Commuting to work on Gough is rather different to my old commute, less traffic, no road rage, bad drivers or insane taxis. It has different challenges, such as fording flooded rivers rivers after the island has had 60mm of rain in three hours... All that river crossing advice that I have (luckily) avoided ever having to use back in the mountains at home has proven very useful here. Any of those of you reading this who think that this island sounds like a kayaking paradise are sadly mistaken. All the rivers here are clogged with low trees. You would be trapped in a strainer so fast, you would never have a chance. Sea-kayaks, however would be wonderful. Even now in winter we have days that are flat calm and would be absolutely wonderful to explore the island from the sea. You'd just have to find some way to circumvent DEA's silly policy about no swimming in the sea...
 |
| The river in question. It was thigh-deep at the shallowest place I could find. |
So as I said, it has rained rather a lot this week and is due to rain some more tonight. There is a big cold front passing just south of us at the moment. For those of you are interested in these things, the pressure has dropped 20 millibars since 6 a.m. and is still dropping. Should make for a fun night!
All this rain plays merry hell with my work schedule because the only thing you can predict about the weather on Gough is that you can't predict the weather on Gough. Weekends and weekdays have ceased to have any real meaning, work happens when it is not raining too hard. Otherwise I spend my time writing reports, which are something else the job description did not include: Requires ability to write endless reports that no one will ever read. That would surely have stopped me applying for this job.
 |
| One clear night to see the stars and moon |
Other than the weather there has been nothing else momentous, or even notable to recount this week. Have a great week yourselves. Bundle up warm, I hear it is cold in the Cape.
No comments:
Post a Comment