Even as a little girl I knew our family was different – we weren’t happy, I didn’t have friends, and I dreamed of moving to the country and having a pony. It seemed totally unattainable for us townies and when it happened it gave me a deep and wonderful knowledge that dreams really do come true. Life has thrown a few challenging things my way – as it does to most of us – and I have learned that just when those things threaten to become overwhelming, hopes and dreams long forgotten, just sometimes, that’s just when a dream can come true. Don’t ever stop dreaming, whether you are 7, as I was with my pony dream, or 67 as I am now, or anything in between or indeed any time at all. As a young adult I dreamed of seeing Everest with my own eyes with no idea that it was something I could ever achieve. To stand there and do that very thing – I can still shut my eyes and be there.

You’ll have gathered how much I love wild and lonely places, nature, the sky above me, the earth or the sea beneath my feet. For more than half my life my dream has been to come to the Arctic and to stand where Nansen stood and lived for a winter. Keep dreaming folks and keep hoping, whatever it is…if mine can come true, so can yours.

Everything else is a bonus now – polar bears, walruses, the light on the sea, the ice, the sky – it is stunningly, unbelievably beautiful here. To stand and stare. I am so lucky.

That lonely little patch of flat land at the bottom of the cliffs is where Nansen and Johanssen overwintered, they made a shelter from stones and a driftwood log and lived off polar bears and walrusses. It wouldn’t have been green when they were there,  just ice.

And here is what they looked out at, again, it would have been solid ice and of course what they didn’t see was a ship….this is the lovely Sea Spirit waiting patiently for us as we walked where they walked, breathed the air they breathed and looked out on the same sea they looked at every day.