Elephant Beach

We have just spent the weekend at a self-catering cottage on Elephant Beach Farm near Cape Dolphin. Having had snow showers on Thursday and with more forecast I wondered if we were going to make it but it had largely thawed by Friday afternoon, although the roads were still quite icy in places. In fact it was an amazing drive out there as there was a full moon and a clear sky so the mountains were all lit up in the moonlight.

Ben, the farmer had put a joint of beef in the oven for us so there were delicious smells in the cottage when we arrived and it was good to relax. Saturday morning we woke while the moon was still in the sky and were able to sit in bed watching a partial eclipse.


Later in the morning we drove a short distance and then walked to Elephant Beach (which is not on Elephant Beach Farm!). The beach is probably about 2 miles long and backed by sand dunes for most of it's length. Washed up at the top of the beach are skulls and bones of hundreds of whales, mostly quite small ones but there are also some huge and very old looking bones embedded in the sand.


Ben said when he was young as many as 50 or 60 pilot whales would beach at a time.

There were some large ponds behind the beach and we saw 5 black-necked swans on one of them as well as lots of geese.

Today we spent a relaxed morning at the cottage and on our way home took a detour up to Salvador, which was an interesting drive up a very indented stretch of coastline, where we had not been before. The roads were actually a lot more slippery with mud coming home than the ice when we went on Friday.

San Carlos 2

We woke on the Sunday morning to a hard frost but another sunny day. Before breakfast I took a short walk down to Blue Beach, scene of the first task force landings in the conflict. It was an amazingly calm morning.


I enjoyed a stroll on the beach and watching a group of two banded plover feeding at the water's edge.


There were also a group of crested ducks dabbling around.


Just behind Blue Beach is the walled cemetry where some of the British casualties are buried and there are plaques commemorating the many who died at sea.


After breakfast Simon and I went for a walk from Blue Beach around the headland near the settlement and watched a sea lion swimming in the bay. We then walked along the pier with it's old rails where the bales of wool would have been wheeled on trolleys down to the boat.


There were lots of shags on the end of the pier, curiously segregated.


Rock shags on the left


and imperial shags on the right.

In the afternoon, after we had packed up, we drove around to the other side of San Carlos Water to Wreck Point farm and then walked to Ajax Bay. This was known as Red Beach during the conflict. There is a small colony of gentoo penguins here and they were bathing in the sea and coming ashore.




There is a complex of derilict buildings here, the remains of a mutton refrigeration plant which was never economically viable and only used for a couple of years.

During the conflict the buildings, most of which have no windows, were used as a field hospital, known as the red and green life machine, where many seriously wounded soldiers received initial treatment before being transferred to the hospital ship Uganda. Two large bombs actually entered the building but failed to explode and the life-saving work continued around them. The buildings are now considered unsafe and you are not allowed to enter.


However you could see inside some of them where the remains of boilers and meat processing equipment can be seen.


By the time we got back to the car the sun was going down and we drove up to the telecommunications mast on the Sussex Mountains and stopped for a cup of tea whilst watching the sun set over San Carlos Water and the mountains of West Falkland. A lovely end to a super weekend.

San Carlos

The second weekend in May I had a free weekend from work and as it was just before my birthday we decided to go away for the weekend. I booked a self-catering cottage at San Carlos which is on the north west coast of East Falkland. We drove out Friday evening after work and as we had had quite a lot of rain the road was very muddy. The cottage was very well equipped, warm and comfortable and it was nice to cook up some dinner and relax for the rest of the evening.


This was the view from our bedroom window when we woke up the next morning. It was a beautiful sunny morning and after a leisurely breakfast and start to the day we set out for a walk.


We headed past the farm's wool shed and sheep handling pens where the farmer was busy sorting sheep.


Then we headed up the hill behind the settlement.

We passed the remains of several dugouts from the conflict and also found quite a few tea berries to pick and eat on our way.


Looking back to the settlement and San Carlos Water.


I was pleased to reach the top of this first hill and stop to admire the view and have a snack.

We then set off to walk along the ridge (the Verde Mountains) to the hill in the distance (Lookout Hill). The ground was very uneven and boggy in places so it was quite hard walking.

Along the ridge are the remains of several dugouts and military encampments where military personel were stationed after the conflict until Mount Pleasant was built. They certainly looked very basic.
We stopped to do some scrambling on this tor (Chapel Rocks) and admire the view again. When I was standing on top of the middle stack of rocks and Simon joined me I was surprised to find that the top slab was balanced and see-sawed as we stood on either edge of it.

On Lookout Hill there are these rapier missiles (no longer functional) left as a memorial to the conflict.


This building on Lookout Hill was still in relatively good condition, with the odd tin mug still hanging up inside and various names written on the walls.

A bird, probably a Falklands thrush , had found a snug place to build a nest inside.

Whoever painted this was obviously imagining a rather warmer scene to that which he would have been looking at through the lookout slit just below it!

As the sun was going down we headed back towards the settlement diagonally down across the hillside. By the time we got back the sun had set and the temperature was dropping drastically. It had been a beautiful sunny day and we were pleasantly tired. Tea and toast and a soak in a hot bath were much appreciated.

April ramble Seal Point

Our outing with the ramblers on 11th April took us to Seal Point, at the end of a long peninsula on the far side of Port Harriet. It was an interesting circular walk starting along the north coast where there were quite a lot of birds and a couple of remaining magellanic penguins.


I was particularly interested to find this plant of the Falklands smooth ragwort. There are 2 endemic Falklands ragworts - smooth and woolly. They are both quite short and nothing like the invasive and poisonous European ragwort. I have often seen plants flowering near Stanley on Engineers Point but have never been able to decide which sort they were.


Having spotted the smooth one on our ramble I could clearly see the difference so now know that the local ones are woolly ones.


Towards the end of Seal Point there is a dense area of tussac grass which has been fenced off to prevent the sheep over grazing it. We could hear sea lions moving around and got to see quite a lot, incuding these 2 pups who were enjoying playing together.


This adult male was well hidden amongst the tussac having a snooze!

Moulting magellanics

I have just been looking back over past blogs and realised that it is a long time since there were any penguin pictures. The magellanic penguins all left some time ago and won't be back until September. These pictures were taken on 18th March when the majority had left but there were still some moulting.


Drying off on the beach after a swim.


The one on the left is a young one which must have been late hatched as most of the chicks had gone by this time.


A very bad feather day.


This really isn't funny you know.

Berries and preserves

One of the things I really miss here is Seville oranges to make my own nice tangy, chunky marmalade. I recently made a batch of marmalade from a tin of prepared lemons (best before 2004!) and some peels from eating oranges and some carton orange juice. It is OK but nothing like the real thing made to my Mum's recipe.

There is also a marked shortage of fruit for jam making, compared to my garden in UK. There are however some edible berries which grow here. Most are very small and grow very close to the ground.


These are diddle-dee, a small shrubby plant, rather like heather which grows extensively here. The berries are much smaller than a red currant, about the size of a mung bean and quite hard. They taste very bitter. It is unusual to see a plant with so many berries on. In fact when I went to pick some in the autumn there were only occasional plants with a few berries so it took me 2 days to pick enough for a few jars of jelly but it was nice to be out walking in the sunshine. The upland geese strip much of the fruit off them. You can make jam from them but it is extremely pippy so I made jelly, which tastes quite like red currant jelly and is nice with meat.


These are tea berries which grow in damp places amongst grass and very close to the ground. They are very sweet, with a delicate flavour and are nice to eat raw.


They are paler and softer than these mountain berries which are not poisonous but don't taste very nice.


The real gem to find is the Falkland's wild strawberry which actually looks more like a raspberry and tastes delicious. These are very hard to find as they are not widespread, the plants are tiny and the fruits well hidden.


These are not to be confused with the pig vine which is plentiful in wet areas around the coast but is poisonous.

Mid-winter

Today is the shortest day of the year here. On Friday we had blizzards all day and everywhere is still white with probably about 6 inches of snow on average in the garden. The main road into town is now reasonably clear although there are odd icy patches but our road is like an ice rink.


Saturday dawned quite bright and not too windy and we headed down to Surf Bay to register for the mid-winter swim. Because the main MPA road was closed to military vehicles because of the snow there were a lot less people participating than last year.


We had time to walk along the beach and back before it was time to strip off, run down the beach and plunge into the sea. There were some big waves this year and being knocked over by one helped me to get the required head under the water! It was very exhilarating but I wouldn't have wanted to stay in for long.


The air temperature was 1 degree C but the water is probably a couple of degrees warmer. The worst thing was standing in snow on the beach with bare feet whilst undressing and dressing.
I didn't manage to give our camera to a non-swimmer this year so no pictures to prove that I was actually in the South Atlantic in mid-winter in a bikini!


On the way home I took this photo of the Lady Liz and the view up the harbour to Mount William and Tumbledown.


Yesterday afternoon we went back to Surf Bay with the sledge and had great fun sledging down the snow covered dunes. As the sea has eroded the sand at the top of the beach there is a small drop off before you land on the beach amongst the kelp.