HAPPY NEW YEAR!
And welcome to the first ever edition of the PollyEvans.com newsletter. It's unlikely ever to be worth a lot on ebay, but print it off and you'll find it's perfect for making paper aeroplanes, for using as a firelighter, or for screwing up and stuffing in draughty holes about your house. Or you could just read it on the screen and give yourself a smug pat on the back for having done one tiny thing to help save the planet.
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| And the winner is... |
As promised, I've put the names of all the subscribers to my newsletter in my Argentine gaucho's hat and pulled out a winner (in good, honest tombola style - there's no newfangled phone-in trickery here, largely because I don't know how). And the winner is Susan Evenden to whom a signed copy of one of my books will be winging its way just as soon as the Royal Mail can rise to the task. I may be wrong, but I reckon that Susan is going to choose Mad Dogs and an Englishwoman, because she's in it! I met Susan and her daughter Hilary in Dawson City when I was following the Yukon Quest two winters ago, and they were working for the race as volunteers.
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| Lost Patrol 100 |
I've been busy over the last month with the preliminary arrangements for my next Big Adventure - actually it will be by far my biggest adventure yet. Hopefully, this time next year I'll be heading back out to Canada's Yukon Territory, where my forthcoming book Mad Dogs and an Englishwoman is based. The trip will be another dogsledding journey, but much more challenging than anything I've done before, running for almost a thousand miles between Herschel Island in the Beaufort Sea and Dawson City.
This is a journey with a compelling history: a hundred years ago, Herschel Island was a whaling station. It wasn't a particularly peaceful place, however: the American whalers were wreaking havoc with the locals, plying them with alcohol and other evils, and furthermore they weren't paying their taxes. So in 1903 the Canadian authorities decided to set up a police station on the island, and they sent a hardened Arctic outdoorsman, Francis Fitzgerald, to manage it.
But Fitzgerald had a problem. The only feasible way to send dispatches to his superiors was via the whaling ships - not an ideal form of transport when he was reporting on the whalers' behaviour. And so the Mounties set up an annual, winter dogsled patrol both to carry the mail and to check on the smattering of Indians and gold prospectors living in this far-northern wilderness.
In the winter of 1910-11, though, the patrol got lost. Temperatures dropped to minus 54C and, unable to find their way, the four Mounties ran out of food. They ate their dogs one by one, then three of the men starved to death. The fourth man shot himself.
Now, almost a hundred years on, with the benefit of modern communications and equipment, I'll be commemorating the journey (hopefully not replicating it) with my friend Stefan Wackershagen. Stefan was one of the guides at Muktuk Kennels, where I was based while I researched my book Mad Dogs and an Englishwoman. He's experienced in winter camping with dogs, and has expedition experience, too: a few years ago he and a companion were the first people to walk the 700-kilometre length of Baikal in winter, hauling their supplies by pulka. I'll be writing a book about our adventure and we're hoping to get a TV programme made of the journey - all the media will come out to tie in with the centenary of the tragedy, hence the project's name, Lost Patrol 100.
Obviously it's a big and expensive journey so I'm currently in the process of securing sponsorship - hopefully I'll have more news on that in the next couple of months. I'll keep you updated on the progress of the project via this newsletter, and there are more details at the project's website: www.lostpatrol100.com. In the meantime, if the history of the project interests you, try reading The Lost Patrol by Dick North . Dick North lives in Dawson City and has written a number of fabulous books on the history of the far north. When I was in Dawson in July I phoned him and met him and his wife for breakfast, and found that he's great company in person as well as on the page.
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| Mad Dogs and an Englishwoman |
 Still on the subject of dogsledding, my next book, Mad Dogs and an Englishwoman, will be published on 11 February by Bantam. It tells the story of my journey to Canada's Yukon Territory to learn to drive sled dogs. To be honest, I've never been good with the cold and I was pretty nervous before I went that I would be too much of a wimp and would horribly disgrace myself. And for the first few days I was slightly chilly. But here's the funny thing - after about 10 days I had a complete change of metabolism. Suddenly, my appetite soared - I was eating second helpings at every meal, and stuffing myself with croissants and muffins in between - and I was perpetually warm. It's an amazing thing, the human body. Possibly it's not quite as amazing as a sled dog's body though. These dogs consume 10,000 calories a day when they're racing.Anyway, it was a truly incredible trip - life-changing in fact - and definitely the best of the book trips so far. By the time I left I'd completely fallen in love with the north, with the subtle pinks and purples of the winter sky, with the pristine silence, the tracks of wolves and deer in the snow, the glittering hoar frost that stuck like gaudy faux-diamonds to the trees, and of course, with the delightful, friendly, tail-wagging sled dogs. Pre-order your copies from Amazon now!
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| Competition |
And lastly, here's a call for entries to my monthly travel-writing competition. Go on, enter - it's easy! And the prize is brilliant: the writer of the best piece will win the Bradt Guide of their choice. To enter you have to write up to 500 words (but it doesn't have to be 500 words - it can be just one really pithy paragraph) about your most quirky, outrageous, hilarious or otherwise extraordinary travel experience. Send your entry to me by email at polly@pollyevans.com by 31 January. I'll announce the winner in early February.
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| This month at PollyEvans.com |
Be sure to visit my website this month - it has glistening new posts for January. There are three new Quirky Guides about my Lapland travels, as well as selection of photos from Lapland. Also new are January's Books of the Month. This month, they're all about very different journeys: Terry Darlington's hilarious Narrow Dog to Carcassonne, the legendary A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby, and the story of one of the most horrible voyages of all time, Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe by Laurence Bergreen. And, of course, I'll be constantly updating my Members' Forum and replying to posts there throughout the month.
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So that's it for this month. I hope you have a happy, healthy and prosperous January, and I'll be back in your inbox with bright, fresh tidings at the beginning of February - including details of any events, press and radio interviews I'll be doing to promote the publication of Mad Dogs and an Englishwoman.
Polly
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| Travels in Lapland |
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Just before Christmas I travelled north to Lapland for the very first time. I stayed for two nights in the Icehotel in Jukkasjärvi, in Sweden. The Icehotel has been much written about and vaunted, but I'd never been before. My expectations, to be honest, were pretty high - but amazingly, when I got there, I was still completely mesmerized.
It's really an ice sculpture gallery as much as a hotel. The hallway just glistens with incredible statues, and then you can tour the "art suites" - individual bedrooms designed by sculptors from all over the world. The ice is exceptionally clear - they reckon that the water from the Torne River, from where the ice comes, is some of the purest and clearest in the world, and it's supposed to better to drink than mineral water. With clever use of LCD lighting, these ice installations become really sensational works of art.
I only spent one night in an ice room (and mine was a simple, snowy cell, not an art suite), and to be honest that was about enough - it's one of those things which is fabulous to experience but you wouldn't want to spend a week in the freezer. You sleep on a slatted base that slots into a frame made of ice (so you're not sleeping directly on the ice but just over rather chilly air). The slatted base is covered with a mattress and reindeer skins, and then they give you a very thick sleeping bag. Inside the Icehotel, the temperature stays around minus five degrees, which isn't good for batteries, toiletries and so on, so you stash all your possessions in a locker in the warm part of the hotel. After their night in an ice room, most people then spend one or more nights in the warm accommodation - comfortable Scandinavian-style rooms and chalets that are also in the Icehotel complex, alongside warm bars and restaurants.
From the Icehotel I went reindeer sledging and on a tour of the very quirky iron-ore mine in Kiruna. Read all about those trips in this month's Quirky Guides on my website. Then I left on a bus for Henningsvaer in Norway's Lofoten Islands, where we went out on a boat to see killer whales. The whales follow the herring which migrate to these parts each November and December.
Unfortunately the weather was dire (the waves on the morning of our boat trip were 4.8 metres high) so we weren't able to go to the killer whale hot spot, and consequently didn't see any.
The trip was still wonderful though. The Lofoten Islands, in the dusky winter twilight, were incredibly beautiful - all rugged, dark rocks and green meadows spotted with colourfully painted, wooden fishermen's houses. It was the week before Christmas and the houses' windows were lit with candles or illuminated stars, and on the streets Christmas trees were decorated with simple white lights, all of which gave a sense of tremendous warmth to this sub-Arctic winter world.
I've posted some photos on the web. If they spur you to want to visit Lapland for yourself, I strongly recommend the company I travelled with, Discover the World, which specializes in holidays to Lapland and Iceland. It's the only company to run a direct charter flight between London and Kiruna - otherwise you'd have to change planes in Stockholm - so the direct flight saves time, money and carbon emissions.
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