Author: worstjourney
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Drawing in Dundee
I always love visiting Scotland, and one of my favourite things to do while there is hang out with the ghosts of the Heroic Age on the RRS Discovery in Dundee. I will always recommend a visit, but if you happen to be convenient to Dundee on Thursday 27 July, I will be hosting a…
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Ponting (and me) at The Atkinson (no relation)
In the seaside town of Southport is a museum called The Atkinson. This has no connection to Surgeon Lieutenant E.L. Atkinson R.N., but does have a polar connection in that Frederick Hooper, Terra Nova steward, spent the latter years of his life in Southport, and left them his Antarctic stuff. It also happens to be…
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Die Schlimmste Reise
Worst Journey: The Graphic Novel is out in Germany! From 23 May 2023 you will be able to get a super-large glossy and deluxe Die Schlimmste Reise der Welt from Panini, translated by the excellent and fastidious Katharina Reiche. The annotations are significantly reduced from the English version, but are be available on this site…
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Polar Museum Show
When an unexpected gap in programming opened up in the Polar Museum’s exhibition calendar in the autumn of 2022, they generously asked if I might like to do something about the graphic novel to fill the space between shows. Vol.1 is only the journey to Antarctica, and therefore not very polar, as such, so we…
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Sea Ice Basics
Antarctica is, as we all know, a continent of ice. But the ice isn’t just the ice caps and glaciers on the continent itself – it extends off the coast in all directions as the Southern Ocean seasonally freezes over. This fringe of frozen sea gives the penguins a place to escape their predators and…
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Arrival Heights
With the heavy schedule of trainings and breakfast meetings, I fought to get every ounce of sleep I could. Word on the street was that the light was much better for photography at ‘night’, when the sun was lower in the sky – the angle making the light warmer, and shadows longer and richer –…
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Discovery Hut Photo Tour
My first full day in Antarctica was the coldest of the whole trip. I noted in my journal that it was -4°F/-20°C – I don’t recall if that was with wind chill or without, but it was definitely windy that day, so you can imagine. The previous day’s flurries were still blowing around, so the…
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The Story of the Discovery Hut
The Discovery Hut is named such because it was built on the Discovery Expedition, in early 1902, when the ship had found its permanent berth in the small inlet at the end of the southernmost peninsula of Ross Island. This was imaginatively dubbed Winter Quarters Bay, and the spit of land adjacent to it was…
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Induction McMurdo
Here’s the thing about arriving at McMurdo: It’s kind of like diving into your first week at college. You have a series of orientation sessions, a bunch of classes in different buildings with random numbers, and you meet a lot of new people with names and roles that are hard to keep straight, while also…
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Getting There
For such an enormous bird, the landing was admirably smooth, and once all post-landing checks had been completed, the hatch was opened. Long before we felt the cold, we could see our breath in the air, as the moisture levels in the cabin met the declining temperature. I had read about how stepping off the…