Wildlife & nature

CRUISE

A narrow weather window opened just long enough for us to fly to a place we were never supposed to be. Inclement combinations of wind and pack ice meant that to board the AE Expeditions ship Sylvia Earle, we had to fly to Resolute Bay rather than our intended point of embarkation further south.

Obituary

Between Point Barrow in Alaska and Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, lies a stretch of freezing water that was once an unbroken sheet of ice. Years of global warming has since melted large swathes of the 3,800-mile ice cap and reduced it to a sea of shifting floes, making crossing it by foot or sled impossible.

An adventurer from Edinburgh has helped to set two world records by kayaking the Arctic Ocean’s treacherous Northwest Passage.

From Our Correspondent

Were it not for the icicles hanging from the ceiling you could at first glance mistake the elongated pool for some obscure Olympic swimming venue.

GREENLAND

It was Monday afternoon in the settlement of Ittoqqortoormiit in eastern Greenland and I was watching life unfold. The town’s matriarch was on her way home, flashing me a big friendly smile (albeit toothless) as she passed, wrapped up in a neon pink puffer jacket and revving the engine of her quad bike to speed up the hill. Watching her go from outside his red house halfway up Mikip Aqqulaa street was the local carpenter Marti, who I paused to speak to. He told me there was only one thing on his mind — dinner. “I hope it’s polar bear curry tonight, that’s my favourite.”

A cruise ship carrying 206 passengers has run aground in a remote fjord in eastern Greenland.

solo adventure special

What do you pack for a trip that involves running in subzero temperatures? Layers and resilience mostly. Oh, and Vaseline to stop your eyelashes from freezing. It’s certainly not your average holiday.

History

On May 19, 1845, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror left Greenhithe on the Thames for the unnavigated reaches of the Northwest Passage. The expedition would become one of the great nautical mysteries: the ships never returned and the men were all lost. Now some of their faces have emerged from the past.

NORWAY

There seem to be three camps when it comes to Svalbard. The people who have never heard of the place; the people who have had it on their wish list since for ever; and the people who have been and are hankering to go back. I was in the first camp until a few months ago. But then a friend who has visited twice, in summer and winter, kept raving about it. So now, recently returned from this Arctic archipelago that belongs to Norway yet is so far north that the flight from Oslo takes three hours, I am in the last.

Ocean 14 Capital has raised its fundraising target after tapping into a healthy appetite for a fund backing start-ups working to clean up and revitalise the world’s oceans.