Prestwich and Whitefield Probus Club

These take her to the most unusual places easily summed up in a few lines of rhyme:

No yearning for the midday sun,

nor soft sands for feet to run;

Give me, give me the frozen

wastes -

no accounting for some folk's

tastes!

Spitzbergen is an archipelago of islands, 400 miles of Norway's north cape, which Kathleen has visited twice - to our amazement she informed us that before the upheaval of our world, this area lay around the Equator.

Some of the oldest granite rocks on this planet are to be found there. Once covered in forests, its coal resources are now exploited by Russia, though the lands have been owned by Norway since 1916.

NATO has a military base there and other Norwegians work at scientific stations, alongside some workers from British universities.

Inevitably, slides showed snow, snow and more snow, steep cliffs and rocks in fantastic shapes.

Birdlife manages to nest on the narrowest of ledges, among them fulmars, guillemots and puffins. Its the realm of the polar bear, musk ox, caribou and reindeer too, and travel guides carry guns in case polar bears should become too menacing. Kathleen chose to stroke the stuffed variety!

Huskies drawing the family sledge were the usual form of transport.

Houses get their supplies of hot and cold water from pipes mounted on trestles above ground because permanently frozen subsoil is too hard to excavate.

Housing has to be strategically located away from the gulleys which become torrents of water when ice thaws. Strong winds blow and it's usually bitterly cold, Kathleen told us.

Certainly, it looked the most inhospitable of holiday venues but it certainly inspires Kathleen. Tears were shed as one cruise ended. It was an excellent talk and slide show, which earned our speaker ready applause.

A rhyme opened these notes and more rhymes under the title "Chuckles in Verse" will be related by Ernest Statham at our next meeting on January 27.

BERNARD HOWCROFT