After a careful recce of the beach where the polar bear had been the night before, Phil and Jonathan declared it safe for a shore party to walk along the terminal moraine of the glacier at Flintholmen. The terrain was very different from anything we’d been on before, soft mud and pointed hillocks where Jonathan positioned himself as lookout after carefully scouting our route.
Returning to the boat for our last evening aboard it was time to pack and have a final review of the sketchbooks. Espen and the crew had prepared a great evening meal, salmon which had been marinaded since Wednesday followed by reindeer stew with creamy mash.
No need for an early breakfast with taxis to the airport arriving at 0900. SAS flights back to London, direct this time without a layover in Tromsø, were fine apart from poor airport signage at Oslo. We were directed to join a queue we didn’t need to be in! Svalbard is outside the Schengen Agreement, transit passengers do not need to have passports checked in Oslo if flying from Longyearbyen to London. Despite three enquiries about where to queue, we hung around for over an hour and nearly missed the connecting flight! Failed to find the ‘Heathrow Hopper’ to take us back to the Holiday Inn for the car but a black cab charged us just £12.
Watch the second part of the video for the Svalbard Adventure.