Up close with the ice

interspersed with gregarious gentoos. On the Falkland Islands, Magellanic penguins wandered newly landmine-free beaches just outside of the town of Stanley. Down on the Antarctic Peninsula, chinstrap penguins, with their black tongues and ugly calls, looked like little goths next to more colourful birds. The emperors were out of range though. To access their frozen territories requires dedication (and money) that keeps them out of most itineraries.

Exploring The Ice

So popular has tourism become in Antarctica that the Peninsula is now close to capacity for cruise ships. Each must abide by strict rules defined by the Antarctic Treaty and those laid out by the International Antarctic Association of Tour Operators (IAATO), but nonetheless, with an estimated

100,000 tourists in the 2022/23 season, landing sites are being booked months in advance, and no ship is likely to sail without seeing others around the icy coasts. However, as the industry expands and newer, greener, tougher ships are launched, so the continent opens up a little more. Currently standing above all other options is Ponant’s new hybrid-fuelled Le Commandant Charcot, and it has emperors comfortably within its range. While virtually all polar ships have reinforced hulls, this 135-berth ship is the only official icebreaker currently carrying passengers. Put simply, this allows it to reach places no other company currently can. The Marseille-based company have not been shy in its deployment.

In January 2023 I boarded Le Commandant Charcot for its first transcontinental cruise from Ushuaia, Argentina, all the way along the vast Antarctic coast, to Lyttleton, New Zealand. This was the port from which CherryGarrard, led by Captain Scott on his doomed mission to the South Pole, set sail in 1910.

If their mission was defined by hardship, ours could hardly have been more comfortable. On board there are features so decadent as to seem inappropriate in the environment: a cigar lounge, a spa, a personal trainer in the gym, a finedining restaurant with a menu from Alain Ducasse, limitless champagne available from breakfast – and plenty of passengers willing to take up that offer.

Some of these elements definitely feel more like a cruise than an expedition, but despite all that tinsel, what really matters are the decisions being made on the bridge by Captain Stanislas Devorsine. He’d been captain of a French Antarctic icebreaker for a decade before joining Ponant. The chance to take charge of this new vessel was irresistible. “This ship is really amazing,” he tells me in his office one evening after a long day of bumping and crushing our way through pack ice. “There are many things I think she cannot do, but she does. For me it allows maximum flexibility.”

Also on board is a helicopter, which I initially feared might be used for gratuitous sight-seeing flights. In fact, it’s used exclusively to scout out ice conditions ahead. The ship may be reinforced, but when pieces of tabular ice are not only longer but taller than her, the captain has to give them a wide berth.

Between the pilots, the captain, and weather so favourable I could spend afternoons reading on my balcony, we push on to some extraordinary latitudes, leaving the crowded Antarctic Peninsula far behind. IAATO provides ships with briefings on what to expect and how to behave at landing sites, but on places like Sims Island – a dramatic, Mordorian black rock – they have no information.

On the Brownson Islands, deep into the Amundsen Sea, charts are useless – many of the islands haven’t even been named. No tourist ship had ever visited before, nor seen any of the 6,000 emperor penguins thought to nest here in winter. The Antarctic skuas and hardy little Adélie penguins living there in the austral summer were unlikely to have ever seen humans before, either. As I slide out of the motorised Zodiac and on to the unnamed shore, expedition leader Florence Kuyper offers me a firm

Retail therapy

As I get my shoulders under the warm mineral waters of the rooftop pool at the Bath Spa Thermae, it’s easy to see why so many period films and TV shows are filmed in Bath –there’s barely a 21st century addition in sight. Higgledy piggledy roofs dotted with stubby chimney stacks sit atop limestone Georgian houses, and with its seven surrounding hills in the near distance, I get a great sense of just how compact this World Heritage city is.

I’m visiting with a group of girlfriends and an afternoon at the Bath Spa Thermae is highly recommended. From £38 for two hours access to not just its rooftop pool but a series of saunas and steam rooms plus a larger thermal pool, we’re taking in the same mineral-rich waters as the Celts and Romans did over 2,000 years ago.

Next on our weekend here is some retail therapy. Bath’s narrow streets, many of them pedestrianised, are full of independent shops and