Saturday 6 September 2025 – For the second time in two days, there was a touch of the unexpected – which worked out spectacularly for the better.  The “Expedition Morning” (i.e. plans being made on the hoof) was to take a short hike to a waterfall in Ekmanfjorden, just north of Longyearbyen.  The scenery that was the backdrop to this was pretty spectacular.

The second picture above is of a formation locally nicknamed “The Colosseum”. On the way to landing, Carlo, one of the Italians in the group, professed himself a little puzzled as to why.

We landed, disembarked the Zodiacs and hopped ashore for what turned out to be a candidate for the shortest hike in world history, because the sharp eyes of Agnese, Carlo’s girlfriend, immediately picked out something that suddenly became really relevant to, and fundamentally altered, the morning’s plans.

In the distance was a polar bear. The picture above was taken at the longest end of the Big Lens – 560mm for the photo nerds among you – so this would be the view through binoculars – and Agnese can take credit for a great piece of scouting. Despite the bear being over a kilometre away, there was no question of us continuing on land – and anyway, we now had something rather more interesting to seek out than a boring old waterfall.

So we hopped straight back into the Zodiacs, which made the length of the hike not significantly different from zero, and headed off in the general direction of the bear in the hope that it would stay reasonably close to the shore so we could photograph watch it.

The terrain gave us a really good lesson into how careful one must be in these here parts, as the moraine had crests and dips in it, any of which could easily hide even something as substantial as a polar bear.

See?

We followed the shoreline towards where we’d last seen the bear – guided occasionally by the crew from the bridge on Kinfish who, being higher than us, could sometimes see the bear, albeit only through their snazzy stabilised binoculars. We passed the remains of a trapper’s cabin (Gunnar got a grin by suggesting it was the bear’s lodgings)

and had lost sight of it until suddenly someone spotted it. It had moved a surprisingly long way and was now in the water, swimming back towards where we’d last seen it.

It even swam back past the cabin, kindly providing us photographers with an interesting backdrop,

and then, even more obligingly, went ashore.

We could see at this point, then, that it was a female. How did we know? Because it was wearing a tracking collar; males’ necks are too thick for these collars, apparently.

So, there we were, with our final day presenting us with a brilliant last encounter.

The bear pottered bearishly along the shore, heading back towards the waterfall, which had suddenly become interesting again as a possible backdrop for photography. But then…

it turned back, to (hushed) groans from the photographers (we didn’t want to disturb the bear in any way but really wanted it in front of the waterfall). Perhaps it heard us because, happily, it once again headed towards the waterfall, and we got a lovely portrait of it positioned as foreground interest.

We carefully maintained the 300m distance from the bear as it wandered along the shoreline

and it approached and crossed a couple of smaller waterfalls, which involved it climbing up quite a steep slope

and pottering on.

After watching it quietly and following it for about an hour, we decided it would be best to leave it in peace, and so headed back to Kinfish, which was beautifully positioned for a final shot.

Of course, when we boarded, there was nothing for it but to have a celebratory glass of fizz, which Anni magicked out of her stores for us.

We then headed back towards Longyearbyen, with a ship’s cruise past the glacier there. I’d decided that I was more interested in checking out bear photos, but Jane persuaded me to take a bit of a break to register the passing scenery.

Today’s wonderful encounter gave the final evening, the Captain’s Dinner, a distinctly celebratory air.  There were bespoke cocktails for us to photograph drink

and captain Jesper gave a valedictory speech

before we sat down to a very, very fine dinner. Roger, our Swedish chef,

having done us proud all week, excelled himself, and Anni did her usual smooth job of ensuring that everyone was well lubricated.

So came to an end a memorable exploration of the northern reaches of the Svalbard archipelago – and beyond, of course.  Kuba had been keeping a map going of the places we called in at, and he also showed us the formal track as monitored by the ship’s instruments.

We’ve been extraordinarily lucky. With thanks to Kate at Whisper and Wild, we happened upon a wonderful ship with an excellent crew; we had really very kind weather; and have managed to see a wide range of the wildlife of the arctic in its natural, stunningly beautiful, environment. Can’t ask for better, really.

Tomorrow sees us travelling home. We have an appallingly early start in order to catch an early flight to Oslo and then onwards to London, but we depart with brilliant memories of a fantastic time in mainland Norway and Svalbard.

That’s the end of this trip, but, as you might guess, not the end of our travels. We’ll be off again very soon, so best keep an eye on these pages to see what we get up to.