At Sea to Murmansk
We left Franz Josef Land yesterday and headed out into the Barents Sea towards the Russian mainland and Murmansk. To cross the Barents Sea will take a little more than a day and we will arrive in Murmansk tomorrow morning. The day at sea is always an opportunity to watch for passing wildlife and today was a quiet day on the bridge, although a few distant white-beaked dolphins were sighted along with a variety of seabirds including Atlantic puffins.
Today was perhaps best for reflection on what we have achieved in this voyage. There is a sense of satisfaction in achieving the well documented ‘firsts’ associated with this journey. But perhaps the greater satisfaction is in getting back to the very basics of expedition travel: heading out into a new area without a firm plan, at the whim of weather and ice conditions, and making the best of whatever is available to us at the time.
At the start of the 21st century over 40,000 people visit Antarctica annually. It is unlikely that this many people have ever been to Franz Josef Land. We have enjoyed comforts and a style of travel that Payer and Weyprecht, Frederick Jackson, Fridtjof Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen could never have dreamed of. But we all want to explore new places, share new experiences and come back with new tales to tell. A colleague introduced me to the idea of a mental map. That while we can look at an atlas or a globe and see where places are, it is only by travelling to them that we can fill in the mental map with a sense of that place. This journey has enabled us to fill in some of the blanks on our mental maps.
