01 Jan Happy New Year – Day 41 Of SPEC

Well, as you might imagine, we are getting fairly tired of our standard rations.

But tonight for Hogmanay (New Year’s Eve for all those that don’t have Scottish descendants!). It’s been another long day but tonight we’re looking forward to enjoying a small dram of whisky – provided by friends of ours at the Ardgowan Distillery. They’re the people who designed and built the solar snow-melters we’ve been using on expedition, and we’ll be adding a wee drop of the water they’ve melted to our Ardgowan Expedition malt whisky to bring in the New Year.

We’re certainly not the first explorers to have drunk whisky in Antarctica – it was definitely enjoyed at field base in early expeditions – but there’s no record of anyone ever having taken any to the South Pole. A few early adventurers tried to make some kind spirit to drink – on Mawson’s 1912 expedition they made a (literally) poisonous concoction called ‘Tanglefoot’ by ‘boiling raisins in primus methylated spirit’ which, not surprisingly, tasted awful. Definitely don’t try that at home!

Thankfully, we have two small flasks of malt whisky – one which we plan to drink tonight, and another we’re taking all the way to the South Pole, and then back to Scotland – where it will then become part of some very exclusive Ardgowan Expedition malt whisky. I think we can safely say this will be the most southerly dram in the world!

But wherever you are, we wish all of our family, friends, sponsors and supporters lots of love, laughter and new adventures in 2018.

Barney, Kyle, Martin…..and Robert