The Coldest Journey

This is the S A Agulhas leaving London today to head down to Antarctica. Next year explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes and his team are going to attempt to cross the continent in winter. They are also raising money for the Seeing is Believing charity to tackle avoidable blindness .

Here are pieces on the BBC site showing the ship being  loaded and setting out.

As the temperature can reach -90 this all seems a bit insane. My fingers were frozen after standing for half an hour waiting for them to leave, so maybe I'm not cut out for polar exploration.

extra, the original processing I did on this picture, which I now hate but I don't want to delete it completely, so it reminds me not to do it again.