WILSON'S STONE IGLOO I Igloo Spur, Cape Crozier, Antarctica

The slight problem was that emperor penguins lay their eggs in the depths of the Antarctic winter during which there is perpetual darkness and temperatures of -60C. Cripes. It was also a 200km round trip from their toasty wooden cabin and mission control of the main Scott group. Three men were chosen for this crack(pot) mission: Dr. Edward Wilson the chief scientist of the Scott expedition, Apsley Cherry-Garrard the assistant zoologist, and Royal Marine Lieutenant Henry ‘Birdie’ Bowers. Pulling two long and heavy wooden sleds with a tent and all their provisions they aimed to arrive at full moon as the eggs were being laid. Let’s hope the gestation period of your average emperor penguin is fairly predictable. On arrival near the penguins, they built this igloo to the design of Cherry-Gerrard but possibly based on similar buildings with stone walls and fabric/skin roofs used by Inuit in the Arctic. It was also known as ‘The House that Cherry Built’ or ‘Oriana Hut’ after Wilson’s wife whom he married three weeks before leaving the UK.

Our three heroes obviously weren’t expecting a light ramble but the degree of hardship they endured seems relatively unprecedented even in the annals of polar exploration. In Cherry-Gerrard’s memoir titled ‘The Worst Journey in the World’, he says; ‘I for one had come to that point of suffering at which I did not really care if only I could die without much pain’. During hurricane-force winds, the roof of the igloo was ripped to shreds and their tent carried off by the wind, leaving the men trapped in their sleeping bags for almost two days, under blankets of snow. On the return journey, Cherry’s teeth chattered so much they shattered in the cold and the sleeping bags took 45 mins to thaw before they could get in them.

On August 1st at 10 pm, they finally arrived back alive at the Scott camp and had to be cut out of their frozen clothing. A happier Cherry said; ‘I managed to keep awake just long enough to think that Paradise must be something like this’. Before they had started the return journey they left what they didn’t need in the igloo and amazingly it’s still there today, undisturbed. Penguin bones, shreds of canvas, test tubes, rope, tin cans and wool clothing, all preserved by the Antarctic cold. They obviously hadn’t heard of the Countryside Code. Sadly their epic journey was overshadowed by other events: the outbreak of WW1 and Scott’s failure to get to the pole first, during which Wilson and Bowers died. The three eggs that made it back to Blighty are in the Natural History Museum’s outpost in Tring but it turned out that emperor penguins weren’t that important in the grand evolutionary scheme of things and Cherry had to practically force the museum to take them. Despite the obvious paucity of tourists, the building is classified as a category one heritage site by the Antarctic Heritage Trust and of course, their journey, the worst journey in the world, has lived on. Sometimes it’s not about the destination.