The Svalbard archipelago lies in the Arctic Ocean, about midway between Norway and the North Pole, and belongs to Norway. It comprises all lands between latitude 74° North and latitude 81° North and between longitude 10° East and longitude 35° East. The principal islands are Spitsbergen, Nordaustlandet, Barentsøya, Edgeøya, Kong Karls Land, Prins Karls Forland, and Bjørnøya. Longyearbyen with nearly 2000 inhabitants is the largest populated area on the territory of Svalbard and lies at the southern side of Adventfjorden, stretched out along the Longyearelva River. It is named after American entrepreneur John Munro Longyear (1860-1922), who as head of the Arctic Coal Company founded the town and the neighboring coal mine, the first large mine on Svalbard. Mining is still big business, with the roadsides and mountainsides littered with mines and their equipment, but tourism ... read more

Our day at Heathrow started very early on Monday 30th June. After flying to Perth early sunday to meet Lesley then onto Singapore, our flight from Singapore to London had been delayed an hour and 15 minutes and only having an original turn around time of 2 hours it was going to be a stretch. Onto a bus to terminal 5...which took another 15 minutes..and a race to the desk to get through to the gates. The first security lady looked at the boarding passes and said yes you should make it...the second lady took a quick look and without even thinking about it said' No sorry, you'll never make the gate you'll have to go rebook onto the next flight'...even though we still had a good ten minutes before the gate closed... craaaapp.....maybe she wouldn't ... read more

Ah, home and back to work to find that no, nothing really changes. (Which basically means now it's back to saving money to pay for the next trip- wherever that may be.) A big congratulations to all 8 of my friends who have added to their families in the time I have been away. Also, I hope everyone here at home and all those overseas and still travelling had a fantastic xmas and new year. Haven't had time to upload the funny engrish signs I found in China but for those interested you can also look up www.engrish.com for some more. Mostly funny, some just plain weird although i'm sure my chinese translations would be a lot worse. My favourite- that of course I didn't manage to get a photo of- was at the 'Big Wild ... read more

You know when you leave a carton of milk in the fridge for waaaaay too long, and when you take it out there is solid stuff in the bottom and clear liquid on the top but you've already opened it and taken a whiff before you realise? Well if you're ever in Mongolia and someone offers you fermented milk alcohol, you would be well off to remember that particular smell and JUST SAY NO!!! One of our group ignored this advice and earnt himself the name 'Yoghurt Boy' before waking very ill in the middle of the night. Only two days in Mongolia on the way into China which was nowhere near enough to see this amazing country. Off the train in Ulaanbaatar into minus 6 degrees and snowflakes in the air. Have I mentioned I ... read more

In February this year I was sitting in a lecture room on a big red boat crossing the Drake passage and one of the first questions we were asked was this... "How many people here are visiting Antarctica because it is your seventh continent?" Well, I suddenly realised that during all my previous trips it was something I had never actually considered, and later that evening in our cabin, myself and new cabin mate Sally spent some time trying to figure out just exactly how many continents we had both travelled and what was left. Even so , this year was not the year I had picked to finish off the list, until it was Chris' turn to book a trip and he said "Hey, how about we all go to Tunisia?" "Is that in Africa?" ... read more