The talks were hearty fayre such as Professor Vaughan’s on environmental change – and I arrived in the middle of this (late for class!) just as he was naming a few of the recent large ice shelves named after explorers of that heroic era that had parted company with the continent. ….  including the Wordie ice shelf’.  So named after my husbands grandfather Sir James Wordie.  Hmmmm, there went the family heirloom then.

There was a talk from a Ms Jane Rumble, head of the Polar Regions Unit, FCO – which I always think has a shadowy side to it and so I imagined Ms Rumble as a sort of white spook, talking about the Antarctic treaty as a ‘legacy of Captain Scott’.  Scott, I imagine, would have spluttered into his expedition whisky had he seen the resultant dibs of the continent. All done apparently in the shared concern for protection of, so far, the only continent not to have been a stage for any war.  All very polite at the moment but just you wait til that Antarctic ice cap gives way to opening up to some of  her riches below, it’ll be, stuff the manners, as  all hell  breaks loose in the rush to rape and pillage her. Same too for up north, although it’s already begun with a childish Russian attempt to drop a flag on the sea bed (they should watch that Eddie Izzard “do you have a flag?” on Youtube.com)

I did ask how Antarctica got be like an apple pie all carved into unfair sizes – some fat to some countries, some thin to others and USA in the middle with the Norwegians somewhere on the petticoats.  Answer was as evasive as the polar drift.

The inimitable Sir Ran Fiennes gave a talk on ‘The challenge of the Poles’, which was more about that gritty issue of why explorers do what they do.  He concluded, after illustrating with a variety of responses from well and not so well known folk, with his characteristic masterly understatement that if you have to ask you either get a you-asked-for-it disingenuous answer from one of the less scrupulous polar glory merchants or, as you have to ask, you ain’t going to get it anyway. Too true.

Onto the Gala dinner in the dining hall of Corpus Christi College; (scooping the obligatory Cambridge parking fine ticket on the way, despite parking in a NCP car park, …grrr, haven’t I nobler matters on the mind to worry about?  Mind you, with the amount of sledge traffic on Antarctica this centenary year, it wouldn’t surprise me if some found parking tickets on their sledges parked at the Pole). The magnificent and imposing stained glass window, illuminated from within, led us in through the archways, over the cobbles and through the quad.  Each of the interlinking high-ceilinged chambers looked like a theatrical stage with their panelled walls, chaise longues and classical sofas, (set back waiting for a Lumley type to drape themselves along,) and led us on into the splendid candlelit dining hall.  HRH Prince Philip, Prince Albert of Monaco and lesser mortals such as myself were amongst the guests and I felt as pleased as can be to be a guest at Simon and Jeffa Murray’s table, they are a brilliant double act, both vying with one another in their glamorous and adventure-packed lives.  Later at the charity auction, and having noticed earlier that a book on explorers’ stories by Robin Hanbury Tennyson was one of the Lots on offer, I bid with gusto for it, the 2^nd lot of the Auction – and won.  Only that Lot transpired to be some other book by someone I didn’t know and hadn’t heard of – oops!  Time to go home – a bit poorer in pocket but richer in learning about our proud legacy in polar expedition from Scott and about Antarctica and her changing environment.

PS.  It took my expedition colleague and friend Char Harrison to remind me, of a polar anniversary of my own and the fact that three days before on the 14^th January 2004, I had arrived at the Pole on my solo Antarctic expedition after a journey of 43 days 11 hours and 20 minutes, on (over and through) the ice cap.  Not as long as some of those earlier expeditions but a speed record in fact, and still a lot of oil-infused porridge to get through.   My own wee ice achievements in the shadow of such polar giants as Scott are down to a dream born of ‘sitting on the shoulders of giants’ such as Scott, Shackleton and more recent figures such as Liv Arneson and Borge Ousland. So I raise my glass to them and raise it once again to an old adversary from Antarctica who did an ‘Amundsen’ on me and pipped me to the post, my very good friend Fiona Thorniwell. If I hadn’t been chasing your tail Fiona, I think I would have broken a different record – that of being the slowest ever expedition on ice.

I would like to quietly salute one such polar contemporary of my own. When Fiona Thornewill piped me as the first British woman solo to the south pole by some 30 hours in 2003, I well remember receiving the message of her arrival, as a mere 18 or so nautical miles stood between us. Might as well have been a million. Perhaps like the first sighting of a Norwegian flag. I felt all the energy had been sucked from my very soul. God but those last miles were hard.

I’m surprised Scott and his men made it so far back from the Pole. Mind you, had it not been for Fiona and the knowledge that she was out there in the gloom, and she me, I don’t think we would have both smashed all previous speed records! In fact I do wonder if I would have bothered to get up out of my sleeping bag at all on some mornings.
I might let it be known that Fiona once she could see the Scott Amundsen station was in sight, she took a long break and waited for me to see if I could catch up and join her arrival.
I hope just such a spirit is still in evidence far away in the maddening crowds on Antarctica. Whilst still springing out of your sleeping bags of course. Much like in the vein of Amundsen I imagine, fair but focussed.

Here’s to you Fiona, frost on your nose (clink)

Rosie

Buckingham Palace cloakroom attendants have never seen anything like it. Rails of puffas, Pertex tops and sensible anoraks along with a mountain of multi-coloured stuff sacks.  The Queen was holding a reception for British explorers – and boy, what a party. It certainly blew those moth balls out.

My old polar team mate and real time friend Pom Oliver, and Canadian guide Matty McNair (freshly blown in on our gale from Baffin island), met at The Park Lane Hotel. In through the front revolving door and out in our glad rags, save our shoes which rather let down the superwomen image but we were grimly set on striding across the park to the Palace and our shoes were designed for catching cabs in, (not splodging through puddles in a stiff wind, silly).  I had already thrown caution to the wind by investing in a professional blow-dry as might befit the occasion, Pom had a constructed a chignon affair atop her head and Matty, well, Matty had brushed her hair. By the time we reached the gates to the palace we all looked as if we’d been through a car wash,  and the position of Pom’s hair clip gave a fairly accurate indication of the wind direction.  Matty’s strangely seemed not to have moved at all, whilst as for my hairdo, might as well have thrown my cash to the wind too.

We straightened ourselves out amidst an excited hubbub in the cloakroom, where various groups seem to be practising curtseying . Someone asked me how to do it and should you put your left or right foot behind first?  I’d never thought about this before, just done it really. And now I was suddenly forced to think it through which inevitably resulted in a Captain Haddock moment . “Captain, do you sleep with your beard under or over the sheet at night?”  Pan to the captain wide awake in the middle of the night torturing himself with the dilemma, under or over? … Left foot or right foot?

Still pondering this tricky issue, we made for the wide, red-carpeted stairway up to the reception.   ‘Here we go, best foot forward gals’ I said, which for some reason drew our eyes down and instinctively to Matty’s feet as she was padded towards her destiny resplendent in her Inuit galoshes.  This elicited Force 12  gales of laughter from us. Even the female attendant at the bottom of the stairs couldn’t resist a laugh . Mascara ruined, we repaired to the cloakroom, re-shod Matty and launched ourselves into the fray.

Bit of a panicky jostling going on in the presentation line where it seemed that a lot of the valiant ‘explorers’ were behaving like highly strung race horses losing their nerve over getting into their starting boxes.  It was, of course, the greatest honour to be presented to both the Queen and HRH Prince Philip. Once this honourable hurdle had been successfully ‘cleared,’ the decibel level ‘the other side’ was deafening with the excitement and a little post-nerve relief for not having lost a footing or said something indescribably daft (I think).

A sea awaited of wonderful, exciting, colourful people.  What a party, everyone was loving every moment of it – so much that I daresay no one really noticed the wealth of pictures adorning the walls. A variety of members of the Royal Family circulated comfortably and their genuine interest lent a relaxed and jovial party atmosphere.

I can actually say that I enjoyed myself so much that I don’t think I got through even one whole glass of excellent champagne (well there was a vertiginous fear in my heels of losing my sense of perpendicular).

Did I make any gaffes? I smugly thought that, right up until the end,  I really had done rather well – for me that is, but oh no I had to blow it right at the end at the door before leaving.  Running up like a little teenage groupee to Ben Fogle, with whom I had ‘chatted’ before at the Park charity foundation (for about 30 seconds. Three years ago) and whose wife went to the same school as me and, well ,you can see I led myself into a cul-de-sac  here as clearly he didn’t have a clue who this giddy thing with weird hair  was and that she had nothing in particular to say.

‘Time to go’ Pom said.  And off we went in our finery, round the corner into the park. Where behind the wall we took off our glass slippers and put back on the galoshes. It was time to catch the last pumpkin home from Liverpool Street.