Festivities in Antarctica - Ticket To Antarctica

We’ve reached the Falkland Islands – and our journey to and around Antarctica has come to an end. We hope you’ve enjoyed the journey, and discovered some new things about our ship and the frozen continent.

King penguins at Volunteer Point in the Falkland Islands

Want to re-live our voyage to Antarctica? The ship’s webcam takes a photo every 15 minutes so we’ve stuck them together to create a sped up journey of the trip of a lifetime.

POV: RRS Sir David Attenborough

Celebrations on the ice

The holiday season in Antarctica is a unique experience! People are far from home and away from friends and family – but they have their own special Antarctic traditions. There are nearly 300 researchers, engineers, crew and support staff across five research stations and the ship who will be celebrating in Antarctica this year. We found out what some of them would be up to…

The tradition at Signy is for the Station Leader to cook Christmas Dinner, so that is what I will be doing. There’s only five of us, and we’ll have a nice brunch while reading the email greetings from all the other research stations. The others will probably head out to survey some penguins and do some sledging, and I will hold down the fort and get the turkey, nut roast and trimmings sorted. After dinner we’ll spend the evening enjoying some games together including maybe some Christmas darts.
Sarah Clark, Station Leader at Signy Research Station

I’ll head over to Gourlay Peninsula on the south-east shores of the island to carry out the almost daily checks on the chinstrap and Adélie penguin colonies there, followed by some sledging or snowman building. After dinner I’ll probably fall asleep in traditional Christmas style in front of a cheesy festive movie!
Derren Fox, Zoological Field Assistant at Signy

Secret Santa and carols on the deck? Sounds like a great Christmas to us!

The ship and stations are decorated for the festive season – think Antarctica-themed tree toppers and tinsel-a-plenty!

Celebrations in Antarctica

A group of people in Santa hats and paper hats sitting around a long table. Everyone is looking at the camera and smiling. There are crackers and plates and wine glasses on the table

Rich Turner

A man with glasses and a woman wearing a Christmas jumper and a Santa hat smiling at the camera

A group of people wearing stripy aprons stood in a kitchen, smiling at the camera, with trays of mince pies in front of them

Emma Reynolds

A Christmas tree with baubles on, and an albatross model on top

Alexandra Dodds

The longest day

While it’s winter in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s currently summer in Antarctica. This means that on the continent, there are almost 24 hours of daylight. In fact, their longest day is on the 21 December – the same date as the shortest day in the UK.

The team at Rothera won’t see the sun set until 13 January 2025, and even then it’s only for just over an hour!

Sunset at Rothera Research Station

This is because of the way the Earth tilts on its axis. In the Antarctic summer, the South Pole tilts towards the sun, so it’s always visible. This can be hard for people living there – although constant sun sounds nice, it can make it hard to sleep!

Watch out for when the nights stop in this timelapse!

Your flight is about to depart

The ship makes frequent calls to the Falkland Islands to load cargo and pick up people. It berths at the Mare Harbour Military Port (our previous ship, RRS James Clark Ross, could berth in Stanley but the draft of the RRS Sir David Attenborough is too deep!)

RRS Sir David Attenborough is registered in Stanley, Falkland Islands. There is a long tradition of registering British Antarctic Survey ships and aircraft in the Falkland Islands. This underpins the ship’s role in carrying out science in the South-west Atlantic and Antarctica.

The Falkland Islands are very remote – but there have been visitors from all over the world!

The Falkland Islands are a small group of islands in the south Atlantic. The scenery is spectacular – think mountains and stone runs (a bit like a glacier made of rock!) and there is wildlife aplenty.

Lots of people travelling to and from Antarctica with the British Antarctic Survey travel through the Falkland Islands. They make the long journey home on the military airbridge, which stops at Ascension Island in the south Atlantic, before landing in the UK. The whole journey takes around 20 hours!

Beautiful landscapes in the Falkland Islands

Tell us what you think

We hope you’ve enjoyed your journey to Antarctica with us. What was your favourite part? Have you discovered anything new?

We’d be really grateful if you could fill out this short survey so we can make Ticket to Antarctica 2025 even better!

Take the survey

A Christmas Iceworld special

Featuring a missing frozen turkey, après-ski cinema, and Antarctic Secret Santa. Nadia Frontier talks to the team at Rothera Research Station about spending the festive season in Antarctica.

Thank you

We are officially at the end of our journey. Thank you to everyone that has followed along for the journey – we hope you enjoyed it!

An extra special thank you is also needed for Sir David Attenborough and all of our partners for helping spread the word about Ticket to Antarctica.

We’ll keep you posted about the time capsule – and watch this space for a reimagined second year of Ticket to Antarctica in 2025!

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