… 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.