Tuesday 13th January

[coughing] I've got a bit of a chesty cough but I'm OK. We had a long march today, we've done 21.7 km.

Awful weather - walking in a pea soup with a howling gale, very cold, but we got there and everything's fine.

It was really difficult navigating in today's horrible weather. We had no waypoints to be able to work on to.

We're very happy today because we've hopefully only got four days to go.

Some questions from readers of the blog:

Q: How are you finding putting up the tent with all your kit on?

We've got it down to a fine art; in fact, this evening putting up the tent was almost a Rolls Royce effort... I even got a complimentary comment from Conrad on our tent erection abilities.

I felt very good about it, I must admit.

If only the weather was this good!

p.s. to Amy, who asked the question...I'm wearing the skins that she gave me, some time back, every day. In fact I haven't taken them off for about two weeks ...you can imagine how much they smell! They are wonderful.

Q: How are your pills doing? Is your breathing improving?

They're actually doing incredibly well, I was going to ask you to email Simon Mtuy (click his name for an amazing video) to say that I hope he's tracking our progress, and that if it wasn't for his pills (Homeopathic Mountain Climbing Kit) I don't think I'd have been able to make it. It's working unbelievably well so I'm very grateful to him.

Q: How are you finding the 24 hour sunlight?

Really, really weird. You wake up in the middle of the night and the sun is high in the sky, the tent can either be freezing cold or boiling hot - dependent upon whether there's any solar gain. It's just the strangest, strangest thing!

In fact we could quite happily set any time we like, the only reason we are on GMT-3 hours is because that's what time Union Glacier base camp are on. It's easier to work to their time, in case we have an emergency. Just before we call you, we call them and so we have to use their time to fit in with their schedules.

When we get to the South Pole, believe it or not, people there are 16 hours ahead! So we'll arrive in the evening, and they'll be getting up for the morning. How weird is that!

(P.s. the people who work at the South Pole scientific centre work on New Zealand time, which is the cause of the time difference. Patrick and Conrad will continue to work on Chilean time because the plane which takes them back will be from Union Glacier, therefore is working on Chilean time also.)

24 hour sunlight