Scott's Last Expedition @ NHM London

I was lucky enough to be invited to spend Pole Day morning checking out Scott's Last Expedition - the new Exhibition opening on Friday at the Natural History Museum here in London. If you follow me on the twitter you will know I've been waiting for it for ages so was obviously chomping at the bit for this one.

Its well good you guys. The exhibit is laid out in roughly the shape of the Expeditions winter quarters at Cape Evans, which gave a wonderful sense of scale that's generally lost when looking at pictures or reading about the cramped close quarters they all lived in. Frankly, it made me realised, potentially not that cramped? The biggest revelation was that old Ponco had a darkroom bigger than my kitchen! I was a little disappointed that it wasn't heaving with pieces from the hut like I had pictured in my mind (I think I may have been harking back to my trips to Kelly Tarlton's as a wayward 10 year old back in New Zealand where they have an excellent replica of the hut that you can visit) but the huge blown up Ponting photos of life in the hut were fantastic - I noticed all kinds of things I'd never noticed before (Cherry stashing chocolate under his bed?!) when looking at them on a smaller scale.

The highlights for me were of course Cherry's egg, lit up like the holy grail, a tiny NZ flag that Dr Wilson flew at the pole and Levick's Adelie notebook

(and the giant blown up photograph of my favourite picture of the dreamy Dr Aitch on the wall obviously)

We also spent a while marvelling at Scott's tiny waist and admiring his broad shoulders. I mean, epaulettes.

I also think I am dangerously close to getting the emblem on Scott's sledging flag tattooed upon my person on Friday? Its amazing!

Great pieces for avid fans and a fantastic introduction for people who aren't familiar with anything that happened in the South Pole 100 years ago at all. Its only £9 to get in which is reasonable and totally worth every penny.

Fantastic exhibition and well worth checking out. I know I'm biased, but it really is, I'm going again on Friday!

[more pictures // buy tickets]