I read in a press report today that Covid has reached Antarctica, with staff at a Belgian base affected by the virus. Actually this is the second time -- last year there was a report of staff at a Chilean base (Bernardo O'Higgins) being affected. Nowhere is safe, not even in Antarctica........
On checking, I discovered that there are now 14 nations running bases and other "research facilities" on Fildes Peninsula, which was a pristine landscape in 1966 when I worked there with three colleagues. there is also a lot of tourist pressure from cruise ships. In fact the human pressure on the peninsula is now so great that it is being used for "human impact studies" and pollution monitoring, and the political decision has been made by the international scientific community that the peninsula should be sacrificed in order to keep other locations in as "natural" a state as possible.
Another striking thing to come from the recent photos of the Peninsula is the extent of vegetation growth -- mosses and grasses in particular. Where this photo was taken, there was virtually no vegetation in 1966:
Base camp in a howling gale. You can see the submerged tombolo, marked by a line of surf.
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Woman's Hour 28/12/2021 Women of Snow & I've [ whilst I was shaving!]
....includes inspirational women studying Antarctica.
bbc.co.uk/programmes/0012s71
Mentioned Dr Alison Banwell, Glaciolologist Antarctica. Also ponding on ice shelves. Interested?
Interesting that the Woman's Hour feature also mentioned whether or not the ladies at Antarctica experienced misogyny whilst there.
Also interesting that, thinking back to my Geography Undergraduate days 1967-70 at Durham, there were precisely NIL female lecturers there under the lead professorship of "BIll" Fisher. Quite an achievement! Did it change during the 1970s?
Actually there is no surprise in the number of excellent female glaciologists and other scientists working in Antarctica and Greenland these days. They have been around for decades. I'm surprised that Womens Hour should make a big deal of it!! The head of the British Antarctic Survey is a woman too.
...... and by the way, she has a mountain named after her!!
Aaah, a mountain named after her, eh? Well....my surname consists of 2 syllables, both of which mean "steep sloping ground". I grew up in the edge of the Yorkshire steel town of Stocksbridge, but to the west on Midhope Moors is Hingcliffe or Hingliffe Hill, 351 metres. Then there's a strong population of folk with variations of my surname on and around Holmfirth/ Hinchliffe Mill.The surname is said by experts to originate in the Holme valley (near the Pennine Way).
According to the Surname Database website, the "hinch" part is "derived from the old English pre 7th century 'henge' steep". Cognate with modern English “hang” and the “henge” in Stonehenge. Also with the name of the parish I reside in - Tring, Herts, from “tree hanger”: trees “hanging” on a slope, in this case the Chiltern scarp.
The Anglian ice edge is generally thought to have been somewhat north of the Tring Gap in the Chilterns, though some have suggested that ice moved through it, shifting puddingstone, a kind of sarsen, southwards from Northchurch to Hemel Hempstead. Another instance of the glacial vs. human transport debate. Deposits at Little Heath on the same route have also been claimed to be glacial.
Ah, so this all proves that Stonehenge is named after the Hinchliffe family -- probably Tony's ancestors built the blasted thing, when not having orgies at Durrington, thereby causing all this trouble.
Of course I was too modest to point out the Stonehenge place - name link. This was so obvious in the Holmfirth area near Huddersfield that "The Last of the Summer Wine" writers even introduced a character called " Uncle Hinchliffe". Whilst I dispute any sensory link with that show's character 'Compo' played so delightfully and with such subtlety by Bill Owen, my own theory is that my ancestors emerged from the mists on t'moors lad!! Almost certainly we are all descended from peaceful, intellectual Mesolithic hunter-and-gatherers, and have no links whatsoever with Heathcliffe that dodgy Liverpudlian character created by a Bronte lass.
We have a hamlet in north Wiltshire named Clyffe Hanging,on the lower escarpment of the Marlborough Downs near Clyffe Pypard & Broad Town and fairly close to Royal Wootton Bassett. "Hanging" is a common descriptive topographic word, e.g. around Longleat House's greater landscape.
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