Burgers and culture in Reykjavik

With great courage, teamwork and sheer grit and determination we have achieved our first goal: getting through Stansted airport. This challenge overcome, we found ourselves in Reykjavik (sp?) and cosily holed up at Snorri's guesthouse. Reykjavik (sp?) is pleasant, small and expensive. Icelanders are not as tall as we thought but sport a reassuring amount of facial hair. We have visited the museum where we learnt about the vikings and that the arrival of the photobooth in Iceland was a sign of the country entering into the modern age. Just had our last burger in anticiaption of 30 days of camp rations.
We leave Reykjavik on a 9am flight tomorrow for Constable Point. we'll spend two nights there before being choppered onto Renland. We're told Constable Point has an airstrip, alot of mud, drunken violence and a polar bear problem (they're drunk and violent) so we'll be pretty keen to move on from there. So that's the last blog entry direct from us and we'll be phoning them in via Emily and Catherine from now on.

Sponsoring...

A few people have been asking about sponsoring us. We are very grateful for this. There are two ways that you can sponsor us. You can make a donation to Sobell House via the link on the website. We have already raised over £500 for this great charity. Or you can make a donation the expedition, if you would like to do this, get in touch with one of us.

5 Days to go..

It's only five days until we depart for Iceland, the first stop on our journey to Renland. I've just been to pick up our new tent from Terra Nova, which is the final thing on my 'to do list' besides packing odds and ends like toothbrushes and eating loads of crisps and buiscuits!
We've heard reports, via other teams currently in Greenland, that it has been unseasonaly cold and that this winter's snow is still at sea level. This is far from ideal, but with any luck conditions are improving as I write.
While in Renland we hope to be able to report back by our sat phone, though this may prove impractical.
That's it for now.

Oh yeah, thanks Chris and Luke for the loan of their tracievers and can somebody remind me to pack some cutlery.

Research

In March we were contacted by Dr. Geoffrey Halliday who has been working on the Flora (flowering plants and ferns) of the central fjord region of Greenland since 1961. Although he has pretty good coverage of Scoresby Sound he lacks any information on Renland apart from a few coastal sites. Dr. Halliday has asked if we can make complete list of plant species occurring in the area in which we will be exploring and climbing, in particular he wants us to note species occurring above 1500m and recording the highest altitude at which species are found. We have a ‘Flowers of Greenland’ guide and will attempt to identify as many specimens in the field as possible - we have a bit of swotting up to do before we leave for Greenland! We have been sent an Arctic plant press for drying and transporting flowering and fruiting specimens back to the UK for further identification. It is great to be adding a research element to our climbing expedition and contributing to such a long-term study.

When not learning our plants we are in the process of planning a fundraising Race Night in Oxford for early June......watch this space

Sad News.

Unfortunatly Alex has decided, for personal reasons, to leave the expedition. This is a great shame for all of us, though the expedition will still be going ahead as planned.

Augustine Courtauld Memorial Trust.

The expedition is very grateful to have received another grant today. This grant came from the a trust set up in memory of Augustine Courtauld, a prolific adventurer, who took part in several expeditions to Greenland in the 1920's and 30's.

Information about the trust can be found at: www.augustinecourtauldtrust.org

packing.

We spent yesterday packing and last minute shopping. We are still waiting for some food to arrive, but we hope to have everything shipped off by the end of the week.

One of the photos shows Crispin trying to pack himself into a barrel. We eventually told that he was allowed to come on the plane with us as long as he promised to do all the washing up on the expedition.