welcome meeting to give us the day’s itinerary, but it was all interrupted as far as I was concerned because we found ourselves in the ice stream. And that was me, and a German lady, lost to the public as we went outside to take a few photographs.

And it was just as well that we did because by the time that the speech was over we had passed through the ice and gone.

Mind you, it wouldn’t have been much to miss because we will be encountering ice much more formidable than this. Or, at least, we better had because otherwise there is little point in coming on a trip like this in my opinion.

One of the things that has surprised me more than anything was that when they handed out the waterproof boots, mine fitted me perfectly. Usually, it’s a kind of Army thing where they bung you a pair of boots and you either have to cut off your toes or else stuff a few sheets of newspaper inside.

The next thing was a discussion given by different Inuit from different regions of the High Arctic, to make us aware of the different cultures through which we will be passing.

Someone else taught us a couple of works in Inuit, but it’s not going to help much because there are so many different words and so many different dialects that I am bound to use the wrong word at the wrong time in the wrong place.

We have several Inuit people from the local area on board the ship.

Their role is to explain the local environment and culture to us and to help us understand much better the way of life out here.

Susi had brought with her a soapstone oil lamp – a Qulliq or Kudlik. They have always played quite an important role i life in the High Arctic and I was really glad that I actually managed to see one.

It’s fuelled with seal oil of course and the wick is Arctic Cotton, a-plenty of which we shall apparently be seeing on our voyage.

Lunch was a running buffet and much to my surprise there were things there that I could eat.

There was bad news afterwards. There had been a plan to go to visit the long-abandoned RCMP post on Devon Island, but one look at the fog and snow outside was enough to convince us otherwise.

You wouldn’t be able to spot a polar bear until it was about 50 feet away in this fog, by which time it would be far too late to do anything about it. That kind of thing can’t be helped of course, but it’s just so disappointing that all of our plans are just melting away into nothing.

Instead, Latonia gave us a very interesting talk on the different peoples of the High Arctic.

She also introduced us to a new cartographic way of looking at the Arctic that was certainly different for me.

Forget your Mercator’s Projection – this shows the Arctic regions in a much more realistic and accurate way and puts everything into the proper perspective.

By now though, the fog, which had been slowly lifting during the course of the day as you have seen, was now sufficiently clear that we can see some of what we might be doing.

Unfortunately it was far too late to go back to the RCMP post on Devon Island. But just a stone’s throw away up an inlet called Croker Bay just round the corner there is a glacier that calves into the sea.

Everyone thought that that might be a good place to visit, as a way of breaking us into the High Arctic.

They proposed a procession of Zodiacs up Croker Bay to see it, and so we donned our winter gear and waterproofs because there was a wind and it was still snowing.

The Vanilla Queen is in a different team to me so she was off in one of the first boats and I was in one of the last so by the time we went out she was back.

And how she had cause to regret it too, as you will find out in early course.

So we bid a temporary farewell to our ship as we headed off up the inlet on our zodiac, with the Good Ship Ve … errr Ocean Endeavour disappearing into the fog and snow flurries behind us.

This is how I always imagined life in the High Arctic to be, and I pictured to myself the several generations of Sailors in the 19th Century who were obliged to do this with oars.

And then regularly volunteered to come back with a subsequent expedition.

All of the broken ice at the head of the bay told us that an iceberg had not long calved and fragmented.

And so we weaved our way in and out of the icebergs and growlers, looking at all of the spectacular shapes and forms that they can produce,

I have never been this close to an iceberg and so I was absolutely thrilled to see them.

And we weren’t alone here in the inlet either.

As well as our good selves, the zodiacs and the Good Ship Ve … errr Ocean Endeavour were several seals swimming about, fishing in the water at the foot of the glacier.

They are all unfortunately very out-of-focus. You have no idea just how difficult it is to take a photograph of a small moving object from a moving boat riding the swell in a wind..

But what happened next was unbelievable.

One of the passengers on our zodiac was scanning the rock face with the binoculars and was convinced that she had seen something moving about.

One of the other zodiacs had spotted it too and called up everyone on the radio so we all headed down that way.

And sure enough, there WAS something moving.

It was very difficult to see anything clearly so I took a long-range photograph of it so that I could enlarge it at my leisure.

It’s a good job that I had fitted the zoom lens to the camera before we started. It would have been a difficult thing to do in a swaying zodiac.

And it was as well that I did because I HAVE SEEN A POLAR BEAR. And not just a polar bear too, but a mummy polar bear with a cub in tow!

I suppose that it’s something of a cheat to say that I saw it, because I really didn’t know exactly what it was that I was seeing until I enlarged the photo, but it’s a polar bear nevertheless.

And I’m really hoping that I’ll see a polar bear much closer than this (although not too close of course) in due course but nevertheless it’s a good start.

After this ten minutes of excitement we had to return to the Good Ship Ve … errr Ocean Endeavour.

There wasn’t a moment of silence on board our zodiac. We were all far too interested in discussing the polar bears that we had seen.

The seals on their own would have been exciting enough for one day but the polar bears really were something.

The whole thing was totally magnificent and I was so impressed. So impressed that I was prepared to say that this was one of the highlights of the journey – and we have only just started too!

As we approached the the Good Ship Ve … errr Ocean Endeavour we were lucky enough to witness the hoisting abord of the zodiacs who had returned to the ship before us.

We docked at one of the ramps at the side of the ship and we all clambered out of the zodiacs and on board.

I went straight to my room, had a quick shower, change of clothes and a clothes-wash and then back upstairs.

The Vanilla Queen was there so I showed her my photo of the bears. She was so depressed by it that I invited her to supper and negotiated a glass of wine for her to cheer her up.

Later in the evening we all had to dress up again in our winter and waterproof gear.

One we were suitably dressed we all went for a moonlight (or what passes for moonlight here so high up in the Arctic) ride in the zodiacs up the the glacier once more.

And I did make the suggestion that they should equip the boats with telephone boxes so we could all dash in, spin around, and come out fully-changed like Superman … “superPERSON” – ed …” but for some reason that didn’t go down too well.

No wildlife to speak of this evening. Just a few birds, but not of the kind that I’m ever likely to be interested in watching.

There was however a pirate zodiac manned … “PERSONNED” – ed …by buccaneers handing out hot toddies and hot tea to warm us up.

And you’ve no idea just how quickly hot tea goes cold in the High Arctic.

Most of the ice that we had seen earlier had been swept out of the bay.

But the face of the glacier was really impressive this evening with a couple of enormous bergs almost ready to break off and float away

There were a couple of largish ones over in the far corner creaking ominously as they were on the point of breaking up even further. We listened for a while just in case we might hear the “crack” telling us that we would be lucky enough to see an iceberg calve.

No such luck though.

We couldn’t stay out there all night waiting in hope. We had to return to the Good Ship Ve … errr Ocean Endeavour.

But it wasn’t where we had left it. Rounding an iceberg we discovered that it had moved off to one side of the inlet under the cliffs.

Apparently there was another cruise ship on its way to shelter in the inlet for the night. It’s like the M6 up here in the High Arctic right now.

By the time that we arrived back at our ship, it was going dark. Or, rather, as dark as it gets around here at this time of the year.

But this evening the cloud cover is quite thick so we won’t have very much in the way of midnight sun tonight.

We tied up our zodiac and scrambled aboard. And having disposed of my wet-weather gear I went off to my cabin to change into clean clothes.

Right now I’m writing up my notes and editing the photos of today. And staring out of the window at the other ship riding at anchor on the other side of the inlet.

Later on after everyone else has gone to bed, I’ll go for a walk around with Strawberry Moose and look for more photo opportunities for His Nibs. He deserves to spread his fame around.

And then I’ll be off to bed. It’s another long day tomorrow, with an early start.

Friday 30th September 2016 – THEY CALL ME TRINITY

Well, Baie Trinité actually, but never mind – it’s near enough.

We’ve been here before – in 2012on our mega-ramble down Highway 138 to be precise, but I’d only driven through the place without having the time to have a real poke around, and so seeing as it’s quite close to where I’m staying (a mere 37 kilometres – which is “right next door” over here on the North Shore of the St Lawrence River) I reckoned that I would come for a nosy around.

On the way out there, though, I encountered quite a beautiful lake. It’s at round about kilometre 831 and it’s called le Lac au Rat Musqué – Muskrat Lake – and I’d love to know how it is that some of these lakes and other natural landmarks earned their European names.

I didn’t take a photo of it in 2012 and I don’t know why. But there are lakes just about everywhere and I suppose that I was spoiled for choice.

First thing that you notice as you arrive in Baie Trinité is a rest area, right in the centre of what passes for the village and right by the shore. There are all of the usual facilities here, but it goes without saying that they are all closed up for the winter.

But anyway, it’s gone lunchtime, my stomach thinks that my throat has been cut and I have my butties to eat. I’ve run out of hummus but I do have some vegan cheese that I picked up in the Atlantic Superstore in Woodstock.

Baie Trinité’s claim to fame is that it is the home of the Centre National des Naufrages du Saint Laurent – the National Centre for Shipwrecks on the Saint Lawrence. This is a place that I would love to visit, but as you probably realise, it’s closed now until next season.

But one thing about it is that here you can “experience several major tragedies that have marked the history of Nouvelle France” but if anyone thinks that I’m going to experience a shipwreck at first hand just to satisfy my curiosity they are mistaken.

There have been plenty of shipwrecks along the coast as you probably know, and we’ve visited the sites of a few of them. And without any explanatory panel (which wouldn’t do you lot much good anyway because here in Quebec the Tourist Information is written in French only, just to spite the Anglophone tourists), I would say that this cannon is from a real shipwreck.

In 1690 a mariner by the name of Admiral Phips sailed up the St Lawrence in an attempt to capture Quebec from the French. He was unsuccessful, not the least of the reasons being that he lost several ships on the way up. And on Christmas Eve 1994 the remains of one of them – the Elizabeth and Mary – were found just off the headland at Baie Trinité.

And as you might also expect, just like every other village in Quebec, we have a church here, built in 1939.

I forgot to go over and see to whom it was dedicated (I’m really forgetting myself these days) but as this place is called Baie Trinité, apparently because Jacques Cartier is supposed to have visited the bay on Trinity Sunday in 1536, it’s quite possible that this could be the Church of the Holy Trinity – l’église Sainte-Trinité.

As we have said before, the beaches around here are magnificent, with all of the sand that has been deposited by glaciers as they receded at the end of the various ice ages.

I’m not a big fan of the beach here at Baie Trinité though. It’s right by the main highway and while it’s hardly the M25, you’d be surprised at the number of heavy lorries that go past here. It’s too noisy for me.

Instead, I’m going to head up the beach westwards. That’s far more sheltered behind the Tourist Information Centre and the church and where I’m less likely to be disturbed.

Except, it has to be said, by someone on a quad who decides to come for a ride out here as I’m walking along. Still, I do my best to avoid him and think pleasant thoughts instead as I take advantage of the beautiful sunshine.

All of the beaches, shores and river mouths along here are littered with rocks as you have probably noticed, and they too have been brought down here by glaciers (and latterly by rivers) from their places of origin.

Geologists can and do have hours of endless fun tracing rocks back to their original source and thus plotting the paths of glaciers and rivers during prehistory. It’s a fascinating hobby, so I’m told.

But this lump of rock on the beach is quite interesting. It caught my attention because it was glistening in the sunlight so I went over to photograph it. Unfortunately, the glistening hasn’t come out at all.

The rock is totally different from most of the others along here and to me (not that I would know very much about it) it closely resembles a lump of iron ore similar to what we saw when we tracked down the old iron mine at Gagnon last year.

There are many deposits of iron ore in the interior – Gagnon, Fire Lake, Mont Wright, Labrador and Wabush to name just five out of dozens, and it’s interesting to think that this rock might have come all the way down from there.

This river is called, rather unsurprisingly, the rivière Trinité and apparently it’s quite famous for the quality – and quantity – of the salmon that was caught in it.

It was quite popular with some first-Nation Canadians who used to live off the salmon from the river in the summer and off whales and the like from the St Lawrence during the winter. There was no reason for them to live a nomadic lifestyle.

Like most rivers out here along the North Shore, Quebec Hydro has become involved in it and has installed a little hydro-electric generating plant to serve the town and its neighbourhood.

There wasn’t very much by the way of detail to tell me anything about it but although it’s not a very big drop the force of the water makes it quite powerful so I imagine that there’s enough power here to run the village and its surroundings.

“But what about the salmon?” I hear you say. After all, it’s quite a famous salmon fishing river and one time the fishing rights were owned by a club in Quebec, although control was soon wrestled back by the villagers.

In fact, when they built the barrage they also built a kind of fish ladder at the side of it so that the salmon could move upstream and downstream . I haven’t heard whether or not it’s as successful and whether the fish are a snumerous as before.

Meanwhile, I’m back on the beach again heading east. Right over there is the fish-processing plant that we visited when we were here in 2012.

Formerly, it was the forest products that provided the major source of employment in the village. It was quite a hive of industry, with a log flume and even a small railway network, but the 1960s put an end to all of that and the economy collapsed.

Nowadays, it’s fishing and the fish processing plant that provide most of the employment opportunities around here.

One thing that Baie Trinité does have going for it is that it has a fuel station and convenience store, and you can see it peering through the trees over there, left of centre.

I went in there for a wander around and to my great surprise they sold bread. Baguettes too, albeit frozen ones that need to be thawed out before I can use them. But it’s good news for me – it’s a round trip of just 78 kms for the bread instead of 116 kms.

Out on the western side of the village is the Pointe-à-Poulin. I tried to reach there in 2012 as you may remember but was blocked by the snow.

No such problems this year though. In fact I made it all the way down to the Anse de Sable – Sandy Cove – and not only that, I was chased all the way down the road by three Dodge Caravans full of people and that made me wonder what on earth was going on. It seems to be a popular spot this year and so I shall have to make enquiries as to why they are here.

They all went over there to have a play on that big rock, that looked as if it might have been a plaque of volcanic lava. I went over to have a chat to them to see what was going on.

It appears that they were High-School students who were out on a field trip along the North Shore of the St Lawrence – and that made me wonder whether the young archaeologists whom I had seen at Godbout the other day excavating part of that cache of seashells were from the same group.

But anyway, I left them all to it and went for a wander right out to the farthest extremity of the Point.

Or at least, what I thought was the farthest extremity of the Point because each time that I came to what I thought was the farthest extremity of the Point, there was another Point around the corner. I’d heard of a similar phenomenon in mountaineering when people climbed up to what they considered to be the summit, only to find another summit further on.

having realised that I was likely to be out here all night at this rate, I turned round and retraced my steps somewhat, turning my attention to the rocks just offshore.

I went for a clamber about and a closer inspection thereof. I noticed that the rocks were not rocks at all but nice, black, smooth and shiny, so it seemed to me that these might also be plaques of lava.

You might be wondering about the likelihood of volcanic activity around the St Lawrence, but it does appear to be a recorded fact.

The St Lawrence River valley is situated more-or-less along a geological fault line and there is evidence of techtonic plate movement along here as well as some evidence of prehistoric volcanic eruptions. Coming across outcrops of lava, and even lava fused into airgaps in other rocks, is by no means unusual.

But talking of techtonic plate movement, there have been several earthquakes recorded along the St Lawrence in recent years – a score of 5 on the Richter Scale is not unknown. But this pales into insignificance when considered against the events of 1663

Many of you will remember the discussion that we had when we were at Les Eboulements. We mentioned that in that year there had been as many as 33 earthquakes along the St Lawrence, the largest of which caused an entire mountainside to slide into the river.

So leaving the lava beds for now and greeting the students, who seemed to be having endless amounts of fun, I walked right back around the bay to the other end – the end closest to Baie Trinité.

I was hoping to see a shipwreck or two, or the remains of a shipwreck maybe, but I was completely out of luck.But it really was a beautiful beach and I had quite enjoyed my time out here. Given a few more degrees of temperature and bit less wind, I could quite happily have stretched out on one of the lava beds.

Anyway, I called it a day and leapt into Strider to take me back home.

But halfway down the road before I reached Highway 138, I came to a shuddering halt along the side of the road. That was because the view of the bay that I saw as I rounded a bend was quite stunning. Now this is the kind of beach upon which I could quite happily recline in the evening sun, except of course that the sun is setting behind the trees on the left.
And in any case, I was feeling quite tired by now so I was quite keen to return home to my little room.

I made myself a coffee and retired to my room for a repose and relax before I made tea. Baked potatoes, beans and hotdogs with mustard as usual (it was a good idea to buy that bag of spuds and those tins of beans) was on the menu. And then having done the washing-up, I retired foe the night.

I was pretty exhausted after my long walk around the beach. But at least I have my bread for tomorrow.

And you have 2105 words to read tonight. Serves you all right.

Thursday 29th September 2016 – DO YOU KNOW WHAT?

I had the best night’s sleep that I had ever had.

I was asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow and I remember absolutely nothing until the alarm went off at 06:00 – with the radio on the laptop still playing. That was a deep sleep.

I came back up here after breakfast (today’s home-made jam was mango, ginger, maple syrup and saffron) just in time to see the F A Gauthier coming into view, with a bulk carrier in the background.

By the time that I had grabbed the telephoto lens she had steamed into a beautiful position and the bulk carrier was continuing her way upstream.

I wonder she is.

I didn’t do too much this morning – it’s not really possible to do too much with the internet connection here but I did what I could. Despite having had a good sleep through the night, I dozed off at some time and so was late going out. I ended up grabbing a bag of crisps instead of my butties.

I went for a walk in the other direction today, towards the west, and I came across the cemetery of the village.

I had a good nosey around at some of the graves, as I always like to do in places like this, and this lady seems to be the oldest inhabitants of the cemetery. She died in 1880, aged 27. There was a gap of a good few years between her and the next-oldest. Maybe there weren’t too many people living around here in those days.

But that wasn’t everything apparently. There was some kind of stele in the cemetery giving a list of names of people who are interred in here and whose last resting places would seem to be lost. It’s a shame that so many names haven’t been remembered too.

But this stele was clearly erected in the olden days when the original inhabitants were still being referred to as “Indians” rather than First-Nation Canadians.

By the way, it’s an error to believe that the word “Indian” when applied to people in Canada refers to the Indian sub-continent and the belief that this might have been the Indies. Jacques Cartier knew full well that it wasn’t.

The word “Indian” when applied here is an English-language corruption of the word “Indigène” which is the French word for “native inhabitant”.

Godbout has a small school here, and also a very impressive church with a presbytery. It dates from about 1908 and much to my surprise, its predecessor of 1840 didn’t actually burn down like everywhere else in Quebec but managed to survive until it was demolished at the end of 1903

I forgot to have a close look at the statue to see who she was. As you know if you have been a regular reader of this rubbish, the different saints are identified by the object with which they are depicted. This might be Saint Mary – but then on the other hand it might not.

There is a park down at the end of the road – the “Parc Intergenerationnelle”. This must be a paradise for young children, with all of the attractions that are available.

I myself would have made a bee-line for the pirate ship. This is an ideal place for the extreme youth of the village to hang out and many British people would find themselves at home here, for having voted for the Brexit they will soon find themselves all at sea.

As for the adults who didn’t vote in favour of the Brexit, there are things to do here too. My friend Liz saw the photo and asked me if this place was a playground or a gymnasium. It can quite easily be both, without any trouble at all.

I was keen to go over and have a look, and maybe a play on the apparatus but I’d wasted so much time already and I had plenty of other things to doso I couldn’t afford to hang around.

At the side of the park is the second of the two rivers here at Godbout. This is the bigger of the two, called (as you might expect) the Riviere Godbout, and nicknamed (as you might equally expect) the “Grande Riviere”. According to mine host, it’s a famous salmon river and some good fish have been taken out of it.

But the climb down the bank to the sandy beach was quite something. The steps down to the water stopped half-way down and it was quite an undignified scramble the rest of the way.

There is a reason for this, as the people whom you can see on the right-hand edge of the photograph explained to me.

Apparently there has been something of a storm that has eroded away a good part of the banks of the river, hence the beach at the bottom of the steps has gone.

However, it’s good news for these people. They are archaeologists and apparently some kind of considerable cache of seashells has been uncovered. There’s a possibility that it might be an old Innu rubbish dump and so they were busy excavating it.

The sediment that comes down the river is caught by the current of the St Lawrence River which is quite slow-moving at this point and so there’s quite a magnificent pair of sandspits.

I’ve told you before where the sand comes from. But in case you have forgotten, it’s the debris from when boulders have rubbed together as they have been transported by glaciers during the various ice ages, and when the glaciers melted, they deposited the sand on the ground.

It’s for this reason that the St Lawrence River up here, and many other rivers in the sub-arctic regions of the world have such magnificent beaches, and those of Godbout are amongst the best that I have ever encountered.

Had the wind dropped, I would have been quite happy to have sat down here with my book to relax for a while by the sea. However I had to knock that idea on the head, for I had already discovered that I had forgotten to pack my booK.

This piece of wood lying here on the beach caught my attention and I went over for a closer look. What had drawn my attention to it was that there was a good deal of what looked like worked joints in it – the kind that a carpenter might make if he had been using the wood as part of a construction.

And not only that. There were huge nails and metal pegs sticking out of where the joints are. I ended up wondering if this had been part of a shipwreck or an abandoned boat.

My guest house is called the Thépi du Bec Sucré and so it comes as no surprise to find that we have a teepee in the back garden. In the summer it’s used as a tearoom for tourists but right now it’s closed until next summer.

It does however remind me of the story of the chief of a Native American tribe who once took part in a tea-drinking competition. He broke the record, as you might expect, but was found next morning, dead in his teepee.

When I returned to my digs, I made myself a coffee and took it up to my room. Glancing out of the window I noticed something big sailing upriver towards Quebec and Montreal.

Grabbing hold of the big zoom lens and with some judicious enlargement, I was able to identify it as some kind of cruise ship.

In case you are wondering, by the way, the river is wider than it looks. So much so that during World War II a couple of U-boats were operating right here between Godbout and Matane, scoring several hits and sinking several ships in the river before making successful escapes.

And so I’ve had my tea – baked potatoes beans and hot-dogs – and now I’m having an early night.

I deserve it.

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Tag Archives: glacier

Thursday 21st April 2022 – GLOBAL WARMING ANYONE?

Tuesday 5th May 2020 – I THOUGHT SO!

Friday 1st May 2020 – A STRANGE THING …

Wednesday 29th April 2020 – I MISSED …

Wednesday 21st August 2019 – WE GAIN …

Wednesday 24th July 2019 – OUR LAST …

Wednesday 17th July 2019 – THIS EVENING …

Friday 12th July 2019 – LAST NIGHT …

Monday 10th September 2018 – ELLESMERE ISLAND …

Tuesday 4th September 2018 – SO THERE I WAS …

Friday 30th September 2016 – THEY CALL ME TRINITY

Thursday 29th September 2016 – DO YOU KNOW WHAT?

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