Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

Taking a picnic we drove to Carvoera, where there were interesting red
cliffs in many grotesque shapes with caves and tunnels and grottos and deep
blue sea beyond! Albufeira, now a crowded tourist resort, was then a small
fishing village on long quiet beach under the cliffs, but it stank and the sea was
dirty. The colourful fishing boats were drawn up on the sand and the nets
spread out to dry. It was a long day's drive home to Estoril via our favourite
place Arrabida and the fishing village of Sesimbra which was very quaint.
We stayed in Portugal until the end of the month, enjoying every day to
the full, doing something different, until we boarded the Blue Star line's
cargo/passenger ship RMS "Uruguay Star", returning from South America,
taking passage to Southampton. We had three nights on board. The small
group of passengers included Gerald Durrell, the naturalist and author of a
number of very amusing, informative and readable books on natural history.
He and his wife were returning from a field trip with a live collection of South
American animals, including an anteater and monkeys. We ourselves had a
vast amount of luggage and large crates and wooden drums of wedding
presents – nothing live though. Our heavy luggage was consigned to the
‘British Museum (Natural History)’, which had kindly agreed to store this
mixed cargo until we could deal with it; possibly I had told them it was a
collection of specimens! And so we came to our first home in Wormley,
Surrey, near Godalming: it was a tiny wooden cottage that I had found with the
help of NIO, with a small garden full of flowers, fruit trees and a minute lawn.
We called it "the base hut" as it looked and was primitive, like a small Antarctic
field hut. Appropriately only one rather small bed was provided for the two of
us! We rented it for a few months until we could find something larger.
At the end of July we collected a 7-week-old male cocker spaniel – a
copper-coloured bundle of mischief whom we called ‘Brandy’. It took ages to
get to the kennels and back, as we had to use bike, bus and train as transport;
in those days we had no car. Then in September we moved into an Admiralty
'pre-fab' bungalow in Hatchett's Drive, in a very pretty situation on top of
Woolmer Hill, outside Haslemere. Leonard and his car helped to move all our
stuff and the next day with Brandy we moved in. The weekly rent was 2l
shillings! So our life assumed a new pattern as I became a commuter and took
the stopping train down the line to Witley Station and the National Institute of
Oceanography (NIO) where I now worked. We enjoyed the long evenings and
the weekends, when we explored the surrounding countryside. The area
around our home was really beautiful and we did plenty of cycling to explore
it. Nearby were the hills and valleys of Hindhead and the Devil's Punch Bowl,
full of heathers, russet bracken, trees and bushes. There were pretty little lakes
in Waggoner's Wells and at Frensham Ponds, and Blackdown Heath was not
too far away by bicycle. Brandy had a lovely time running along with us, or
sitting in the basket on the handlebars.
December came with deep snow and we travelled up to Edinburgh where I
was to receive the "Bruce" medal for my Antarctic work from the Royal Society
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