Met Man Pete Goes South

Peter Richards was born in 1932 and is now married with two children and five grandchildren. He lived an idyllic country childhood, growing up in a small village south of Chichester. The war years provided the young lad new and exciting experiences, with forbidden scrambles into bomb craters and the ’rescuing’ of parts from downed aircraft.Dreams of joining the RAF for his national service were dashed by a perforated eardrum so Peter instead joined the Met Office, commencing his employment at the famous wartime airfield of Tangmere, then moving north to Dunstable. It was during his work there that after reading Niall Rankin’s Antarctic Island, Peter conversed with John Lancaster, a colleague who had just returned from the British Overseas Territory of South Georgia. This inspired Peter to apply for a role in South Georgia himself, however he was instead offered a three-year stint with the Falkland Island Dependency Survey (now known as the British Antarctic Survey). After a Harley Street specialist found nothing wrong with Peter’s ear, he was off to the southern hemisphere.After a long trip by sea on the RRS Shackleton via the Falklands, Peter was landed on the island of Signy, and as base leader with five other men spent three seasons there, before being moved to South Georgia where he explored, surveyed and even helped with the tagging of seals. This is the story of Peter’s time at the bottom of the world.