named after such an awful thing. The ship was anchored just offshore and in front of an amazingly large and very active glacier. We were all hoping for a large calving but alas this never happened.

We got ready for our zodiac landing and were really overdressed. It was hot and we had more layers than we really needed so we found ourselves leaving a pile of clothes on the beach near to the landing site. It was stunningly beautiful here and although there was a colony of 250 breeding pairs of Gentoo penguins there were moments of complete silence. This made a great change from the usual noisy coming and goings of a typical penguin colony. Again we wandered and observed penguins and also sat ourselves down uphill from the beach in case of a large glacier calving. We were told not to go on the beach nearest to the glacier as you would have approximately 25 seconds to get 100 metres before the big

wave occurred if a large calving happened. Of course there was one of party that made a beeline for the glacier beach - oh where is that large calving we thought! We also shared a drink with Daphne and Rob, as Daphne’s brother had given her a shot of flavoured vodka to drink on their furthest point south! It was also to be our first and only landing on the actual continent of Antarctica! There are only 4 tourist landing points allowed on the continent and this is to keep the environment as pristine as possible. This rule is totally understandable and very necessary as there are a fair few cruise ships within the area.

The glacier seemed to creek and groan and we saw a few small calvings but nothing very large and it was very hard to try and see where the calving had taken place, due to the size of the glacier and the fact that the noise of a calving has a few seconds delay! It was wonderful