At last, a day off the boat exploring the land of the High Arctic. We sailed pretty well due east along the southern coast of Devon Island at 74°N, over 9° further than we got South. The sea is unnaturally calm, the skies bizarrely blue, the temperature unusually high. In the morning, we landed in Dundas Harbour and strolled over the tundra for three hours, learning about the geology and ecosystem. In this location, the main interest was the flora-saxifrage, sedges, 1” high willows, bell campion, blue grass, cottongrass and the pale yellow arctic poppy. An abandoned RCMP base was poignantly desolate; the antique jar of peanut butter and the rusting sewing machine were more affecting even than the official gravestones in the perfect little graveyard. In the afternoon, we cruised to Croker Bay, a long narrow inlet ending in a chaotic glacier. We squelched through boggy tundra, spying bear prints in the mud, a fox’s jawbone, snow geese, red-throated loons, and two fox traps from the Devonian civilisation 1,500 years old. They are essentially a tunnel built of stones, baited with meat and a dropstone linked to it with a length of leather which, when tripped, results in one trapped fox. After dinner, the captain took us, in lieu of cabaret, up close and intimate to the nose of the glacier. From deck 6 we could see the ice surface, like peaks of stiff meringue, and the entire vertical face, from a distance of 30 metres. Wow. We also saw a young polar bear on a berg, rather thin, but Adrian’s picture of it diving into the sea has wooed the bar lizards. Off now to share a dram in 312.