Almost two years ago I was standing on our station platform, nervous and masked, heading for eight days quarantine in Yorkshire before starting on my five week artist’s residency on board HMS Protector in Antarctica. Now finally my book ‘Antarctic Sketchbook’ has arrived, and it brings back all those vivid memories. The day after the continue reading »
More from the sketchbook diary of a wandering artist – my travels on board HMS Protector as Artist in Residence for Friends of Scott Polar Research Institute Pause for a moment and look at a world map. Let your eyes travel south, away from the busy squabbling human places, and follow the mountains that form continue reading »
At 4.30am on 4th December I went on deck, expecting to see a solar eclipse. The sky was clear with a steel-cold wind and indigo sea, and there seemed to be no sign of anything different about the sun. Instead, there was South Georgia, close up, a range of sharp edged mountains and glaciers. I continue reading »
I’m home, after 16,000 miles by air, 4,335 nautical miles by ship and two months away. I have been to the Antarctic Peninsula via York, Brize Norton, Falkland Islands, South Georgia, South Sandwich Islands, South Orkneys and South Shetlands. But in all those miles the only time I stepped outside the UK was on the continue reading »
When I first started sailing back in the 1980s, Britain had been part of Europe for only ten years and I remember that there were still procedures to follow when Going Foreign. Sailing across the Channel to France meant that we had to fly a yellow Q flag on approach, and then report with our continue reading »