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13.12.09
Getting your boots off
You get through the front door, hang your coat up, chuck your bag on the floor, kick your shoes off and collapse on the sofa. It's the end of your day and time to relax. They may not have a sofa, or even a front door for that matter, but you can bet your bottom dollar that the moment they fall into the tent and get their boots off, a similar wave of relief strikes. Felicity (UK) talks us through the process.
Felicity (UK)'s PodCast:
Link to Podcast
Felicity's PodCast in writing:
"Hello, this is Felicity giving you an update on Day 21.
Everything's going really well, and we're making excellent progress. We're all absolutely delighted. We've literally just passed the half way mark, and it does feel like the miles are catching up with us a little bit. Lucky there's been no sort of serious injuries yet, but we've all got various aches and pains, which I think come from walking so many miles. But everyone is definitely grateful each evening to get into camp and take our boots off. It's definitely one of the highlights of our day.
We stopped this evening just around 5:30pm, and these days it takes about half an hour from stopping on our skis to getting everyone in the tent. My job in the evening is to secure the tent by digging snow onto the edges, onto the balances so I'm usually one of the last into the tent. Once I've got in and got my boots off, I take off all my ice encrusted goggles and face masks and hats and gloves, which again is another amazing moment - to get these horrible icy things off of my face, and then we hang all those ice encrusted bits of kit on our washing line that we have on the roof of our tent.
That's usually followed by about 10 minutes of concentrated power eating while I do the best to finish my bag of popcorn, nuts sesame snacks and everything else that we're supposed to eat during the day. I never usually finish it off while we're skiing so I just have to finish it all in the evening instead. And then by the time I finish, dinner is usually ready. So I get handed a huge dehydrated meal which I'm still really thrilled when I open it up and find that there are real proper vegetables in it. We honestly have the best dehydrated meals in the world. I've eaten a few, and these rank as some of the best, they really do.
After dinner, the stove is brought right inside the main part of the tent and we zip it up so it gets really hot in here and dries out all our clothes that have got wet with snow during the day. And it does get really hot. It might be -20 outside, but we can sit here quite comfortably in our chocolate fish sandals and really thaw out for once.
But that's it. That's the update for today. Love to everyone at home. I'm thinking of you all and really can't wait to speak to you all on Christmas Day. Lot's of love, Felicity."
Photo by Robert Hollingworth