McVitie's Penguin Polar Relay - Update 29 May 1997

Apologies to all if the enormous success of the expedition has not been matched by volume of information on the web page. The base camp team all left Resolute on Tuesday to go and pick the triumphant Penguin Echo up from the North Pole. As is the norm it seems with the pick up flights, the weather closed in and the planes have been grounded in Eureka for two days now. So the excitement is not over yet by any means.

This report is being written from the UK base of The Polar Travel Company deep in the middle of Dartmoor, where the whole event really began in January 1996 at the first selection weekend. Our information is obviously limited since Eureka is even more off the beaten track than Resolute. We have just learnt from the air charter company that as of 17.30 BST the weather is clearing across the Arctic and it is likely that the planes will make the five or six hour flight to the Pole in the near future. No guarantees of course. If this is the case then Penguin Echo should arrive back in the UK on Monday morning. Fingers crossed. I for one will be there.

The phones have been going red hot here from the media et al as you might imagine. Everyone seems to believe that we have a hot line to the Pole. We don't. So your guess is as good as ours as to whether Echo actually did run the final miles to the Pole. Their rapid progress suggested as much.

Four hundred and fifteen miles gone and oh yes none to go.