Saturday 11 May and I finally made it home! Steve managed to get a late flight to Alderney last night but I had missed the last boat to Sark so had an evening in Guernsey before going home.

Tiredness took over when I got home and I have felt exhausted for the weekend, sleeping in on Sunday morning,  something that never happens! Thanks to Liz, Sam and Meg for that lovely lie-in!

So,  back to work on Monday and normality, although the PR will continue for a little while. There is much to convey to those who want to listen. Even though our time on the ice was short, our adventure was long and we learned a lot about a foreign land and culture. And of course there’s always the question of going back…………………………..!

Simon and Steve finally left Greenland today and are now in Iceland awaiting a flight back to the UK early tomorrow morning - touch wood and weather permitting.

Simon saw the doctor at a hospital in Tasillaq yesterday and will obviously need ongoing treatment when he returns to the Channel Islands. It is believed to be ligament damage rather than a break.

This morning he and Steve caught a flight to Kulusuk from where they had hoped to catch a connecting flight on to Iceland. However, still dogged by bad luck, the weather again turned for the worse and all flights were grounded. This means they are now spending the night in Kulusuk and are hoping that weather conditions will have improved by tomorrow so they can finally begin the journey home.

Yesterday while Steve and Simon were in Isortoq they were invited to share a meal with a local family and also managed a short walk through the settlement. The local children followed them everywhere until they shared out their chocolate and sweet rations! The children then climbed onto a roof and sat there and ate the lot!

This afternoon they have flown by helicopter to Tasillaq. Simon is hoping to see a doctor at the hospital in Tasillaq in the morning. The onward flight to Kulusuk is booked for Wednesday. From there Steve and Simon should be able to get a flight out to Iceland.

Greenland

After 5 days stranded on the Greenland icecap due to bad weather, the call we were waiting for finally came through from the Greenland Police, “the helicopter will pick you up in a few hours”, the transfer to Tasillaq, the largest town on the East coast of Greenland. We packed and we felt rather excited waited for the impending “whump” of the chopper to fill our ears. The “whump” never came - instead a call from my new “best” friend at police HQ, “Simon, it is Leif here, we are sorry the helipcopter is not coming for anoither 3 days!”. Dismay. Anger. A cup of tea…………… calm, discuss.
A brief discussion it was to - Isortoq, a village that sounded as if should be in a novel by Tolkien, lay to the south, 80 miles and beyond the mountains. Could we get there? Once a day a Helo “whumped” from Isortoq to Tasillaq, our goal. How to get there? My foot, as im sure you are all aware, makes it impossible for me to ski. A private helo - no, a man with a skidoo - no, two Greenlandic men, two sledges and 26 dogs - thats the way to travel up here! They arrived 13 and a half hours after setting out from Tolkiens kingdom, Michael and Hans, suntanned, strong and carrying sandwiches and Coke! The dogs rested whilst we packed away our tents and kit. This time we would be leaving for sure. Fourteen hours later we arived in Isortoq, the dogs having rested for ten minutes on the way home - a feat of endurance that the most hardy polar adventuruer could never match, a feat that will amaze me for the rest of my days. 24 hours on and I have visited the same dogs. I have no doubt that they could do it all again if now asked by their owners.

Isortoq is home to 80 people, 20 of whom are children, and 200 dogs. To be honest you can work out the ratio by the smell, as that amount of dogs do create a small amount of mess! The children are like all children I have come across in the Arctic - cheeky, persistent and helpful. This morning we awoke early to the dawn chorus of 200 dogs wanting their breakfast and soon small faces appeared at the windows urging us to come for a walk around the village and hoping to be given “presents” of our unwanted chocolate rations! Both were accomplished and after visiting the major sites of our new location (very interesting Mobile phone mast Adi!), I retired to our lodgings, the Village Community Centre, to write this blog and to rest the dodgy foot.

Our thoughts now turn to travelling home. We seem to have been away an age and we have now made the first and probably hardest step to getting back to Blighty and our “dear Channel Islands” . The Expedition may have ended early and in failure but we have completed different goals and overturned a different set of problems to those that we we were expecting to encounter.

A quick note to Mr Murphy at the GP - there are obviously very few Scousers in Greenland - all the cars have their hubcaps!”

Halted on the ice sheet

Today Steve and Simon were told by the local authorities that they were going to have to wait out on the ice another three days for the helicopter to evacuate them. Infuriatingly the local authority had deemed them in need of evacuation but not as an emergency! All this only an hour from when the helicopter was due!

Taking matters into their own hands and using the satellite phone for communication they have successfully managed to arrange for a local dog-sled team to come for them instead. This team is based approximately 50kms away from Steve and Simon’s current position and it will take the dogs around eight hours to reach them.

The team will be leaving their village at 4:30am local time tomorrow. Hopefully within the next 48 hours Steve and Simon should be back in civilisation and in an area with mobile phone coverage which will make onward arrangements a little easier.

Once again we will update this site as and when we hear from them.

Steve managed a quick sat phone call to Erica tonight. This is the information he passed on:

Steve said… Yesterday he built a 4ft snow wall to keep the tent sheltered from the 35mph winds, and a toilet. 

Today they were speaking to the helicopter pilot at about 11:30 our time, to see if it might be possible to pick them up but weather conditions didn’t allow that.

There have been 2 clearances of about 15 mins each today but the sun was not sufficient to charge the battery for the laptop, so they may not be able to email until they get back to Iceland.

He had planned to build an igloo but it turned out the snow was too wet. Approximately 80cm of fresh snow had fallen while they have been camped there so the tent was now in a deep hole and the toilet kept filling up.

Simon’s ankle is improving with rest and if the helicopter can’t get in tomorrow, Friday, they are considering walking a short distance, as much as Simon can manage, back towards Tasillaq. At least then they will be doing something positive towards getting home and easing their stiffening limbs and backs from being cramped in the tent together.

We will update the site further when we receive more news.

We are still camped at the same position we were at yesterday due to Simon’s foot injury and are now waiting for a helicopter to evacuate us off the ice. We have tried to find ways for Steve to continue by attaching him to another group but logistically this is proving nigh on impossible. We hope to be back in normal communication range within the next 48 hours. We are both well apart from the obvious injury and will update everyone as soon as possible.

After a few days of hard work in bad weather we woke this morning to better conditions but unfortunately Simon has sustained an ankle injury which makes further travel impossible. More details to follow in the next 24 hours.