Spitsbergen

Breathtaking scenery is everywhere on Spitsbergen and starts as your flight descends through a glacier-hung valley to Longyearbyen’s airport. Glaciers and ice-caps are rent by dark ‘Spits’ or steep-sided mountains that give the island its name. It is almost as far north as you can get (comfortably!) and still be on land. With an area approximately that of the Netherlands and Belgium together and a population that would not fill a large British village Spitsbergen can rightly claim to be Europe’s largest wilderness!

Our cruise is a clockwise circumnavigation of Spitsbergen amid continuously improbable scenery. You can expect to come across that most magnificent denizen of the Arctic, the Polar Bear, likely on several occasions. Mother Polar Bears and their cubs seek seal prey under the snouts of glaciers while lugubrious Walruses haul out on sand-bars, their ivory tusks gleaming in the midnight sun. As well as Ringed Seals we’ll also encounter the larger Bearded Seal and maybe Common and Harp Seals too. Groups of ghostly-white Belugas and their dusky coloured youngsters pass serenely as the midnight sun lowers in the sky. Spitsbergen’s own race of Reindeer graze on flats decorated with the delicate Svalbard Poppy and Windflower. Abundant Saxifrages include yellow hirculus and platysepala, creamy cespitosa, endemic svalbardensis and lovely oppositifolia, the latter so common the landscape turns purple. Bright pink mounds of Silene acaulis, heaths of white Cassiope and beautiful blue Boreal Jacob’s Ladder make it a colourful show.

Abundance rather than species richness is the hallmark of the high Arctic summer. You’ll quickly see your first Brünnich’s Guillemot and soon you’ll have seen your millionth! Little Auks are abundant too and we’ll visit a breeding colony on the little island of Fuglesangen which literally means ‘bird song’ and refers to the laughing calls of these tiny alcids. We’ll sit at the edge of the colony with birds coming and going just yards away – they are too busy bringing food to their young to worry about us! We’ll visit several ‘bird cliffs’ by zodiac or by mooring the ship right under them! They are the favoured haunt of Arctic Foxes. Immaculate King Eider and Ivory Gull are two specialities and we’ll also encounter Sabine’s Gull, the delightful Red Phalarope and everywhere smart Snow Buntings offer their cheery little song. And you’ve twenty-four hours of daylight to enjoy it all in!