As Britain today commemorates the 30th anniversary of the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands, I’m reminded of my own visit there, in December 1993. I was lucky to go – I was one of just three travel journalists that year to be sponsored to go by the Falkland Islands Government. The reason they went to such expense is because at the time I was producing a syndicated radio travel programme with a wider audience reach than the BBC’s own flagship travel programme.
I flew out from Brize Norton in a Royal Air Force “Timmy” Tristar. They didn’t have Club class, but row one was always allocated to the top brass, and so I found myself sitting there with a Wing Commander heading out to pay his Tornado fighters a visit on one side of me, and someone from the Admiralty on the other. It was a long flight out, refuelling at Recife in Brazil (the runway on Ascension Island was being resurfaced), and then half an hour out of Port Stanley, we were met by two Tornado fighters, and escorted in with one just off each wingtip! It was a trifle odd to see people holding large cards with numbers over their heads once we’d landed at Mount Pleasant Airport and begun to taxi to the terminal. It seems bored squaddies took delight in scoring the landings of the Tristars when they came in three times a week.
More bizarrely, whilst still a captive audience, waiting for our baggage in the arrivals hall, passengers were given a compulsory safety briefing on all the different types of unexploded ordnance that might be found in the islands. There were 117 known minefields laid by the Argentinians (30 years on, these are still being cleared), but there were many other places where unexploded hand grenades, mortar bombs and small arms rounds might turn up, along with the beautiful but deadly coronet-topped cluster bombs dropped by our own Harriers.
While in Port Stanley, I stayed in the Upland Goose Hotel, in a room overlooking Stanley Harbour, a five mile stretch of water, home to the remains of several beached ocean-going square riggers. In the days before the Panama Canal, ships had to negotiate the dangerous waters around Cape Horn. Many of them limped in to Stanley for repair and never got any further.
Everywhere outside Stanley is called “camp”, and access is either by Land Rover, such as the day I went to Volunteer Point to see the colony of King Penguins, or by the Trislander aircraft of FIGAS, the Falkland Islands Government Air Service. I spent one night on Pebble Island, scene of the daring SAS raid, and where 11 years on, wrecked Argentine Pucara aircraft still lay beside the grass strip runway. And I spent another night on Sea Lion Island, visiting Elephant Corner, where huge elephant seals lie on the beach in a heaving mass of blubber.
Apart from the amazing wildlife, the Falklands provide some terrific walking opportunities, although with no footpaths, it’s definitely a case of blazing your own trail. I hiked one day up Mount Tumbledown, scene of one of the fiercest battles of the war. When I visited, 11 years after the conflict, the mountainside was still littered with communication wire, plimsolls, bits of tents and sleeping bags, and a couple of field kitchens. But while appreciating the view from the summit, I realised there was none of the birdsong to be heard elsewhere – the birds never came back!
I became something of a celebrity when I was interviewed on Falkland Islands Radio by Patrick Watts, who in 1982 famously continued to broadcast as Argentinian soldiers burst into his studio. And not to be outdone, the British Forces Broadcasting Service had me on their programme for service personnel. The Falkland Islanders themselves were incredibly friendly, hospitable, and genuinely interested in their visitors. They remain very grateful for being rescued from the Argentine dictatorship, and left me in no doubt of their desire to remain British!
