Peter Bull is a very keen photographer and his talk was illustrated by lots of photographs of his trip to Svalbard, an island off the coast of Norway that is 400 miles from the North Pole and 1,783 miles from Sheffield It was akin to looking at a picture book of his trip.
Peter started in Aberdeen and took in a falconry centre and a whisky distillery before catching the ship that took him on the first sea leg of his trip.
Rough weather prevented the ship getting into Orkney, and the first stops were the Shetland Isles and Fair Isle. The photos he took there showed us many different sea birds and seals and puffins.
They sailed past Bear Island but did not land there. Nobody lives there, other than a small number of scientists doing research work.
Peter told us that the Arctic Circle begins at 63 degrees 33 minutes North, and that four per cent of the Earth’s surface is covered in sea ice.
They finally arrived at Svalbard, which is mountainous with no vegetation, basically because it has all been blasted off by the strong winds.
It is sedimentary rock and gypsum, which was mined there in the past. They saw very rough seas and layers of sea ice.
His photos showed us lots of different sea birds, some whales and Svalbard reindeer. The guide carried a gun in case they met a polar bear.
On their tours around, they saw walruses lying on the rocky shores and many piles of bones lying on the beaches. These were the skeletons of Beluga whales left there by the whalers in the past.
One very interesting photograph was of Peter looking at the Sun quite high above the horizon at midnight – he was, after all, in the Land of the Midnight Sun!
This was a very interesting talk illustrated by a fantastic series of photographs.