Month: July 2009

Svalbard – Kingdom of the polar bear

 

 

The three day journey there was worth it. I would do it any day just to get back to the frozen kingdom of Svalbard! The landscape ever changing though in some way always the same. Never two ice floes alike, never the same colour, never, though always the same.

With only three settlement stops before nothing but the wild, it may seem very unsettling but I never felt uncomfortable about the endless sea, ice and land. The large ship gave much comfort; and, of course, it was a thrill to be in the middle of nowhere!

Our first polar bear sighting was in the distance and it was hard to see them; there were two. But not long after we saw many more; most days didn’t go without a polar bear after that.

Walruses were soon also a common sight. Twice we landed close to them, once we saw them from the zodiacs and there were many seen from the ship.

Many birds were seen and we saw a few seals, though most were in the distance.

We were very lucky with the weather. Usually it’s overcast and rainy. But the sun shone and the sea was calm. It rained but even then it was only drizzle. We had one night when people took seasickness pills, but I didn’t think it was so bad. It rocked you quietly to sleep…

We have 3 cherry trees in our garden which have disappointed us year after year. On the few occasions when they have fruited the cherries have split and been quickly exploited by the birds and especially the wasps. But this year conditions have been perfect, starting with an explosion of blossom in the spring and followed by dry enough conditions to allow the fruit to set and not split. So we now have three trees laden with fruit which we cannot access because the trees are so tall. The picture shows some of the cherries which we did manage to pick and we have tried some ingenious methods for reaching at least some of the lower branches. But the birds and the bees will be the main beneficiaries. (I mean the birds and the wasps of course but it doesn’t trip off the keyboard so well).  Tired already of eating them fresh we tried a crobbler today which is a hybrid cobbler/crumble but it is tedious work stoning the cherries so I can’t see us having too many of those.

Sunday the 28th of June at eight o’clock am we had to be at the scout-hut. When we were finished being given stuff e.g. food, then we drove to Hirtshals(north of Denmark) I three cars. When we had got on the ferry we looked for a place to sit, we found a place outside where we ate our lunch packs and talked and stuff like that. Johanne(my friend) and I went to the tax free and bought some sweets, I had forgotten my money in the car I was in so I borrowed some from Johanne. Then we came in at Larvik in Norway and drove for four hours until we came to a place to camp.

 Next day we drove over to some place called Geilo to shop mum Gwen and I have been there before, after that we drove to a place to put the cars while we were walking. But then when we got out of the car the car drove some metres away and parked I was looking the other way so I didn’t se it but I heard it, there was a big smash and one of the boys had accidently smashed the back window. After that big palaver we walked 3-4 km. and set up camp.

 

Tuesday we walked about 5 km up to the place where we had to eat, but just before that we had to go over some water and guess what I fell in… then I changed and we ate, then we went another 5km and we were where we had to set up camp. And my rucksack started to fall to pieces.

 Wednesday we walked without our rucksack and that was very nice. We ate and then there was some people who stayed where we ate, like I did, some people walked a bit further. On the way home I got sun burnt and I was horrible it was the first time in my life I got sun burnt. Then we came to camp and the tent was all ready put up. I fell and hurt my knee.

 Thursday we walked back the same way as when I fell in the water and set camp where we set up camp Monday it was just blowing much, much more.

Friday we drove most of the day.

 Saturday we drove to a weir and that was fun.

 Sunday we came home, it was really fun.

 Mia

A great deal has happened while we were ‘away’. In fact that’s why we were ‘away’ because we had no time to add to this. Added to which there were rumours that the Yahoo blog was going to be shut down and you can’t have failed to notice that in the end the Yahoo blog was more hole than blog as they gradually stopped supporting videos and pictures from outside.

So now it’s crunch time as Yahoo have said they are shutting everything on July 13th so I have been forced to transfer as much as I can before it all disappears. The slide show above (don’t forget to have your sound on as well)  is just a little summary of some of the things that have have happened recently including the deer and the fox who visit our garden, Gwen who went on work experience to dissect a huge number of small mammals and to show that the house just got painted, at last and finally! By the way Mia is not picking up wayside litter but is in fact processing a highly secret cache.

The nature photos are by Gwen who is becoming very interested in taking good photos and is fast filling up our new computer with hundreds of 4Mb pictures. Don’t forget that you can click on the icon at the bottom right hand of the slideshow to see the pictures full screen though they are compressed so don’t blow up well. But the originals are fantastic!

There are alll sorts of bits and bobs on this new blog so just click around. I am also going to rescue the old stuff from the very first web site which featured our news and glue it on here somehow.

So watch this space! … and feel free to add your comments. We may be forced to add a password but we’ll see how things go before going down that route.