Fitzroy and a Picnic

4th October was a Bank Holiday, known as “Peat Cutting Monday” as it is the day tradition dictated when people began cutting peat to allow it time to dry for burning over winter. Don’t forget that October is Spring in the Southern Hemisphere, as we have Summer at Christmas, and June, July and August are Winter.


As we don’t have a peat fire, we have no need to go and cut peat, so we went out for the day. The weather forecast for the day was 25mph winds and rain, so when we got up to see it was sunny we were pleased. Actually, weather forecasting is somewhat strange here, as it is rarely correct!!!

Anyway, we decided that as the weather was good we would go to Fitzroy. This was the scene of the greatest tragedy the British Army suffered during the whole Falklands campaign. During the offload of the Welsh Guards on 8th June 1982 in preparation for the assault on Stanley, Argentine planes bombed the Sir Tristram and Sir Galahad, killing and injuring dozens of men. One of these was Simon Weston, who suffered horrific burns to most of his body, but managed to survive.

There are several memorials to the ships and men who were lost on that day. The Sir Galahad never made it home. She was towed out to sea and sunk as an official war grave

You can see how the daffodils are just getting ready; it is the equivalent of March/April here. The beer bottle is full and has never been touched, and the daffodils are a nice touch for the Welsh Guards who were on the Sir Galahad.

It’s something I find incredible...people leave little tokens like the beer bottle, whilst all memorials with a metal plaque have an ammo box containing cloths and metal polish, and no one damages or nicks it. In England the items would be gone very quickly! People here have the utmost respect and reverence for those who came to free them in 1982, even those who weren’t born at the time. Nothing says this more than the number of families who are willing to put veterans and their families up in their houses when they visit. Often it is also the families of those who never made it home that people are willing to accommodate too.

The place was perfectly still, and beautifully quiet. The sun beating down was extremely hot, and it was easy to see today why so many people get sunburnt when visiting the islands.

We also saw some birds nesting on the cliffs below the memorial. I actually had to lie down and hang over to photograph them. I used a 300mm zoom lens with a UV filter. I was using the UV filter as the photos from Wireless Ridge the previous day were very glary, even with the shortest exposure time I could set up.  They are Rock Cormorants, also known as Rock Sh@gs.  I have the @ in, as some filters were blocking it with an a there!!!

I took a sweeping panorama view of Fitzroy Sound and then stitched the individual photos together, as I had done when at Gypsy Cove. I think I’ll try a 360 from the top of somewhere like Mount Longdon or Mount Tumbledown at some point; Wireless Ridge seemed to have too many rocky outcrops to get a good panorama.

We got home in time for lunch, and the weather was so nice, Harry announced we would have a picnic outside. The weather was still glorious, so why not!

I also used the opportunity to take some snaps of the garden.

It was pleasant sat out there for 20 or so minutes, when in true Falkland form, the weather changed in about 30 seconds flat, so I tried to take some moody pictures with the black and white setting and some different coloured lenses. Top to bottom: no filter, yellow, green, orange, red, blue, and then finally in colour.