Penguin Diaries: Day 72: M25 ring road

Tuesday 22nd January

Today was the 4th of out the 5 days off together that James and I have. Yayyy. Tuesdays are no fly days for Brintel, so we were unable to book our selves onto a helicopter trip. So I had booked ourselves a wagon for the day and thoguht we would just decide what to do when the day got here.

The forecast was pretty grim - after a beautiful weekend of temps well into the 20s, today was set to be foggy to start, then cloudy all day with outbreaks of rain. But the fog had lifted by the time we set off, and one or two breaks were already starting to form in the cloud. The great thing was that the wind was pretty much flat calm. Down here, 15KT feels like light winds and the beaufort scale just makes no sense here as it's always so windy. So it was actually a pretty great day.

We decided to drive around the ring road - known as the M25. I have included another map so you can see where it goes. It was about 150 miles (I think, I can't remember. Maybe more). There were places to stop off, but James thought he would rather make a day trip of the places like Bodie Bridge and San Carlos, Darwin and Goose Green, as I had already been. The drive was going to take about 4 hours anyway.

By the time we had got the wagon it was about 10am before we were "loaded up and truckin". We decided to go clockwise so that we would end up in Stanley, and could go surfing if it looked ok. We decided to make just one stop, at San Carlos for a little look around, and to have a cup of tea, but that was the only stop we had made. Abouth 2 hours in we came to a cross road which could have taken us to Cape Dolphin, but as you can see from the map it is quite far. We decided that another day we could do a special trip there - more penguins you see.

It was actually really nice to just drive around and to be off base, and the weather turned out to be pretty nice! The views were pretty and there were a few little settlements to drive through and look at.

We got to Stanley and went to get a "fake subway" from West Store. It was only about 3 o' clock, so we decided we would have time to go back to MPA, pick up whoever else was free, and to come back to Stanley for dinner and a few drinks. We phoned work and the girls were keen. (There are loads of girls here now, it's great!! James was going to be the only guy out tonight!) I was bought a recipe book for my birthday, from James' family, called "taste of the falklands" and the chef owns a restaurant called The Waterfront so we went there to book a table for dinner.

Some of the Brintel pilots had told James about a secret cove, just down from Surf Bay that was pretty good, so we went to check it out. Again it was a pretty white sandy beach which was deserted. James went in, and managed to catch quite a few waves, which was good. About 30 minutes later the fog started to roll back in, and we headed back to MPA to collect the girls.

We left MPA at around 7.30 so were a little late for our 8pm reservation, but they didn't mind. There was one other medium sized party and three single diners, so it was a little quiet. But we still had fun and made some ambiance of our own. I had two starters instead of a main - pumpkin ravioli and squid. It was lovely. Everyone else had lamb and they all said it was really really good - Jo said the best lamb she had ever had.

We then went into The Vic (which according to James is just like The Swan in Sidmouth) and had a drink in there before going back to MPA.

Good day :)