蜜芽传媒

After a record number of applicants, Clare Ballantyne, Mairi Hilton, Natalie Corbett and Lucy Bruzzone have been selected to run the world's most remote post office, and whilst they are at it, count the island's colony of penguins.

The historic site of Port Lockroy, on Goudier Island in Antarctica, is being reopened for the first time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

The team will travel 15,000km from the UK, and on arrival will be faced with five months of sub-zero temperatures, almost constant daylight and no running water.

The penguin colony on the island will be monitored to track the impact of tourism and climate change on breeding and will be fed into a data set that the British Antarctic Survey monitor. The historic post office will handle approximately 80,000 cards, mainly from tourists to the wider world, but also keeping various other bases in the Antarctic in contact.

Lucy Bruzzone, the base leader who has recently spent three months in Svalbard on an Arctic expedition, has said that this is a "dream come true" and on the prospect of using hand written cards:

"There isn't a huge amount of technological communications available, so a bit of snail mail will be a nice way to keep in touch."

(Photo: Lucy Bruzzone, Base Leader on Port Lockroy. Credit: UK Antarctic Heritage Trust/PA Wire)

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