Coming in from the cold [Antarctica Research Base]

TAKING MY SEAT on the Russian IIyushin II-76 into Antarctica, I saw a face I recognised. A decade previously I had spent three years living and working as a meteorologist at Rothera, Britain´s largest research station in Antarctica. Simon had been a logistics manager at the base, but now he was heading south as a project manager for Galliford Try, the construction company building the UK´s newest research station on the continent, Halley VI. With construction limited to Antarctica´s 12-week summer season, the build was already into its third year. When Simon showed me a photograph of the new station I wasn´t at first completely sure what I was looking at. The bright blue capsule standing on ski-footed legs looked peculiarly canine as it sat in a landscape of polar wastes. It could have been a CGI still from the latest science-fiction blockbuster.