It's the Sunday before the Tuesday morning that I leave for Copenhagen en route to another Arctic adventure. Thirty-seven years after my BSES trip to Iceland, I'm now off to Greenland, but this time by myself, a great deal older and creakier, and quite a bit pricier! Having spent about 2 months in the planning, 9 months in excitement and anticipation, a little bit of apprehension is now beginning to creep in as I pack my rucksack.
New boots on the left, old boots on the right.
On top of that I've been recommended to bring walking sticks which were simply not a 'thing' back in 1985 and I've never actually used before, energy bars for the various treks I have planned (Greenland is extremely expensive, best not to have to buy things there), and a 1l water bottle. And all this within what is well-known to be an extremely strict 20kg limit as Air Greenland flies out freight with its passengers.
The internet is also notoriously slow and expensive in Greenland, so I invested in printing up my full itinerary, directions to locations, travel and insurance documents into a nice little booklet. Aren't I clever? With a three-day ferry trip planned, I've downloaded a couple of long Audible books onto my phone (in case seasickness discourages me from using the Kindle), bought a storage card for my phone for lots of photos and bought micropore tape in case of blisters... Just counting down the hours now and hoping nothing (London transport, airline strikes or pandemics...) gets in the way..
