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To all the best things in life, plus a pile of post and a leaky toilet.

Time to find out what on earth I've been lugging through various airports over the past few days (I can't remember exactly what's in those ridiculously heavy bags but, let's face it, it's probably books) and to discover just how little the kids have missed me!

Thanks for reading my abstruse witterings; it's been nice to be able to share my preposterous adventure with you. I've spent almost a month pottering about in the most incredible places I've ever seen, and on sober reflection I think that I can safely conclude, without fear of doubt or contradiction: "that's enough penguins..."

Mid-Atlantic, just north of the equator

Ten hours out from Santiago, and my journey has one last mighty dose of context to force upon me. From my window I have a perfect view of the horizontal smile of the quarter-crescent moon, and am captivated by its reflections on the wing and, far below, on the surface of the ocean. In the southern hemisphere, of course, the moon and constellations appear upside-down compared with our familiar northern orientation; seeing the moon now on its side, and watching the southern stars recede behind the wing, gives me a sudden and quite disarming sense of the shape of our world, and of the shallowness of the tiny habitat that we're so appallingly bad at sharing.

It's an odd thing for someone with a Wittgensteinian view of language to say (although if you've been reading this blog you'll know that I'm hardly averse to saying odd things) but the view from up here is a beautiful yet merciless reminder that what's out there is what there is, and there isn't anything else.

Having spent the past few weeks considering the work of the Antarctic (and indeed lunar) pioneers - exploring exploration itself, I suppose – I've reached no profound (nor even trivial) conclusions (other than that my photography could do with improvement, and my prose could do with fewer clauses in brackets.) However, I've arrived at a something that appears to be, at least, a procedural restriction. (It also appears to be cribbed shamelessly from set theory and Kurt Godel, but there you go.) We can describe, delineate and eulogise the universe, but all we're doing is measuring ourselves against the bits we've noticed: it remains brutally inflexible and insensitive to our theories and our opinions. Its final, impenetrable defence against our attempts fully to understand it is the unanswerable fact that it INCLUDES us.

I can detect the fingers of M. Gladwell twitching to tear into this obvious piffle (and to accuse me of having become an arch-realist) but such shenanigans will have to wait until I'm back in a eulogised bit of the universe that serves Harvest Pale.

Santiago Airport

Match Report:

In a surprisingly one-sided contest, Excessively Polite Passenger scored an unexpected away win over Excess Baggage Charges. EBC was the form team, coming off the back of a convincing victory over Rude Foreign Businessman, but in fact this worked in EPP's favour. EBC was expecting regular striker Implausible Upgrade Request to figure in EPP's starting line-up, but instead EPP opted for a defensive formation known as the "pretending not to have three carry-on bags by hiding them behind eachother" technique. This enabled the veteran midfielders Ingratiating Smile and Say Please to sneak behind the EBC defence and get the bag on the belt with no obvious signs of hernia or spinal injury. This left newcomer Air Miles Card to combine with that seasoned international Talk About Weather in a sneaky one-two, putting Window Seat Request through to score.

In the closing moments EBC tried to get back in the game with a smart move by Hand Baggage Label, but this was cleared off the line by Already Got One (brought off the bench moments earlier to replace the rather more truthful Haven't Already Got Three.)

This puts EPP through to the next round, a tricky fixture in Madrid against Not Enough Overhead Space.

Ushuaia / Santiago

It's a glorious summer evening in Chile, and the view from the Holiday Inn Santiago Airport is – well, the airport, of course, but in the distance the snowy Andes peaks are blatantly showing off in the low sunlight. Time for a relaxing evening of doing Carnets, editing a few thousand photos, staring in disbelief at my gravity-friendly array of hand baggage, and trying to find something to eat. Being in Chile, a chilli would appear to be favourite; I'm not holding out too much hope for the hotel restaurant, although the menu claims there's "micro brew beer" (which probably means American Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, but it's better than nothing...)

Most of my shipmates are on this evening's flight to Miami, and thence to various bits of North America; there are only two or three others heading for Europe tomorrow, and I think they're in different hotels, so I have a good excuse to be anti-social for a while. My flight to Madrid is tomorrow afternoon, assuming that they don't take one look at my baggage and transfer me to a cargo plane...

It's kind of a wrench having to leave behind the best place in the world – stunning beauty, amazing wildlife, indescribable emptiness – but great to be heading back to the best things in the world – family, friends, Harvest Pale Ale. In a piece of highly fortuitous accidental planning, I'll get back just in time for Mia's Christmas performance and, as an added bonus, the start of the first Test match. Splendid!

South Atlantic

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday: it's sort of accepted practice for the passengers to wear little name badges so that we can remember eachother's names (I keep forgetting to wear mine, of course); it says a lot about Neil Armstrong that he always wears one, despite being the most famous man in the world. I was really hoping that he'd turn out to be a nice chap, and I've not been disappointed: he's quiet, unassuming and very humble about his achievements. I feel very privileged to have met him.

Despite frantically deleting obvious rejects as I go along, I now have roughly 11,000 photos: my hard drive is full, and I'm storing the overspill on CF cards.

Looking back through them this morning, it became grimly apparent that I have 10,997 very average photos and three which are actually quite good, but frankly (given what they're photos of) average will do!

Today was the first stage of the journey home: across from the Falkland Islands to the southern part of Argentina, and then through the Beagle Channel to Ushuaia where we docked at about 10.30. The sea was rather lumpy again – lying down is OK, but moving about the ship was a rather hazardous procedure and frankly I was glad when the uppy-downy stuff was over.

I've spent the past four hours packing, and trying to make my luggage look half as heavy as it actually is; I've somehow managed to acquire enough stuff (OK, I admit it, books) such that my hand baggage weighs more than the check-in weight limit. My check-in baggage weighs more than Switzerland. This could get expensive...

Tomorrow it's a 6.30 start, off the ship and into Ushuaia for a certain amount of pottering about before the charter flight to Santiago in the afternoon; overnight at an airport hotel, Wednesday morning trying to get online and being horrified by excess baggage charges, then an overnight flight to Madrid, connecting flight to Heathrow, and home by Thursday teatime. After three weeks of revisiting the deeds of the great explorers, it seems a little unfair to be able to think in terms of "home by Thursday teatime" rather than "home in nine months, providing we don't get stuck in pack ice and have to spend the winter at 40 below freezing living in an upturned boat and eating lard." Sorry, Sir Ernest...

Falkland Islands: Carcass Island / New Island

You wouldn't know it from the name, but Carcass Island is lovely: lots of wildlife, especially birds of various persuasions (penguins, wildfowl, perching and birds of prey.) The weather (and indeed the landscape) is not dissimilar to the Scottish islands. The cute-ometer was peaking again, as various baby creatures jostled for the attention of the assembled long lenses. I would refer specifically to one unimaginably cute set of chicks, but I've completely failed to find out what they're called. It won't be "duck"; it'll be "Greater Pin-Tailed Brown-Headed Magellanic Aquabeast" or something similarly elaborate.

This afternoon was our last landing: New Island, a private nature reserve, containing vast numbers of rockhopper penguins, black-browed albatrosses (just what we need, more albatrosses) and blue-eyed cormorants. Amongst MANY other things.

Highlight of the day: watching a baby penguin hatch. All together now: "aaaaaaaahhhhhh!"

No hang, on, that wasn't quite right...

Highlight of the day: having dinner with Neil Armstrong. Not quite as cute, but possibly even more memorable.

Falkland Islands: Steeple Jason Island / Saunders Island

Weeks ago, on our first day at sea, I spent two hours trying to get one decent photo of one black-browed albatross. In retrospect, that was not perhaps the wisest use of my time. This morning, on Steeple Jason Island, I spent an hour or so at a vantage point from which I could have pointed the camera randomly in any direction at all and still be 100% certain that it was pointing at an albatross. Or, more likely, a lot of albatrosses. We encountered a surfeit, a superabundance, an embarrassment of albatrosses: 159,000 breeding pairs, according to the last count (and by the time they'd finished counting there were probably half as many again...)

We did in fact see a few other creatures: striated caracaras, upland geese, prions: but it was almost impossible to photograph them because of all the albatrosses in the way.

This afternoon we were at Saunders Island: we landed on a broad, 2-mile long beach which would have been perfect for beach cricket, had it not been for the howling 40-knot sandstorm. In the slip cordon we had gentoo penguins, in the midwicket area there were Magellanic penguins, and at very very very long on (about a mile away) there was a large colony of of rockhopper penguins. Having fought our way through the gritty gusts (which bothered the penguins not a jot) we were pleased to find that the rockhopper penguin is a literal-minded beast: it's a penguin, and it hops on rocks. Jolly good.

Falkland Islands: Stanley

OK, feeling a bit better now... Two days of continual uppy-downy behaviour was more than my feeble constitution is equipped to deal with, I'm afraid.

At noon today we docked at Stanley, and there was much rejoicing from all and sundry because:

1. Stanley doesn't go up and down all the time
   
2. Stanley has shops
   
3. Stanley has pubs
   

We were met at quayside by a fleet of very British buses for a bit of a tour; we stopped to photograph three of the dozens of old ships which have been simply condemned and left to fall apart where they lay in the harbour, then on to see the airport (which is basically a building the size of a small house plus a few sheds), the local neighbourhood minefield, the small but completely excellent museum, the garden of an anti-whaling activist containing whalebone sculptures and his pet reindeer that thinks it's a dog, a garden overrun by garden gnomes, and the memorial to the fallen of the 1982 war.

The atmosphere of Stanley is an odd combination of sombre and grateful remembrance of the Task Force that liberated them, and raving eccentricity in the best British tradition. In fact it's more British than anywhere I've seen in Britain: Union flags abound, all the cars are Land Rovers, every purveyor of food specialises in fish & chips, and there are red phone boxes on street corners.

And there are pubs. Obviously, as the only Englishman on the ship, I was duty-bound to squeeze in a quick pubcrawl: sadly there's no proper beer in the Falklands, so this exercise was more rewarding in a spiritual sense than in a thirst-quenching one (I'd forgotten just how disgusting canned Boddingtons really is), but the final pub score was Englishman 3, Everybody Else 1. Hooray.

Sadly for my bank balance and my hopes of avoiding multiple excess baggage charges, I found a bookshop. I was, I think, by my standards, very restrained...

The injured passenger, by the way, is now in the hospital: it turns out that it's a double pelvic fracture, whereby the bottom part has... Well... Come off. It sounds absolutely dreadful, but apparently he's now in a body cast with enough sedatives and painkillers to seriously inconvenience a rhino.

Tonight we're sailing around the north of the islands, heading for a spectacular place called Steeple Jason Island: it's by no means certain that we'll be able to land, as rough seas could prevent it, but if we can get ashore we'll be joining roughly 300,000 black-browed albatrosses, amongst other winged wonders. Time to unleash the long lens again...

Drake Passage

...and this time it's wobbly.

Most of the passengers, who are clearly androids of some sort, are going about their daily business as though the ship wasn't rolling around all over the place. I, being a mere namby-pamby landlubber human being, have spent another horizontal day, trying to remind myself that being on a turbulent sea in a ship is a lot better than being on a turbulent sea not in a ship.

Tomorrow we arrive at Stanley (which I'm reasonably sure was Port Stanley at one stage, but this appears no longer to be the case.) We're only there for a few hours, so I'm trying to figure out a schedule whereby I can sneak off for a pint at some stage. There are several pubs, and as an Englishman it's my duty to go and complain about the weather in at least one of them.

Southern Ocean

We're heading for the Falklands a day earlier than expected: last night we were contacted by another ship in South Georgia, en route to Antarctica. One of their passengers has broken his pelvis, and urgently needs to be evacuated to a hospital, and the nearest one is at Port Stanley; as we're heading there anyway, we're leaving South Georgia a day early to get him there.

This appears to have worked in our favour, as apparently we're running just ahead of a storm. As it stands, we're in force 8 winds, very heavy seas, lots of people (including myself) "not that hungry" and spending the day lying down; if we'd left on schedule, it would have been much worse. I'm trying not to think about it.

Apparently the ship is being followed by a variety of albatross species, including Royal and Wandering (the big ones): photos will have to wait until I can stay vertical for more than a few seconds...

South Georgia: Stromness / Grytviken

For me, this was perhaps the most eagerly awaited day of the whole journey: a Shackleton-tastic pilgrimage (almost) literally in the footsteps of the great man and his fellow serial survivors, Worsley and Crean.

We started near Stromness, the now long-abandoned whaling station into which the three bedgraggled, starving, exhausted men staggered at the end of their unprecedented 36-hour non-stop crossing of South Georgia. I walked / squelched / waded / scrambled a little over a mile up the wide, stony, peat-bog valley, across roaring streams of glacial meltwater (pausing only to pull an American out of a waist-deep bog) to a waterfall. It was the very waterfall down which, on 20^th May 1916, they abseiled, using a too-short tattered rope with no belay. It was the final obstacle in their odyssey, seven months since the Endurance was crushed by the Weddell Sea ice, 1500 miles to the south-west. Walking down to the derelict station, I tried (hopelessly, of course) to imagine what they might have been thinking, preparing themselves for their first contact with the outside world in over a year and a half.

What I'm thinking, preparing myself for my first contact with a decent pint in over three and a half weeks, is that if Sir Ernest's local had served Harvest Pale he might have thought twice about heading south at every opportunity...

But south is where he headed and where he remains: his is one of a few dozen graves in the little cemetery at Grytviken, the best-known of the derelict whaling stations in South Georgia. He died on his ship Quest, moored across the bay, on his way south for yet another Antarctic adventure. It was 5^th January 1922; he was 47 years old. Unlike the other occupants, he's buried with his head towards the south, as it was in life.

We had a little ceremony by the graveside, drinking a toast to The Boss (as just about everybody called him) while Ron, a jazz trumpeter amongst our number, played Brahms' Lullaby (it had been played at his funeral, by one of his men, on a banjo.) I'm afraid the moment was rather lost on the majority. Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that when in a graveyard one removes one's hat; sadly in this regard Carlos the Mexican photographer and I were outnumbered by roughly 150 to 2. As I think The Boss would have agreed (once he stopped spinning beneath our feet), "it's raining" is a pretty shoddy excuse for disrespect. The parade of becapped Americans lining up to be photographed leaning on his headstone (meanwhile trampling all over non-famous people's graves) won't have lessened his RPM, I'm sure; thankfully after a short while the herd dispersed, leaving the sodden graveyard empty but for three or four of us with our thoughts and the rain.

The other headstones reveal short, hard lives: whalers who died as young as 19, a few mariners claimed by the pitiless Southern Ocean, and an Argentine soldier killed in the 1982 conflict – his grave dressed with a wreath of poppies placed by the British government representative.

Whose name is Pat: sadly he isn't the postman, but he is the harbourmaster, and also the bod in charge of policing the 200-mile fishery exclusion zone. As he delightedly told me, last time they seized a boat for fishing without a licence, it was uneconomic to sell it for scrap so they got the Falkland Islands garrison to sink it. This task was undertaken with excessive enthusiasm ("you're only supposed to blow the b****y hatches off") such that a photo of bits of ship scattering to the horizon made the cover of the fishing industry trade journal ("Don't mess with the South Georgia Fishery Inspector")!