Lorraine, welcome to the podcast.

Can I just take you right back to the beginning? Where does your interest in Antarctica, the furthest place in the world? Where does it come from?

I think it’s from my dad. You know, when I was little, my dad would weave these amazing stories about space. You know, he bought me a telescope when I was five, and he was always, always really interested in any sort of exploration and in particular, that whole sort of heroic age of Antarctic expeditions as well as to the Arctic also.

He got me really hooked on it, and I just, I’ve always, always been so interested in it.

What were you looking at through the telescope at five? I would’ve loved the telescope.

The moon. The moon, the moon, the moon. And then I sat and of course watched the moon landings with my dad, which was just… I, I can’t believe it. And he got me watching the original Star Trek. As far as I’m concerned, there is only one Star Trek and it’s the original Star Trek with Mr. Spock, who was my first crush, who I adored. I absolutely adored, ’cause I thought I could strip him of his logic and he would be fine. You know, it would all be good.

What would you do when you stripped him of His logic?different

Oh, you can’t put that out on this podcast. That’s for another different conversation.

Well, so, so you, I can sense a sort of strand already when you were young of interest in the, in the world around you. Can I say science?

Yeah, very much so. And very curious about everything. But that comes from my parents. They were terribly young when they had me. They were only like 17. And I don’t know how they managed it. They were extraordinary. They were real grafters. But they taught both me and my brother to read and write before we went to primary school. So we had that, you know, the library was their sanctuary.

You know, they might not have had loads of money and couldn’t have bought us loads of books, but there was the library and the whole world was there, you know, it was just wonderful. So we would always encouraged to ask questions. Why, why, why? My brother just never stopped saying why all the time. And my dad would, you know, would try.

So hard, you know, vehemently to answer his questions. But yeah, we, we were never told to shut up or stop talking or, you know, that thing of, oh, children should just be quiet. You know, we were encouraged to ask questions and that’s so important.

God, I could learn a lot of that for, for my own kids. Just be quiet for 30 seconds so I can do something else.

No, but so, so you, you, you started with this telescope. You started young. And you said that you got introduced to the heroic age. We’re talking about the early 20th century when all the famous expeditions are going to Antarctica. What was it about them that sort of got your interest? Because these things are exciting, but they’re also incredibly dangerous.

people didn’t come back from them. It was a combination of, of adventure and death.

It was that very thing that they didn’t know what they were going into, but they wanted to either, you know, be the first there or to discover things for the greater good of man.

And I just like that. And you know, these guys, ’cause it was inevitably, it was men back then. These guys were like the equivalent of astronauts. You know, when you think about someone like Shackleton, who’s my particular hero. I mean, if I was ever in a jam, I would want the boss. I would want, I wouldn’t be wanting anybody else.

You know? I would want the boss behind me telling me, do that. Say this. Think this. Because he would get you out of any jam. And I love that fact that, okay, he failed in his attempt to do the trans Antarctic expedition. He failed to get to the South Pole, but that didn’t really matter. ’cause you know, he got everybody out safe and from his particular expedition he got ’em all out safe.

And there’s something to be said for that. You know, sort of failure but actually

A leader.

You won in the end. A great leader. A wonderful leader. And couldn’t we do with that these days?

So Ernest Shackleton, I find it impossible to think that people are listening to this wouldn’t know who Ernest Shackleton is, but just, just in case, just the completeness.

he obviously was on his way to Antarctica, got stuck in Pack Ice, and then it looked like everything was over and there was gonna be all sorts of tragedy. But he managed to save all of his men.

He got them all out, and I was lucky enough for my silver wedding anniversary.

Now, some people might want diamonds, some people might want a designer handbag. I have no need or desire for any of these things, so we went on a trip. To Antarctica. Yeah. and we actually followed in Shackleton’s footsteps. So we started off in Argentina and then we did Drake’s passage, and then we went to the continent. We went to Elephant Island, south Georgia, the Falklands. When you were there and experiencing the cold and the sea, and listen, we were fine.

We were okay

you had nice clothes on.

Oh, we were all right. We were good. How they did it. How, yeah. It’s extraordinary. Yeah. I mean, I know he was driven by the fact that he dropped his men off at Elephant Island and then he got on this tiny, tiny little boat, the James caird and went to South Georgia to get help.

’cause there was a whaling station there. But how he managed to do that, I suppose what drives you on is the fact that you’ve got to do it because you’ve got to save these men. You know, you have to get back to your men.

What was it like for you when a few years ago Shackleton’s ship The endurance was actually found?

We’ve spoken to Dan Snow. you know the history, my gosh, history. His podcaster and you know, famous historian.

Oh, he’s wonderful. And he told us all about the expedition to find it. And he was involved obviously. I mean, that must’ve been exciting for you.

It was amazing. And I got a phone call at two o’clock in the morning and you know when your phone goes at two o’clock in the morning, you think, uhoh, what’s wrong?

How happened? This is not good news. You know, something horrid has happened. Yikes. And it was a very, very excited fellow geek saying, you’ll never guess what’s happened. They found her. They found her. And she’s beautiful. And she is. I mean, you can see everything. Who would I thought, ’cause it is one of the great wrecks that people wanted to find was, was Shackleton’s ship.

I mean, to be on that expedition. I’ve talked to Dan about that and oh my goodness, me, I mean, he gets excited about many a thing, quite rightly, but that I think is one of the biggest highlights of his career so far.

So let’s just go back to Ernest Shackleton, and you’ve given us your nickname for him, the Boss.

Um, no his men called him the boss.

He’s, he’s, he’s your hero. Yes. And you chose South his book, uh, for your desert island disc. Why did you choose that? What is it about him specifically? You mentioned some things about the fact he’s a great leader, you want him at your back if anything goes wrong.

When was it that you recognized him as a character that you thought you know you’re gonna carry for the rest of your life?

I think it’s that thing of he’s flawed and I like that because you. We do tend to see particularly people, you know, when you think about Scott, you think, oh, that you are a hero.

Well, I mean, to me, he really wasn’t a hero. He was very flawed, and that’s okay. You know? That’s all right. I like to think of them more as human beings, and I think Shackleton just burst into the world. I mean, he tried everything. I love the fact that he, he was, he was a grafter. He tried really hard and he was so loyal to his men, and they loved him.

Inspiring, that sort of loyalty and that sort of devotion is quite extraordinary, really. And the fact that, okay, he didn’t get to the pole that time. You know, when he was with Scott and he didn’t do the crossing of Antarctica, which was about the only thing left then for him to achieve. But it doesn’t matter because he got everybody home safe and he was determined to do that.

And his colleagues and shipmates literally followed him at the end of the earth even. Oh, absolutely. This was, this was the inspiration he had for them. Yeah.

You’re still following him. It’s incredible. And people have tried to reenact That journey and it’s been even with, you know, the greatest technology that you could ever have and the best clothing and all the rest of it’s been an absolute nightmare.

Well, tell me about your, your sort of retracing of that expedition.

Something that I’ve always wondered about expeditions to Antarctica back in the heroic age is that of course they went and they had these seal skins and whatever, and the fur and have got the famous pictures of them with their icicles and their beard
Modern day, you can go there with very sort of warm fabrics But even then, it’s absolutely petrifyingly cold and unpleasant. What was that experience like?

It was incredible. It was more than I hoped for. My first iceberg, I was like crying. It was just like the most amazing thing that I’d ever seen.

Go on, tell me what you saw when you saw that iceberg.

Well, do you know what? We were really lucky as we were coming, you know, through Drake’s passage and getting near the actual continent, you know, it was like a big cathedral. It was extraordinary. I mean, you know, when you think of an iceberg, you just think a sort of cube kinda thing.

But it was all beautiful. The wind had shaped this and sculpted it into this. It looked like a modern sculpture. And then of course there’s little beany, weenie penguins, bobbing around. I adore penguins. I mean, who doesn’t, frankly, who doesn’t, who does not show me somebody that doesn’t like penguins and they must be a psychopath or something ’cause everybody loves them. But that was incredible. And then we went to Deception Island. And I actually, because I just thought, I’ve only got this one opportunity. I probably will never get the chance. And I put a bikini on. I apologized to everybody for that image in their mind, and I took all my clothes off apart from the bikini obviously, and my hat and my gloves, and I just ran into the water.

A few other people were doing it as you were in the water around Antarctica. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it wasn’t that. Freezing. It was cold right when I came out. I was numb from the neck down and the trouble was I’d gone in so quick that I’d whipped all my clothes off. So if you’ve ever done that in whatever circumstances, you will know that it’s all inside out.

But you know, you, you’ve left your clothes in a heap, you know, all bundled up. So I couldn’t feel my hands. So I basically had to go back to the ship holding my clothes. Oh no, with my furry hat on in my. It’s a boots. I did my, my boots, sorry. Oh geez. I think I terrified everyone when I went on the ship like that.

I, I mean, I suppose you’re gonna do it once in your life, but

Exactly. Did the air round around Antarctica do something to your mind at the time? What was it? I just thought, you know, I just thought to myself, I’ve got, I’ve gotta do it to do this. This has to be done.

This is Shackleton speaking through you basically.

Exactly. And, and it had to be done. I was so glad that I did. But it wasn’t that freezing. It wasn’t as freezing as I thought it would be, certainly in the water, but coming out was really cold. But you know, generally sort of getting off the ship and getting into Zodiac and being able to land in various points as we went along, it wasn’t as cold as I thought though there was a few close encounters with the leopard seals, which I am scared of

Yeah, that frightening. They, they, they, the Leopard Seals. Yeah. They’re really scary. I mean, um, they’ll chase you. Yeah, they will. And there’s something about their eyes. They’re dead. You’ve got dead eyes and of course these massive jaws. Yeah. You just think, geez, they are scary. I, yeah, that was frightening.

Are you a cold water swimmer normally?

I do enjoy it. I like wild water swimming. I do it in Orkney a lot. I love Orkney.

It’s almost as cold as antarctica

Well, the thing about Orkney is you do need your balaclava and your bikini in the same day because it can be so cold and then it gets warm in the afternoon, and then it gets cold again. So it’s a bit, it’s a bit strange, but yeah.

Yeah, I do enjoy that very much. I find it makes you feel zingy. So although I was freezing when I came outta that little dip in Antarctica, I felt a huge sense of achievement.

But tell us about the rest of the exhibitions when you’ve got to Antarctica itself. You talked about the icebergs obviously, and one thing about icebergs that I think people who’ve seen them in coffee table books.

Maybe don’t get, you’ve described already about the shapes and things. The shapes. It’s the color as well of the ice of course, because there’s that, that blue, you never see that blue anywhere else. You don’t, and I was trying to think about, what is this blue, ’cause it’s not duck egg blue. There’s, there’s this sort of neon-ish quality to it.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s, there’s something, it’s like a sort of inner light. I don’t, it’s so difficult to describe, but you have to see it for yourself. ’cause I spent hours just looking at them, just looking at this. And of course as we got closer and closer to the peninsula there was more and more and more.

Like I said, it was like a big cathedral was huge. Absolutely. What could be the size of a city? A mile high or something

Going to a place like that makes you feel teeny tiny. And that’s no bad thing. That is no bad thing. I’ll tell you what, I really love those South Georgia. I just love the history of South Georgia.

You know, I love Orkney as I said, and there’s a, a massive link because. When days gone by with the whaling industry, a lot of Arcadians went south and there’s a little port in south Georgia. There’s obviously Grytviken where Shackleton’s buried, but there’s a new port called Stromness, which is one of the main towns on Orkney

So there was all these connections. Nice connections. Connections. Yeah. There really was, you know, when I went there, I felt very connected to that land. I felt very connected to South Georgia because that’s where Shackleton’s buried and I stood at his grave with a massive, massive glass of whiskey and toasted the great man, you know, everybody has to do that.

Had to. And it was actually very emotional to be there, to be standing on that very spot where he, you know, where he was when he’s laid to rest. You know, there was something really quite spiritual about it actually. And my respect for these people is enormous.

’cause they just went out into the world. They didn’t know, they didn’t know whether they would get back or not. They didn’t know what they were gonna find. They really didn’t. To be able to just have a tiny, tiny, tiny little feeling of that, you know, very small, you know, nothing like what they had, but it touches you and it pulls you back.

I am desperate to go back. I’d go back if you said to me right now, okay, Lorraine, I’ve organized your trip. You need to get on that bus, get, you know, get to the airport.Go, go, go, go, go. I would. I think, I think the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust may have something to say about this straight afterwards.

MUSIC BREAK 1

when you got to the continent itself. What did you feel when you walked onto the ice?

Hugely privileged. Massively privileged. And also I just sat down very quietly and waited and then all the little penguins came towards.

’cause you, I mean, I was really super, super excited and all I wanted to do was run around and try and grab, not grab one, but you know, try to approach. You should never do that. No, of course you mustn’t do that. You mustn’t. But if you sit there and wait and they come to you and peck at you. I mean, that’s amazing.

That was incredible. Well, they’re not scared of you. There’s no reason for them to be scared or –

No, they’re not scared. I mean, inquisitive I guess. They’re inquisitive, but then quite disdainful and they find you quite boring. And I quite like that. I like the fact that penguins bit bored with us. It’s like, oh yeah, well, yeah, we’ve, we’ve seen worse.

Have you seen that leopard seal over there? Exactly. We’re not scared of you. But I did feel hugely privileged to be able to be there. I mean, that is one of the things about this sort of job that I do, that I am. Able to go to do these incredible things.

Well given that, you know, you’ve probably wanted to go there for a long, long, long time. You obviously have this great history learning about Shackleton and feeling his adventure. Would you say that the Lorraine that went to Antarctica was different from the one that came back?

Oh, I think so. I think it does change you. I think it changes your outlook on life and to be able to walk in the shoes of someone that you’ve admired for so, so long.

It’s profound experience, you know? It really is. I mean, it does change you and it makes you, like I was saying, it makes you feel very small, but it also makes you want to keep the world the way it should be, you know, to keep it pristine, to keep that beautiful, beautiful continent. How privileged are we to have something like that?

You know, this gorgeous, big white tablecloth. It’s just so beautiful and so pristine and we’ve not to mess it up, even though, although having said that, when we were in, uh, south Georgia, one of the things that they said to us was, ’cause we sort of did a walk up the glacier, but we found bits of plastic. We found, you know, we found stuff.

It’s encroaching there as well. Yeah, yeah. That had fallen off container ships or currents had taken it there. We found a lot of that and gathered it and I actually felt that experience, although I was really angry because it was spoiling such a beautiful part of the world. At the same time, I felt really good that I was able to clean it up a little bit.

Mm. You cleaned it up, you picked it up. Oh yeah. Then we took, we took it all back to go all back to the ship as much as we possibly could carry.

How much do you think about the sort of climate change and environmental change aspects of this? Oh, a lot. ’cause Antarctica is this amazing place that is relatively untouched by people.

Yeah, yeah. But has, as you say, all these effects from the plastic to the wildlife changing, the temperature of the seas changing. How much do you think about that when you’re going to these places?

You know, it’s really interesting and especially now, now that I’ve become a grandmother, I actually want my granddaughter Billy, I want to be able to take Billy. To show her this beautiful, beautiful part of the world, this wild, gorgeous, as you said, relatively untouched. I mean, we’ve nibbled around the edges, haven’t we?

And actually, when you see pictures of the base at Mcmurdo, you just think, oh, what are human beings like? Can you not tidy up? Clean that up a bit. No, I really, honestly, I do want to go down there and wave a big stick and say, behave you. You should behave. You know, most people are there scientists who are there, they’re very respectful.

You know, people who are there working are very respectful of the environment, but I want it to be the same as I saw, I want her to see the same place, you know, I don’t want her to see it ruined or in any way. You know, countries fighting over it for minerals and all of that. and it really, really worries me when you see what’s happening in, I know it’s the north, but you see what’s happening in Greenland and I don’t want that to happen in Antarctica. I mean, I think it’s one of the things that human beings should be really proud of that treaty. Yeah, but it’s gotta withstand.

Sometimes it’s very easy to despair and I try and be hopeful and I try and be optimistic because I think surely, surely people can’t be that daft. and like I said, I want to take her down there.

Have you managed to get her interested? Oh, well she’s the only one and a half, but she has already got start them young. Um, she has many a book about Antarctica and about penguins. She loves penguins. Obviously, you know, that would be a joy to be able to take her South. And it’s wonderful to see the world through their little eyes as well, and to teach them and to get them enthused.

Being a grandmother has definitely changed me. I was always interested. Of course who wouldn’t be for goodness’s sake and the future of our planet, you know, why could you not be? But yet it’s really brought it home to me now, in the past year and a half since she was born.

We talked about Shackleton in a lot so far, but are there other explorers, either from the heroic age or after, and there’ve been many, many, of course, who don’t get talked about, but are there any others that you particularly like to sort of follow or raise the profile of?

I do like Sir Ranulph Fiennes. We had such a brilliant conversation with him, me and my daughter, and he’s so matter of fact about, you know, obviously everybody knows he cut his fingers off ’cause he had frostbite and it was always stuffing nonsense and went down to his shed with a hack saw.

And you think they don’t make them like that anymore. There’s something going on in that mind isn’t there? They just don’t.I love people like that. We need people like that. He’s incredibly humble as well, given what he’s done and who he is.

But that’s the key, isn’t it? Because I would imagine if by some miracle that you know, we could get the great man, we could get Shackleton here. I think he’d be a wee bit like that about that. I mean, he was somebody that could. Toot his own horn. Of course he had to in order to get sponsorship, in order to go on his expeditions.

But I think his achievements, he probably wouldn’t be as brash about that, and he would share it with everyone else. Oh, I couldn’t do it without Tom Creanan. I couldn’t do it without, you know, whoever it may be that he loved very much, you know? So there’s that. But that would be some dinner party.

So we spoke to Ranulph Fiennes a few seasons ago for this podcast, and what really struck me about that conversation was that, you know, he’s this hero of doing incredibly difficult things,

but what he said was that he was just a guy, and actually it was the scientists who were the real heroes, who really set everything up and did everything properly.

isn’t that really good? Isn’t that a measure of the man that they’re not big head or they’re not like really was surprising I mean, of course they must have satisfaction in all the things that they’ve achieved. It’s that kind of sharing that’s sort of saying, okay, I’m the face of this expedition, but behind me are all these people that managed to get us to this point.

We talked about this a bit earlier. It’s a bit like talking to Neil Armstrong. Not that I’ve done that particularly, but every interview I’ve heard of Neil Armstrong, he’s honestly almost a very boring man in my respects now. That’s so interesting because Buzz was the, he was not. He was not yet. He was not boring a man.

I was lucky enough to interview him. Oh wow. He’s the worst. Interview I’ve ever done in my life. No, it really was.. It was only because I was in such awe of the man. Mm-hmm. I could hardly speak. Mm-hmm. And I just kept what happened. I just kept sort of looking at him going, you’ve been to the moon?

I mean the moon like this. It was really bad. I mean, I did recover myself and we managed somehow to get some sort of sense for the next 10 minutes. But honestly, I just kept looking at this chap and thinking, my goodness, what you’ve done, what you’ve achieved. He was larger than life. And I love the fact that when people come up to him and say, you know, there was one famous occasion when someone um said, oh, it’s a load of rubbish.

Yep. It’s a hoax. He just blanched them. Yeah, I saw that. Just laughed at them. That’s very funny. He punched them right in the puss, right in the face.

One of the first viral videos. I believe that one. So good. It was so, so good. But yeah, talk to those sort of fellas. Even him who, you know, he was a larger life character, he still said, well what about all these people, all the scientists, all the people that did the math, all the people that did all the planning, they’re the ones that should get the credit as well.

Just going back to Shackleton, You must have come across him when you were very young, and I wonder, as you read South his book over time, you must have read it more than once, I’m assuming. Has your relationship with the book or him changed over time as you’ve grown up?

Yeah, I think at first when you’re little, everything’s very black and white and somebody is a hero or a villain.

And I think as I’ve got older and learned more about him and read like books, you know that he’s poetry and poems that meant a lot to him as well. And that kind of spiritual quality too. ’cause a lot of people have said that when they’re in Antarctica, it’s like they’ve got a traveler with them, someone’s voice in their head, uhhuh.

But I can understand that because you would go right inside yourself, wouldn’t you? Because what are you gonna see? For days or months on end, not a lot. And that can play real tricks with the mind, and I think I’ve got a greater understanding of that very complex human being. As you get older, you know, and you realize that, well, there was a lot more to him than just what I admire him for.

It took a lot to get him to that point, I guess, and I think you can identify with him as certainly as I get older, you know? ’cause I’m now older than he was when he died, which seems really weird. It’s really strange to me when I think about that because I was thinking of him as, yeah, they’re very old.

Those people, they’re very old and it’s like, what’s going on? Then you realize they were like 25 when they did the expeditions and you think, wow, okay. Geez. Yeah, you’re right.

I suppose also people like that, but I always wonder about is not only those people who went because their stories are told and amazing, but the people that leave behind too.

Back then, it’s not like they had easy access to letters or definitely not internets or anything, but just they went and maybe went for several months or maybe a year. Yeah, yeah. Some no one heard a thing from them and people at home, you know, wives and children and friends and family would just have to trust that the might Come back.

That must have been really hard. You know, I do think about the wives. Or the kids as well, if that was your dad and all very well that they’re feted as heroes and it’s always in the newspapers and all of that. ’cause they were great heroes. I mean, when you watch some of the old footage of the amount of people that see them off, you know, and there’s usually royalty seeing them off as well.

And then when, you know, in South America, when they come back and you see the throngs and throngs, thousands of people, I mean there were superstars, you know, they were filling stadiums, really, you know, they could have, but that lack of contact must have been so, so hard. I guess people though were different. I think people back then had a lot more faith than people had now. I think people were maybe more religious and maybe that was a comfort to them.

Maybe it’s about expectation as well, though. Of course you’d expect them not to be in contact or you know, if people went away, even just for a trip to Europe, there would be away for several months.

There’s no contact what whatsoever I think it’s completely in anathema now to not be in touch with people.

Exactly. ’cause we’re in touch all the time.

Were you able to sort of be in touch back home? Obviously you didn’t go alone, but No, I went, also went with my husband, but we were doing things, I mean, this shows you the total difference in how crazy the world is now.

Every day we did our WhatsApp story and sent it back and it went on the show.

So I remember, so I went to Antarctica in 2013. Back then, it was impossible to keep in touch with anyone there unless you were a scientist on one of the bases and you had the special satellite phones. Yeah. And satellite phones were incredibly, incredibly expensive. Maybe $2 a minute. So I was, you know, there were the newspaper and trying to report from there, and I was trying to see if we could send a little bit back every day.

See, now the fact that you can, basically, I’ve seen with the Antarctic Heritage Trust, you could just do live links.

. Yes. We talk to them. During COVID, we actually talked to a lot of people in bases in Antarctica at one point.

It was like the only place where that was still okay. You know? Nobody had had anything and that is remarkable, isn’t it? It is remarkable that we can do that.

MUSIC BREAK 2

I’d love to know what the response to your trip was from the people watching your show. Right. So, you know, one of the most famous programs, uh, in the country loads of people are watching.

It’s not necessarily the audience that watches science programs. No, no, not at all. Or climate change programs. Yeah. Or any of these things and. Of course it’s about discovery and that itself is amazing. So watching you go to that place must have been quite interesting to bring people who don’t normally get access to this, into that world. How was it?

No, that’s true and I think that’s a great thing because sometimes you’re just preaching to the choir, aren’t you? Which is fine, you know, you can all do that and that feeling that there’s nothing wrong with that at all. But it’s so good when you get – The response that I got from a lot of kids, which was great, and.

You know, moms who were like, oh, that, that’s brilliant. My kid’s gonna be really interested in that. And that was fantastic. You know, because children are like, as you know, they’re wee sponges, and if you give them an opportunity to get excited and enthused, whether it’s dinosaurs or penguins or space or whatever it happens to be, it’s lovely to see the wee eyes lighting up, wanting to know everything. So, yeah, I mean, I, I don’t want, it’s, it’s a funny thing ’cause obviously I’m making programs for my audience. If I was making programs, for me it would be about Shackleton, Dundee United and Penguins quite niche. But you can bring things in, you can introduce things sometimes, and especially ’cause everybody knows, all my team know that I’m really interested in space.

It’ll be like if an astronaut’s in town, maybe they’ve written a book or they come on the show. Great. And I think hopefully my enthusiasm and being able to maybe keep it simple as well, you know, not just because it’s easier because we don’t have that much time, but just to sort of simplify stuff, it can really help and spark an interest.

And if there’s only one person that it sparks an interest in, that’s great.

I mean, watching the clips that you made from Antarctica on your show and people interviewing you about it even, and you talking about the penguins you’ve seen and all that, the sense I got most apart from the cold obviously was just joy.

And I think that that probably brings a lot more people with you.

Yeah, I think it was joy. I think I had a grin on my face the whole time. I mean, it was kinda living the dream, you know? And a lot of people aren’t lucky enough to be able to live the dream, so I felt very lucky to be able to do that.

And everything about it was magical. Every single thing, even to the point when it was freezing or you were wet and you were cold, you weren’t as wet and cold and freezing as miserable as those poor buggers back in the day. Do you know what I mean? So actually it was okay, but I honestly cannot wait to go back.

I can’t wait. But there’s so much still to be discovered, so much still to learn. I want to see an Emperor. I’ve never seen an emperor ping. Obviously I didn’t get fine enough south to do that. Lucky enough to see tons of kings. So, so many. And they’re,

you didn’t get bored of penguins, did you?

Oh, no. I can never get bored of pengu.

I sat for hours, hours and hours and hours. I mean, I basically, they said to me, we now have to go. And you know, they were sort of saying, the ship is about to go. You will have to leave.

What was the, um, what was the chat on the ship like when you all got back every day?

Well, it was fellow geeks

I mean, I would sit you all the lectures. I went to every single lecture and I would sit at the front, like the Good Wee girl in a notebook, you know, making all these notes and asking ridiculous questions. I loved all that as well. You know, I loved all of that learning things.

We did a lecture on clouds. It was utterly more interesting than people think. Fascinating. It was fascinating. It really, really was, and I learned so, so much about that. You know, I really did. And about winds and about waves and about, you know, everything as well as penguins and all of the other things. So you go for that and you get that, it’s wonderful.

But then there’s all these layers of other pieces of knowledge. ’cause I didn’t really expect that. For me that was huge. I loved all that, you know, like this sort of the geology of Antarctica, you know, all of that history.

What was the most unexpected thing for you?

The scale will always stick with me.

How big everything was. How big the skies were. Yeah, how big the icebergs were, how many penguins there were, how many whales we saw, and dolphins. You know, you think about few wee dolphins bumping around hundreds of them. Hundreds.

how did you deal with the lack of nighttime as well? I didn’t mind that. Yeah, that doesn’t, because the sun never goes down, especially in summer. I didn’t mind that at all. I actually found that strangely comforting, and I love the fact that you could sit up on deck with, you know, a hot wash bottle loads and loads of blankets and things, but you could just sit up there for hours and hours and hours.

That was a joy. I did a show last year a, a travel show in Norway, and it was similar-ish, you know, the fact that the light was there and it’s a magical light, and we did see the Northern lights, which I didn’t see the southern lights. I didn’t see that. So I have to go back to see that. You have to go back.

See, you have to go back for that. And that alone No, I think the light is interesting, isn’t it? This might get too niche for listeners, but we’ve talked about the light going through the icebergs and the blues. You can’t quite describe and the shapes and as you beautifully said, the cathedral. Yeah. Because these things have been around for so long and they’re gonna melt, they’re gonna disappear and they’re not gonna be there for long. An iceberg is basically just a bit of Antarctica that’s sort of broken off and will eventually become part of the ocean.

Yeah. So that’s magical to see. But then the light, I remember I also went in the summer and the sun goes down towards the horizon, sort of touches the horizon, and then it comes back up again. So it’s never dark. It’s very white all the time. Obviously the skies are very blue and all of that, but just about an hour before sunset, if you like inverted commas and sunrise, all the colors of the world appear purple, orange, blue, you know, all of them come in just one hour and suddenly everything is colorful for one hour and then it just goes back to white again.

And you just see all these colors and I think maybe it’s also because your eyes are just. Obviously when you’re living in a city, you’re seeing lots of things. You’re smelling lots of things, and there’s nothing to sort of evoke those senses in Antarctica. So your senses make stuff up and you Yes. You just sort of start to hallucinate, almost sometimes.

Yeah. Maybe that’s why so many explorers felt that they had this third presence with them. Maybe that’s what it was about, because you had that silence that you don’t get in real life. It’s never, you know what it’s like. It’s never totally quiet. You might think, oh, there’s not a lot of noise around, but there’s always a hum.

Or there’s something, or there’s an airplane above you. Or you know, if you live in a city, there might be a train passenger. All you’ve got is your thoughts in that place like that. Yeah. Sometimes that can make you go a little bit strange. Yeah. And mean, it can be an amazing experience. It can make you feel so much better and you know, ’cause we don’t have that time to think about stuff that much.

Yeah. They were very precious moments. Just by myself actually. Yeah. Just looking out. And whether it is just looking out at nothing very much apart from the water and the icebergs.

Why do you think it is that stories about such far away places like this, and I think, I sense I know the answer to this, but why do you think stories like this endure for so many cultures in so many places over so much time?

I dunno. I suppose it’s that hanking after something that’s unspoiled, you know, it’s that hanking for something that we haven’t messed up yet. And also there’s this lovely thing of, there’s a beautiful jewel at the bottom of the world that is there, and we haven’t buggered it up. It’s still there and it’s difficult to get there

We have to keep it pristine and beautiful for generations to come.

And for your granddaughter, too. Surely, surely, surely, for that.

Just a final question which asked to all of our guests,

why does Antarctica matter to you?

I think Antarctica matters to me because it’s an ideal of the way things should be, and also it’s been so important in my life that kind of never give up attitude.

You know, that sort of Shackleton attitude of the odds are against you. This probably isn’t going to work, but I’m gonna try anyway,. That is something that I’ve always carried with me my whole life. Really? ’cause the odds have always been against me in a sense. You know, I, I was lucky to be doing what I’m doing. I mean, I only really got the job working in telly because the head of TVAM happened to be Australian and he didn’t associate my accent as a working class accent.

He just thought it was Scottish. Yeah. The head of BBC told me I would never make it in television, BBC Scotland because of my Scottish accent, because it wasn’t. The right Scottish exhibit. Right. If you know what I mean. Right. So you know, it’s that thing of don’t give up. You might feel that it’s not gonna work, but it will.

And I think Antarctica for me is a symbol for that, and I think everybody’s got, it sounds mad, but everybody’s got their Antarctica. It doesn’t mean that you’ve got to go there, it just means that you’ve got something you’ve got to overcome. And that can be tiny. That can be something really small that means a lot to you.

You know, that can be something as, as, oh my gosh, my daughter’s getting married and I’ve got to make a speech at her wedding. You know, I’m, I’m terrified, but actually you’ll be all right. It’s that kinda thing of not giving up. That’s the symbol for me and just the beauty, the sheer beauty of it.

It’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you.

Thank you so much. Next time it’ll be live from Antarctica. Absolutely. You’re on. You are on.

Thank you for listening.