In 2023, Lucie and I spent the bulk of the month of January and early February riding a Harley-Davidson all around New Zealand and, to be frank, it was a little bit tiring. As is our “way”, with one box comprehensively “ticked”, even before we took off from Auckland, our thoughts had turned to where we would go next.

Japan was top of the leader board although, being in the Northern Hemisphere, it would require a holiday in the summer months. We agreed to think more about it.

It was really only when we got home, however, that I realised just how much our month of almost ceaseless travelling had taken out of me. We hate to admit it, but we all get older every day and only in our dreams can we still do all the stuff that we once merely shrugged off. What was I going to do, I thought, about the very top item on my “bucket list” ?

For as long as I can ever remember, the Antarctic has fascinated me. When I was small, the tragic death of Captain Scott and his companions on the Ross Ice Shelf, in March of 1912, was a comparatively recent event if you compare it now to, say, the end of World War II. It had certainly caught the imagination of my father and he alluded to it often, particularly if I dared to complain when I was dragging feed and water for our stock down through the snowdrifts. It lodged in my mind too – but, growing up in England, in the 1960s, Antarctica may as well have been on the outer reaches of the galaxy.

Lucie and I had bandied the possibility of going to the Antarctic about before, particularly when, in 2017, we found ourselves on the Isla Navarina, the most southerly point of Chile. But although, in global terms, we were then quite near to it, it was still a long (and prohibitively expensive) thousand or so kilometres away.

We talked it over again and again and agreed to explore possibilities. The costs seemed to be eye-watering. We both agreed we would like to do it – but where would we come home to. if we needed to sell our apartment in order to ante-up the cash that Viking or Hurtigruten would require from us to take us there ?

I often comment on Lucie’s determination and, whilst I had almost stored Antarctica as a “not going to happen”, she continued to root around various possibilities. Of course, in the end, she found the Czech agent for a company that did tours that were more adventure oriented than merely a luxury cruise between some icebergs. Best of all, that agent was located in Dolní Břežany, just to the south of Prague. We went to meet him on our Harley and it took us scarcely twenty minutes to get there.

Sitting in the grounds of the small town’s castle brewery, bathed in the warm October sunshine, it was hard to imagine why we were actually there. There were birds flying about and singing in the trees – and we were trying to make arrangements to go to a place where there are no trees – and most of the birds walk and swim.

The agent, Mr Hocek, did not really need to use his sales skills that much. From his brochure it appeared that a suitable trip would cost us between half and two-thirds of the prices we had seen elsewhere. It would be a smallish boat, only about one hundred people and, as well as landfall on the actual Antarctic continent itself, the voyage would also take in the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, South Orkney and South Shetland.

Apart from me worrying that some of it might be in Scotland, I think that, as we rode away having promised to think of it, we both already knew we were going. It was still, what I considered to be, an eye-watering price. Our route home took us past the shop of our favourite butcher, which is in the same small town and I wondered whether my future visits there would be solely to buy his delicious (but quite keenly priced), sausages instead of hunks of lamb, beef and pork. Still, and I apologise to any Hindus reading this, you only live once.

We made up our minds and booked the trip a few days later. If I had even less hair and was a curious shade of yellow and Lucie was even skinnier with a beehive of blue hair, I could, at that point have said “The Simpsons are going to Antarctica !”