And an update to our last message from Anna

'This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning'. Winston Churchill (talking about the battle of Egypt, 1942).

About these blogs...

Because our computer froze, Patricia, my mum, was receiving most of our updates verbally and then passing the messages on to Ken at HIE, so we were wondering what kind of Chinese Whisper misunderstandings would be being reported. All in all, however, (bar a few basic hearing errors!) the websites provide a good basic insight into the journey and we will add some more insights over the next few days.

Ken also managed to find out a lot of 'behind the scenes' information about the ice-cap so the team is now learning retrospectively about the area we travelled through which is very interesting.

Thanks so much to Pat and Ken for helping us out and doing such an amazing job. Given the broken connections and hearing aid troubles,  I can't believe what you guys managed for us.

We will try to add image galleries to the sites over the next few days. Pasi has more than 1,000 digital images that need backing up, sorting, turning, enhancing etc and then everyone else also has slide film that needs to be developed, digitised and distributed. That alone will be a big job but we also have all the video footage to play with at some point over the next few weeks and all the press and sponsor follow-up to do over the next few days. Bear with us in our aim to get a basic overview selection up by the start of next week.

As an insight into the more mundane side of post-expedition life, Pasi and I arrived back in Cannock with 22 North Face-type duffle bags of team kit and three pulks - all somehow crammed into our small Rover hatchback.

We have tonnes of unpacking, of dirty clothes washing, of tent and sleeping bag airing and team kit maintenance to add our ever-growing task-list for the next few days. Next time we are going to aim to be the people in the team who just turn up with their own clothes and return home with the same, or with a few new ones we have provided!

Watch out for some more general comments on learnings, kit, individual thoughts etc while we are still submerged in post-expedition life over the next week or two - and as we try to round-out the websites to give as detailed as possible an overview of our life on the ice-cap and what it has meant to us to succeed in developing the kit and clothing technology that made Karen's journey possible - the long-term goal of this whole project.