We woke this morning after a good night’s sleep. The swell of the Barents Sea had been kind to the boat on the northbound journey towards Svalbard. Thankfully it meant that there was little rocking and rolling overnight whilst we were in bed.

This leg is a 500 mile journey in total, which started when we departed Honningsvåg at 5pm on Thursday 12th September. We aimed to be docking in Longyearbyen, on the Svalbard archipelago, on Saturday 14th September. This meant spending a full day on the ship today.

We had breakfast as normal and after that I decided to go on deck 6 to do some walking, just so I had done some exercise. JC only did three laps of the deck before returning back to the suite, but I carried on. I am unsure how far I walked – it is not easy to record on Strava because the ship is moving. I was determined to burn off the calories that I have consumed whilst on board, and I managed to do nearly 10,000 steps so I was chuffed with myself. It was gone 11am when I completed my health target and went back to the cabin.

When I got back we had a letter waiting for us explaining that we had to attend a mandatory meeting in the lecture room on deck 5. This was to discuss our visit to Ny-Ålesund in two days’ time. More of that later.

The ship was passing by Bjørnøya, or Bear Island, at 12pm, so we got well wrapped up to go up to deck 9. There was a noticeable change of temperature, it was around 8 degrees fahrenheit. There were a lot of people on the deck with cameras, ready to take some photos. The island has abundant birdlife although it was difficult for us to see anything as the ship passed the south of the island, before heading up the east coast. It is common for little auks, puffins, black-legged kittiwakes and northern fulmars to be flying around the cliff tops. I did notice, with the use of a pair of binoculars, that there are no trees or bushes on the island. Apparently nothing much grows here apart from moss and lichen.

The south of Bjørnøya – Bear Island – beautiful and barren

As the ship’s engine power increased, we went inside to warm up. The temperature drop had been a good indication of what it will be like when we dock at Longyearbyen, so gave me a good chance to know what to wear when we go ashore.

We had our lunch in the restaurant as usual, and it did take me time to warm back up. By the time we had finished, it wasn’t long before we had to head back to the Lecture Room on deck 5 for the presentation about Ny-Ålesund.

One of the crew was there to give advice about what we can and can’t do when we get to Ny-Ålesund. This place used to be mainly for mining coal, but became a polar research centre, in the mid-20th century. There are only 20 properties at the settlement which are all occupied by the research teams that have come from 11 different nations. The research teams study glaciology and climate related sciences and because of the sensitive equipment that they use, we are not able to have an active bluetooth connection in a 20 km radius of Ny-Ålesund. The crew member made a point of us actually disconnecting all devices the night that we depart Longyearbyen. We also have to make sure that we only walk on the paths because of the Arctic tundra that are on the ground. As we are going here due to having special permission from the hosts, we have to also respect the fact that we can only walk in designated areas, which were shown to us on a map. This will explain why we only have four hours there. I expect the main purpose of the ship’s arrival will be to deliver much needed supplies to this remote settlement.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing in our suite and not doing much. I did have to have 40 winks for some reason as I felt very jaded.

The restaurant visit was to the usual high standards and Tina, our server, was very interested to know what we liked and didn’t like so far in the food we have had. The main thing for me is trying dishes that I would never had tried before. The evening’s courses consisted of:

First course – Cod tongue with dill mayonnaise;
Second course – Raw salmon with rye, pickled mustard seeds, alpine leek mayo and herbs;
Third course – Cod-sago velouté with mussels and spring onion;
Fourth course – Edel frue cheese, port wine syrup and pickled plum;
Fifth course – Jerusalem artichoke gelato with cherries and marzipan crumb

After we had eaten we went straight back to the cabin to go to bed. We had an early start on Saturday due to some onboard sightseeing down the Isjfjorden of Svalbard.