Here is the latest report dated July 2 from the internet blog prepared by Beith’s Richard Cree (34) and his two companions, Glen Morris and Stephen Doughty, as they kayak in the Artic.

This week Glen records the following on his internet blog: “On Monday July 2. Local time is 10.40 pm. Our position is 69 degrees 45 minutes north, 131 degrees 55 minutes west. We have just got in after a hard slog.

Douglas Moreton wrote a book called ‘The Home of the Blizzard’, this is ‘The Home of the Force Five Wind in your Face- All the Time!’ We’ve had ten days of this now. We’re constantly paddling into winds, and there is quite a swell. Today, when we left it seemed quite calm to start with but after about four or five miles the fog descended on us and we couldn’t see where we were going at all and it was a bit disorientating.

It is very cold at the moment, just a few degrees above freezing and every now and again we get soaked as the water comes over the front of the kayaks. But anyway we are in good spirits. We are camped now near a big Pingo (dome-shaped hill formed in a permafrost area when the hydrostatic pressure of freezing groundwater causes the upheaval of a layer of frozen ground.

Pingos may be up to 90 metres (300 feet) high and over 800 metres ( 1/2 mile) across and are usually circular or oval) on what looks like a pre-historic landscape. Lots of turf and driftwood lying around and very, very flat. We had a job getting in because there’s a huge expanse of mud flats and the tide was going out and as fast as we could get in we were losing depth very, very quickly.

We had to carry the kayaks in a long, long way. We saw a Beluga whale this morning, right near the kayaks. A big white Beluga and we’ve seen a couple of harp seals and lots of birds. The ivory gulls have a really interesting call – they go ‘Ha ha’ as if to mock our progress! But anyway, I’ll sign off, all is well.”