Our son, Andrew, now works for the British Antarctic Survey as a communications specialist or, more precisely, “Wintering Communications Manager”. This means that at the tail-end of October 2008 he set off  down to Rothera station on the Antarctic Peninsular. It’s an 18 month post (and no, there aren’t any trips home!) so he’ll be out of the country until around April 2010.

While there he will be keeping his blog Travelling South going with regular, and when it’s very hectic, not so regular, reports of life in and around the station. Just so he doesn’t forget what life back home is like, I’m going to use this blog to give a flavour of what those of us “Staying North” are up to…