The two most northern settlements on earth

En-route to Svalbard, we’re the little blue circle

You are forbidden to wander to the outskirts in the villages of Longyearbyen or Ny-Ålesund, without a gun-toting guide while visiting Svalbard. Apparently, the polar bears have an intense appetite for two-legged meat.

The immense landscape of Svalbard can be beautifully sunny one moment, eeriliy foggy the next. It’s jawing-dropping in August, but when I try and imagine January, when it’s cold and dark all of the time, I’m fairly certain it would scare the beJesus out of me ... unless I had a full-time, alcohol drip attached to me.

Ny-Ålesund, from which we departed just last night, was once the starting point for many famous polar expeditions, including Roald Amundsen’s and Umberto Nobile’s 1926 airship journey to the North Pole.

Today, 10 nations have permanent research stations in Ny-Ålesund, carrying out studies in fields such as atmospheric physics, biology, geology, glaciology and oceanography. I wanted to knock on one of their doors and ask why the temperature was so damned warm at 20C, the day before yesterday. But no one seemed to know which research station was responsible for global heating.

A note of caution: Ny-Ålesund is not the place to be if you need to Google 24/7. WiFi is forbidden here.