Letters from the Falkland Islands

 

8^th December 2020.

Woke up at 4am. It appears that there is a cockerel which lives in close proximity to the hotel. The daylight made me think that it was much later, made me think that I’d missed the breakfast which is left outside the door at 8am every day. That’s what happens when you move from winter to summer in 24 hours. There’s a touch of the surreal about it all; it seems like no time at all since I was driving down to Brize Norton in the freezing fog of an English winter. No time at all since I was swimming in the river Esk at first light, and saying some goodbyes, and hugging my mum for the last time in a while. That’s the beauty of air travel in some ways; you’re on the other side of the world in a few blinks of an eye. But it’s an awfully long way to travel without taking very much in. You’re taken out of one world and deposited in another with no available insight to the worlds you’re passing through. The flight had one stop, in Dakar, Senegal, to refuel. We were on the ground for two hours, but not allowed off the plane so all I saw of Africa was from a cabin window. I treasured those moments, though. Treasured seeing the sun rise over that most ancient of continents, and smiled as I saw the red dust, that unending red earth. To see the sunrise, to see the sunset, is a spectacle I’ll never tire of. It’s to know time, it’s to know change, it’s to know life. It connects us all, and there is something comforting about the reminder that we are all under the same skies whether in darkness or in light. I can look to the sun, and look to the moon, and know that all the people I love can see the same. Separation from our friends and family need not be that separate at all.

Ten hours after taking off from Dakar we landed in the Falkland Islands, at RAF Mount Pleasant. As with flying into Senegal, this was my first time seeing the Falklands. And in truth I knew I wouldn’t be seeing much more of this place than I did Africa. There was what I could see from the air, and what I could see from the bus journey to the hotel. But it was wonderful, and for all the world I could have been in the far North West Highlands of Scotland. I half expected to see a road sign to Scourie, or a signpost graffitied with the words ‘Flat Earth’. If the landscape reminded me of Scotland, the houses in Stanley remind me of Scandinavia. They are all brightly coloured, bright red, green, blue roofs, some with brightly coloured walls, too. I can see them from the window of this hotel room. I can also see a few trees and bushes, and a few cars and people that pass occasionally.  A moment ago, a youngish lad cycled past blasting out some music; ‘do you think my tractor’s sexy’ were the only words of the song I managed to catch. There’s a strangeness in observing this outside world, and yet finding myself almost entirely separate from it. Today is the first full day of my quarantine period in the Falklands. If everything goes to plan, I’ll be here in this hotel room until 26^th December, which is when I’ll be getting on a ship for the five day journey across the Drake Passage to Antarctica.