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Frozen Planet: Svalbard, 2am

Updated Wednesday, 14th April 2010

Mark Brandon arrives in Svalbard, and steps into a biting wind

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I am writing this from my guesthouse on the edge of what is the capital city of the Svalbard archipelago – Longyearbyen.

After meeting up at Heathrow with the rest of the team travelling north we left just after lunch (no excess baggage – thanks SAS!).

There are four of us on this part of the journey, myself, Matt from the BBC, and two journalists who will be writing stories about what they see.

We had two stops north: first at the Norwegian Capital Oslo and then a couple of hours stopover in the northern city of Tromso before the final leg across the Barents Sea to the land on Svalbard.

Temperatures were decreasing at each stop, and we stepped off the plane at Longyearbyen straight into below -10C.

There was a keen wind blowing as well which always makes it feel a bit colder, but thanks to the wonders of the information age this wasn’t a surprise to me and I had my hat, scarf and gloves at the ready!

Although with just my London clothes on it wasn’t as comfortable as I could have been. Tomorrow, I will be better dressed for it.

We were met by a couple of the BBC team already here (thanks guys) and drove the short trip into the centre of town. After dropping off some of the filming kit Matt brought we checked into the Svalbard Guesthouse.

It is really nice accommodation that used to be used for coal miners – but more about that industry in a later blog entry.

[Image: Mark Brandon]

The picture is the view out of my window at 0200 and just before dawn. Can you see the icicle in the top right of the picture? It is only a few days from 24 hour daylight at this location.

Until the next entry…