A mid-winter weekend break at Pebble Island was agreed on to make a change of scene, although we weren’t really sure what to expect. The lodge at Pebble Island (like all the tourist lodges) is shut for the winter, but Dot and Alex Gould who own and farm Pebble, have two houses available for visitors. It seemed like a good opportunity to explore a bit and get away. Plus you can choose to eat with Dot and Alex in their farmhouse, which we had heard very good things about and to add to that Anita, who also lives there, offers beauty treatments.

Time for a FIGAS flight. As it’s winter, at Pebble this means landing on the very long Elephant Beach, rather than their airstrip which gets very wet and is saved for the summer. This also means that landing is dependent on low tide and on clear, flat stretches of beach and not ridged sand or lots of seaweed or lots of birds foraging in the seaweed. As we set off from Stanley, Dion our pilot, said he thought we’d probably be able to land!

We landed safe and sound on the beach and taxied to the break in the dunes where Dot and Alex were waiting for us. After the passengers, luggage and post were handed over, the plane taxied back down the beach and then took off into the wind for the 45 minutes back to Stanley.

We had a very enjoyable couple of days at Pebble, it was cold but dryish (some light snow overnight) and we spent Saturday looking for pebbles on a beach (pretty and unusual pebbles are what the island is named for). On one of the ponds we saw some black necked swans for the first time and on the beaches lots of gulls, plovers, steamer ducks and oystercatchers. Elephant Beach (where we’d landed) is 4 miles long and we walked all of it.

On Sunday there was time for some beauty treatments and to be given a demonstration of how to hand shear a sheep (rather than the usual machine shearing) and in the afternoon it was time for the plane back to Stanley. This time the beach nearest the settlement was covered in seaweed and things that were probably urchins and were providing a feast for seabirds.

Amazing how a couple of tides can transform the beach. Fortunately Andrew, who was flying us back, was able to use the far end of the beach to land, were it was nice and clean.

The flight back was really special. Andrew flew parallel with the coast but deliberately stayed a bit offshore because he thought we might see whales – and he was right. We saw 3 or 4 small groups of Southern Right Whales along the coast and as we were the only flight of the day, Andrew took the time to give us a fantastic view, circling round a couple of the groups several times. It was very exciting to see the whales going about their daily routine – which at this time of year is apparently most likely to be socialising or mating. As well as it being exciting for passengers to see, the FIGAS pilots report their sightings to the conservation charities based on the Falkland Islands and are a good source of information, they keep a regular eye out for marine wildlife while flying.

And then back to Stanley, having had a very pleasant, relaxing weekend having explored only a little of what Pebble Island has to offer, I’ll definitely be back.