Author: Paul

One of the best wildlife experiences I had when I visited South Georgia last year was also one of the most unexpected. I was standing in the tussac grass at Salisbury Plain, almost deafened by the metallic trumpeting of its enormous king penguin colony, when one of the guides told me to look up. As […]

Last November I was lucky enough to visit Elephant Island, that bleak mountainous outcrop at the farthest tip of the South Shetlands that points the way from the Antarctic Peninsula to South Georgia.  Elephant Island is forever famous as the location where the stranded men of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance expedition sheltered while ‘the Boss’ […]

One of my favourite places in Grytviken in South Georgia is somewhere overlooked. Tucked into an anteroom of the Norwegian Church is the old whaling station’s forgotten library. After browsing the shelves, you can flick through 1950s registration books to discover which whalers were the most avid readers. It’s a gently moving experience: while nature […]

At the end of 2022 I was able to tick off one of my big bucket list destinations when I travelled south to join an expedition cruise sailing to South Georgia and Antarctica. While I packed up my warm clothes and checked my spare memory cards and batteries for my camera I was bubbling over […]

South Georgia is often described as the Serengeti of the Southern Ocean. It’s a title that speaks of the outsized attractions of this thin speck of an island, because when it comes to wildlife, South Georgia truly is the real deal. If you’ve ever considered the Galapagos Islands, the mountain gorillas of East Africa or […]

No figure towers over the history of polar exploration than that of Sir Ernest Shackleton. On polar expedition cruises, it’s a rare voyage there that doesn’t include a lecture about Shackleton’s life and the epic survival story of his Endurance expedition. It’s a story in which South Georgia plays a central role, and many visitors […]

One of the highlights of any trip to South Georgia is a visit to Grytviken and the South Georgia Museum. At the heart of the old abandoned whaling station, overlooked by mountains and facing out to the wide sweep of King Edward Cove, few museums have a more spectacular location. On our most recent visit, […]

Whether you’re counting down the days until you set out on your Antarctic adventure or just daydreaming of icebergs and penguins from the comfort of your armchair, there is a host of podcasts out there to get you in an Antarctica state of mind. We’ve sorted through the best Antarctica podcasts worth listening to. Just […]