May 1968

THE BRITISH SCHOOLS EXPLORING SOCIETY 1967 EXPEDITION TO ARCTIC NORWAY On 26th July last year the 29th Annual Expedition of the British Schools Exploring Society left Newcastle bound for Arctic Norway.

The Society, formerly the Public Schools Exploring Society was founded in 1932 by Surgeon Commander Murray Levick, R.N. The first expedition went to Finland and consisted of the founder of the Society and eight boys. Since then the Society has expanded a great deal and the 1967 expedition consisted of eleven leaders, sixty three boys and two Norwegians as guests of the Society.

Our first part of the journey was from Newcastle across to Bergen. At Bergen, after our first taste of Scandinavian food, we joined one of the coastal ferry boats. On this we were all expecting to find berths as we were to spend three nights on board. However, about a third had to find sleeping accommodation where they could. This ranged from the first class writing rooms to the lifeboats and every possible place between the two. The crew had fairly comfortable quarters and we did manage to get our heads down in their quarters.

The time taken to get up the coast was most useful as it enabled the leaders to get to know all the boys and the boys were able to get to know the people they were going to spend the next seven weeks with. It also enabled the surveyors to get acquainted with theodolites and plane tables.

This saved much valuable time later as very few of the surveyors knew anything about surveying and it is much to the credit of the two leaders that such a good map was made.

The expedition was divided into groups of between ten and twelve called "Fires". Each fire lived separately and did their own cooking. Each of the fires had some work to do and were split down as follows : 2 Fires—Survey 2 Fires—Geology 1 Fire—Natural History 1 Fire—Commando The first five fires speak for themselves but the Commando fire did not have anything to do with the usual use of the word but they did invaluable work in carrying out recce marches in all directions for the benefit of the various marches which were to take place towards the end of the expedition.

After three eventful days on the boat up the coast we disembarked at Bod. I am sure that the crew were relieved to say the least to see us go while the other passengers wished us the best of luck. After unloading all our personal kit we had a short time in which to look around Bodo. This we found very Americanised due to a NATO base being up there. The last stage of our journey was by coach and a mine railway. A combination of the two took us to within walking distance of the base camp which was already well founded by the advance party. The walk from the roadhead to the base camp was only a short distance but due to our various stages of physical fitness it took an awful long time and those who had taken the extra luxury regretted it on the initial march into camp.

As soon as we had de bused and gathered our packs together we were subjected to our first taste of the mosquitoes; it would be more correct to 55