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.

June ramble

Last Sunday we went out with the ramblers. We drove out towards MPA and left our car near the main road. We then got into other people's cars and drove up a track into the hills. We then walked up onto a ridge with some rocky outcrops along the top and views down to the coast. It was quite wet underfoot and a cold wind when we started but the wind eased and the sun came out in the afternoon so it was very pleasant.


From the ridge we dropped down into the Van Tan valley. On the way down I spotted this unusual fungus.
The Van Tan river flows through a pretty valley with steep rocks beside it in places. There are actually very few rivers and streams here so it was particularly nice walking along beside it.


Further downstream Simon and Ross crossed over the river to cut back to where we had left our car.
I thought they might be going to get wet but they got across safely!


The rest of us continued down the river to the main road and then Simon picked up the other drivers and took them to collect their cars while we relaxed in the sunshine. Unfortunately we will miss the July and August rambles as we will be away on leave.

Since last weekend the weather has turned very wintry. I cycled to work in a blizzard yesterday lunchtime. When I came home it was very icy and my bike gears had frozen up so I was stuck in a low gear. I think I must have looked like a cartoon pedalling frantically along on the icy road!

We had more snow this morning but the sun is shining at the moment and it is thawing. However the forecast is for heavy snow tonight with gale force southerly (bitter) winds so going on an early shift tomorrow may not be fun. Anyway I must get ready for work now.

Walking through a minefield

Last Friday I had the unusual experience of walking across what was until recently a minefield. This was part of a public confidence demonstration to celebrate the completion of the demining of the Surf Bay minefield.

As Britain signed up to the Ottowa convention on the clearing of mines in their territories they have committed themselves to clearing the minefields in the Falkland Islands (although they were laid by the Argentinians). As a pilot 2 areas have been cleared this year, one at Sapper Hill and the other at Surf Bay plus small areas at Goose Green and Fox Bay which were fenced off because of the possibility of unexploded ordinance.


A team of 37 deminers from Zimbabwe arrived in October and we got to know some of them well as they came to our church. They were joined for a while by a smaller group from Lebanon.


I think the job proved a lot harder and took a lot longer than expected, particularly at Surf Bay.
They had plans drawn by the Argentine engineers who laid the mines and these proved to be very accurate. (They had been expecting to be removing them themselves when they won the conflict!) The mines were laid in rows within blocks or panels and at Surf Bay there were alternate anti-personel and anti-vehicle mines within the rows.


Searching for the mines is a very painstaking operation. Each mine has only 2 very small pieces of metal on it and so are not easy to detect with metal detectors. From the perimeter fence the deminers clear a number of paths into the minefield until they reach the first row of mines. They then start clearing along the row. The paths are marked out with string and coloured posts and different coloured markers put where each mine was found. Unfortunately I can't find the photos that I took of the area during clearance.

The surface vegetation is carefully removed. The dense fern and diddle dee plants, particularly at Sapper Hill proved very challenging. Then the soil is gradually removed with a trowel. When a layer has been removed they then check again with the metal detectors.

When a mine is discovered it is partially exposed and marked. At the end of work on alternate days the exposed mines are detonated, sending huge couds of peat, sand and stones high into the air. At Sapper Hill many of the mines were very close to the surface and entangled in the roots of the vegetation. At Surf Bay most were between 20 and 30 cms deep but the panels nearest the beach had been covered by sand dunes since they were laid.


To find these they used a mechanical digger which had a protecting metal grid over the front window of the cab. A Falkland Islander was trained to do the mechanical demining. The deepest mine was under about 6 metres of sand so finding the last mines took a long time and involved moving vast quantities of sand.


The minefield at Surf Bay contained over 1,000 mines, and I was amazed how close together they were. You certainly would not have been able to walk through there without standing on one! Despite having been laid 28 years ago the mines were still all in perfect working order.

At the public confidence demonstration one of the people supervising the project gave a short talk and then the few deminers still on the island walked across the area.


The governor was then invited to walk across before the general public were allowed to. The minefield signs have been removed but the fences are going to be left to allow the areas to regenerate. There are still 113 minefields remaining in the Falkland Islands, varying from quite small areas to huge tracts of land. The area at Surf Bay was one of the densest mined areas and also particularly challenging with the varied terrain.