Another day on the white treadmill, and not an awful lot to report, other than that the weather was good to us today, and we're both feeling extraordinarily tired, but still giving our all.

There's been a lot of fresh snow recently and the surface is proving our biggest headache at the moment; you can see the deep furrows we've ploughed up to this evening's camp site. When we take our skis off in the evening and walk around in the deep powder to pitch our tent, we've marvelled several times at how on earth Birdie Bowers -an apparently indefatigable member of Scott's team who abhorred skis and chose to walk instead- managed on this type of stuff.

Speaking of marvelling, now Tarka and I are both feeling as knackered as we've ever felt, we reckon we're finally getting some sort of glimpse of what day-to-day life out here must have been like for Scott's party (and indeed for Shackleton on his Nimrod expedition). It's still an awfully long way back to the coast, which was the only way home a century ago, and like them, we're now threading a path through our lifeline of tiny depots, dotted along nearly 900 miles of nothingness.

Apologies if my post about the Pole sounded a bit negative (particularly to the US National Science Foundation personnel who live and work there!) but it was a long, tough day and I think the tiredness and lack of calories had put me in a bit of a grump. The blue skies today have cheered me up immensely, and I wish I had the words to explain my excitement about now being on the journey back to Ross Island. I'm still pinching myself at times that we've come as far as we have. Thanks for following, and I hope my updates will be back to normal once I've caught up on a bit of sleep...