Part trois (and last part!)
Day X (lost count)
Half way between Norway topmost and Svalbard - passing Bear Island shrouded in mist!
Why did I study maths, not geology!
Bjornaja - largely uninhabited except for odd norwegian station and one very odd polar bear who strayed too far on drift ice...
Next day, finally in Svalbard!
Longyearbyen (main Svalbard settlement) in the background.
No, we weren't that foolish to stray far to be a lunch for polar bears.
Still feeling like being at Norwegian Wild North...
Houses are actually tiny considering that the bottom half of it are just tilings...to stop the heat from inside house sinking the house into permafrost....
All pipes outside to stop dying from frost.
Miss Longyearbyen already!
Most locals disappeared into mainland Norway for holiday.
Saw a local lady strolling with a baby - had to be sent back to mainland Norway to give birth there.
Said most locals live here for 2-5 years. Met a few who lived for 15 years.
One of very few civilized places where you own snowmobile in back garden like a bike and carry big calibre rifle gun like a handbag...
This back end of Longyearbyen
Planked on each side of Longyearbyen by those ridges.
Full of some active and some abandoned coal mine shafts...
Mine cables...and....
And one odd, old graveyard with still well preserved remains beneath .
Now old and sick are sent back to mainland Norway to die there.
No one wants to be buried here to be unburied by frost.
Awkward snap of one of polar foxes in their summer fur roaming streets like urchins.
Glacier in background...full of warning signs of polar bears.
One of the preserved polar bear remains.
Shooting them dead is legal in self-defence.
(real) polar bear...for sale. Bit late to ask me now if you fancied a rug for your lounge and had 80,000Kr (£9K quid) to burn.....
Thank goodness for pram - T was again, very interested - by being asleep for 2 hrs!
Me trekking back to ship :(
One of passengers complained 'so dull town! dreadful roads!'
(!!!!)
Tomorrow, Ny-Alesund!
Surrounded by Kongsfjord glacies, the tiny settlement where 30 folks live long term.
Ny Alesund, once claimingto be the world northenmost settlement. (claim disputed now by one dull Canadian settlement of 5 people at 82 egrees latitude but you don't buy tampons in a supermarket there! So!!)
Post office!
And world northenmost greenhouse...
Though after peeking closer, it appeared to be full of dead plants....don't tell research council though!
At least I am not only one who kills the plants.
And research euipments to die for...why did I do maths!
Arctic terns who attack tourists, but illegal to strike back!
And barnacle geese.
Not to mention auks and guillemots.
I have managed to out quite a few people at my work as closet ornithologists by mere talking about them!!
No, they are not pensioners with expensive telelenses!
Probably the only visitor ever to Ny Alesund to fall asleep at all!
Also plevat' na 2+C degrees.
Tundra lichens and ice floating in Kongsfjord...
Magdalenefjord at 79 degrees latitude...ship now turned on way back. Just few inches off 80!
One of very few truly wild places. No roads outsie settlements. Treks over few miles take days. Tentmaking companies test out their tents to max here.
Bring trip wires next time.
Broad sunlight at 1am...bye bye Svalbard.
(in this space should be many glamorous shots of me taken by husband adoring my beauty....but gave up insisting on my husband doing it.......rather unfortunate side effect of marrying someone lacking vanity :)
Next - move to Franz Josef Land and live there!