Hi everyone
I know it has been more than a day since I said I would update my posts but I could not pass up the opportunity I was offered yesterday morning.
On Sunday two of the VASS team (me and Jemma) visited Port Stanley and had a very interesting time taking pictures of the wrecks, the first being the Jhelum a 500t wooden barque which is believed to be the last East Indiaman ship left in the entire world, the next being the SS Lady Elizabeth a 1000t iron barque which was beached in the 1930s and finally the Plym which was also beached but much earlier. We stayed in the town for the morning looking around the shops and buying the usual penguin souvenirs, I actually bought a book about the ships involved in the exploration of Antarctica called Ordeal By Ice. Opposite the town on the original Military harbour you can see ships names marked out in stones painted white, from my memory there was- Barracouta, Protector, Beagle, Endurance and Dumbarton Castle. We moved on to Surf Bay which was until recently an active mine field but if you didn't know any better you would have thought you were on a tropical island! We visited the Stanley airfield and saw the bomb craters from the famous Black Buck raid by the Vulcan bomber, before moving on to Gypsy Cove and Yorke Bay. From these locations you could see the entrance the harbour and the cove where the SS Great Britain was beached in the 1870s. From here we saw many birds and wildlife including the Magellanic penguins guarding their burrows, Sisikins, Falkland Thrushes, Red eyed Shags, cormorants and Turkey Vultures. Finally we reached the top and found the WW1 and WW2 coastal naval guns, two of them in turrets pointing out to sea.
On Monday, I was asked if I would like to go the British memorial on the West side of the East Falkland. This turned out to be at a place I have always wanted to go but never thought I would get the opportunity. Looking over the area from the mountains you would never have guessed what had happened there just over 30years ago. The stretch of water looked so calm and peaceful now but as we looked out across the water and looked up we realised where we were-we had all grown up seeing these images of Argentinian Skyhawks flying down the same route we had just taken, in front of us was a green marker buoy indicating the sunken HMS Ardent, we had looked out across San Carlos water and we all reflected what had happened and should not have happened. It really changed the mood for us on the trip after that.
We visited the museum and paid our respects to the men who didn't come back especially Colonel H Jones.
We returned via the North Camp road which is more of dirt track than a road.
As far as I know the harbour lights are still on at Mare harbour as we saw them from our positions on our exercise but I don't know anything about Lot 22.
