11 May

5.30am Petters alarm went off. We all looked at our watches and groggily thought 'What?' - then turned over and tried to go back to sleep. Petter then got up and said isn't it time we got up, only 30 minutes before we had to leave! 'Err...' we thought and then worked out he was in the wrong time zone! Three out of four watches said 5.30 which was enough to persuade him he was wrong. Rather than go back to bed for an hour he decided to potter around repacking his sacks. This annoyed us all who wanted to go back to sleep. I just managed to get some sleep when off went my and Paul's alarm. We then proved that 15 minutes to get up had been too generous when 10 minutes later we were outside waiting for the taxi to the airport. Petter was still pottering around packing his sac!

It's little things like this that give you an idea what people will be like in a team. Paul and I were all ready with our sacs and skis waiting for the taxi. Slowly the rest of the team joined us and piled up their gear. Alan was the last to be ready, a good 5 minutes later than everyone else by which time we had just about finished packing the taxi. There was another Tangent team in the hostel as well. They were even later and more disorganized. There was a clear split in their team, the three women were working together and the three blokes had formed a team, but there was no communication between the two. Each would only deal with their own gear etc. while our team had started to bond and was working together as a whole to keep track of gear and pack the taxi. We had a minibus taxi with 12 seats. By the time we had everything on, there was room for 6 people. The taxi driver was impressed by the amount of gear we had and was wondering about his suspension. Given the time it took to pack everything in I'm not surprised he had the meter running! Experience from packing minibuses for the Hiking Club showed with Paul and I doing most of the packing.

Checking at the airport was amusing. We grabbed everything from the taxi and moved into the airport hall and piled it all up taking over 1/4 of the hall. A group checkin was best in this situation. We guessed we would be over weight and they would be less likely to hassle us if they could not weight it all in one go, or easily work out who had too much weight. A quick count of bags showed we had 21 so Scott went to the desk with 8 tickets announced we had 21 bags and we formed a chain ready to pass them to the girl. She give us a strange look then stuck her head through the baggage conveyer hatch to someone behind before producing a long roll of baggage stickers. By the time she had weighed and processed our baggage she looked knackered from the lifting. She then saw the other team waiting and must have thought it was going to be one of those days!

The flight to Akyrari left 15 minutes late for no apparent reason. The plane was a 100 seat turbo jet, ideal for this sort of short domestic flight. We were flying from Reykjavik (which is in the South West) to the North coast of Iceland, a flight of one hour. Planes are used a lot because the road infrastructure is not so good. The equivalent journey by bus takes 10 hours and costs only half the price of the plane. The bus has to go around the outside of Iceland since there are no good roads across the middle. There is one, but it's closed for at least 6 months of the year because of snow. Even when it's open it's not any faster because it's mostly a gravel road.

Flying over the interior of Iceland was interesting. It has lots of plateau mountains, perfectly flat mountains with deep valleys around them. There was also lots of snow and glaciers. What I think was the most interesting were the huge cracks. The border of two tectonic plates runs north-south down Iceland. You could see huge north-south cracks in the ground which I presume is where the plates are pulling away from each other.

Reykjavik had been a cool English morning, maybe 5 degrees. Akureyri lived up to its reputation of having the best weather in Iceland. It was a tropical 25 degrees when we landed and bright sunshine. We watched the ground staff get the luggage from the plane. They had two baggage trolleys of which 1 1/2 was taken by the two teams bags, the the rest was the other passengers bags! We had been maybe 1/4 of the passengers on the plane, but had 3/4 of the baggage. Another pile was promptly formed as it came off the carousel and then Scott went off to find out about our next flight.

The luggage pile at Akureyri. Gordon is the silver haired chap closing his sac. Petter is behind in the red checked shirt. Paul is to the right in the green and red fleece and Glen is looking at the floor?

We were now onto charter flights and you forget all the usual rules. We had no tickets. There was no check-in. They brought out a luggage trolley and we put all our stuff onto it and it disappeared. We were told the flight would be sometime around 1pm. That was an hour later than we expected so I went for a brief walk outside to enjoy the sun and warmth.

The airstrip is on some reclaimed land in a fjord. 3/4 of the runway is surrounded by water so if the pilot gets it wrong you are in for a swim. It was shallow water though. I guess in winter its all frozen.

Akureyri Airport

Around 12.30 the Metro Liner arrived. This was our plane to Greenland. It's a very narrow, long plane with long wings. It all looks out of conventional proportions. Inside you see how narrow it is. The seats were not 2 and 2, or even 1 and 2 like in some small prop planes. It had 1 and 1 seats, but 20 rows of them. It also had a very low roof. I had to walk bent down to my seat. We had some unexpected passengers. Since this was a charter plane for us we thought we would have it all for ourselves. At the back was an empty stretcher, a huge first aid box and two local people. It seems that they had been the reason for the delay. They were hitching a ride to Constable Point, our next destination.

The airport and the town to the North. We are leaving Iceland and on our way to Greenland.

Looking out of the window at Iceland.

The flight to Constable point was boring since as soon as we got over the sea we were over cloud. We could not see any of Greenland until we dropped below the cloud on the final approach to Constable Point. All around were hills and a frozen fjord. The airport is on a flat strip of land next to the fjord. It's just a gravel strip, three hangers and two accommodation blocks. It was built by a mining company, but they had decided the mining was not profitable and so had handed the strip over to the Danish authorities. They maintained the airport because it's the only link between the nearby town of Scoresbysund and the rest of the world. Even then the link is not so good. It's a 15 minute chopper ride to the town. As we came into land I saw the chopper take off.

Arriving at Constable Point, Greenland. From left to right is Alan, Scott, Gorden, Glen, John with his fluorescent boots, Petter behind, Benny and one of the other base staff.

The base manager, Benny, met us when we landed. He was surprised to see us. He knew a plane was coming, but not that it would have 8 English guys on it! Strange we thought. He showed us to one of the accommodation blocks. The were quite good, YHA style. Lots of little rooms with bunk beds for two, two lounges and a kitchen. Room for 25 I guess. There were also lots of showers, two washing machines, two tumble dryers and a pay phone. It was a pleasant surprise, not what I expected give the location, not far from the middle of nowhere and with few visitors expected. I guess when the mining operations were active they had more people transiting though. Ten minutes later our luggage arrived at the door and we got what we needed for an overnight stay while the rest went into a hanger ready to be loaded the next day. Dinner was at 6pm, we were informed, over in the main building.

The accommodation block

15 minutes later the chopper arrived back. Two passengers got out and then someone on a stretcher was carried out and put onto the Metro. The Metro then took off. We found out later that someone in Scoresbysund was sick. Since there was space in the Metro it had been used to get two Nurses from Iceland to Constable Point to look after the patient while he was flown on the now empty plane to a hospital on the west coast of Greenland.

Helicopter returning from Scoresbysund

Dinner was also surprising good. We had the second sitting, the base staff, 7 I think, having already eaten. Soup and fresh bread to start with, then a main course of beef, potatoes and tinned veg and then a dessert of chocolate ice cream. On the table was a tray of the normal accompaniments: ketchup, mustard, pickles, salt, pepper, herbs, and one unusual tub of vitamin tablets. In the winter they won't get any natural light and with living off tinned veg maybe they are concerned they don't get all the vitamins they need. There was also a basket of apples and oranges and an seemingly endless supply of fresh filter coffee or tea. Since there is not much to do there except work, food must be important to them.

The plane to take us to Dronning Louise Land was due to leave at 9.00 the next day so we all had an early night except Glen who wanted a last shower before going onto the Glacier for 17 days. Night is really the wrong word. The flight to Greenland had take us into the Arctic Circle. It was also the middle of May with the longest day of the year approaching. What this really means is that the sun had not set or risen for a few months. It does not get dark at night. The sun does the usual East to West traverse and then keeps going at a low angle all the way back to the East. This upset my sleeping pattern. Thanks to Amanda, my sister, I had blinkers which helped a lot, but I still did not sleep well. This applied to my whole stay in Greenland and Iceland. I never adapted properly to sleeping in the light and it not getting dark at night.