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Penguin Post Office

Penguin Post Office: Episode 1

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Episode 1

BBC Radio 4 - Penguin Post Office, Episode 1

The team boards their yacht Pelagic, designed for the glacial ice fields they encounter.

The team boards their yacht Pelagic, designed for the glacial ice fields they will encounter. But as well as the ice, they must also contend with the notorious Drake Passage.

In October 2013, wildlife cameraman and director Andrew Graham-Brown and assistant producer Ruth Peacey set sail for Antarctica to film the lives of a colony of Gentoo penguins for a BBC Natural World film. Every year the Gentoos return to Port Lockroy which is on a tiny island called Goudier to find a mate and raise their young in the shadow of world's most southerly public Post Office. It was to be one of the most challenging filming trips the team had ever undertaken. Joining them in Antarctica was wildlife cameraman Doug Allan who narrates this series of five programmes which follows the team's adventures. In the first programme, we join them as they board their yacht Pelagic, which with its 12mm steel hull is designed for the glacial ice fields they encounter on their journey south. But fields of ice and giant icebergs are not their only challenge they also have to cross the notorious Drake Passage. Here the unimpeded waves of the vast Southern Ocean squeeze through the relatively narrow, shallow bottleneck of the Drake Passage, resulting in often unpredictable and brutal seas. It's a terrifying ordeal for them all. Producer Sarah Blunt.

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The adventures of a film crew who travel to Antarctica to film a colony of Gentoo penguins

The adventures of a film crew who travel to Antarctica to film a colony of Gentoo penguins. Narrated by wildlife cameraman Doug Allan.

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