One thing you quickly learn living in the Falkland Islands is that Facebook is an integral part of everyday life. This came as a bit of a surprise to me, as before leaving the UK I was on the verge of not using it, as only few people I knew were posting regularly. It’s very different here!

What makes Facebook particularly useful, is the use of groups as a way to communicate what’s going on. There are Facebook groups for everything.

The Falkland Islands Community Board – effectively a noticeboard for: events, the cinema schedule, plane arrivals and departures – both FIGAS and international, various public service announcements, asking questions, seeking advice, reuniting lost dogs, cats and poultry with their owners…

Falkland Islands Community Board – yes, this is a different board; no, I don’t know what the reason for two boards is; yes, almost everything is posted on both boards – but not everything, so you need to belong to both

FI Election – periodically in use for general elections and by-elections

FI Bring and Buy (or chebay) and Falklands Buy and Sell- where anything surplus to requirements is advertised for sale. A fine source of kitchenware; clothes; shoes; books; house plants; car parts; cameras etc. etc. Last weekend I finally managed to buy a full length mirror, a picture frame and a lampshade – a purple patch of finding things I wanted and being in time to buy them, something I don’t often achieve.

FI Car Sales – the place to go to buy and sell your car.

And there are lots of special interest group pages, whatever your interest, including:

• FI Museum and National Trust
• FI Yacht Club
• FI Gardening
• Wild Falklands – stunning images of wildlife
• and lots and lots of sports and clubs

To be honest it’s hard to think of something that doesn’t have a group or a Facebook page – I wonder if Mark Zukerberg ever imagined it being used like this by a whole community when he set it up. It also makes me wonder if other Islands or small communities use Facebook in the same way, or is it a uniquely Falklands thing?

Throughout the inhabited life of the Falklands, keeping up with the news and with your neighbours has been done in many ways and has followed technological developments in the rest of the world. However challenges including distance; the lack of an undersea cable to connect us to fast Internet (the obvious place to connect to would be Argentina, so don’t hold your breath); communicating to dispersed farms and settlements; means that communications still have their own unique flavour.

There is a postal service – it receives and send external mail from the UK on the Airbridge; it sorts internal Falklands mail; it distributes post to Camp with FIGAS; in Stanley it keeps your post in a PO box until you come and collect it, when you remember. In fact many people have their post delivered to their employer’s PO Box, rather than having one of their own.

There are landlines and a mobile phone network, but you can quickly lose signal. As a result there is a 2 meter VHF radio network in use across the Islands and it is sufficiently important that there was major investment in it as recently as 2021. These days it’s not used for doctor’s appointments and nor do children have their GCSE results read out for the whole network to hear, but it is still an important communication link.

The Islands are connected to the Internet and have been for many years but it is via satellite, so it is slow and expensive. It’s faster than it was the first time I came but it’s much slower than normal. Also there’s no such thing as an unlimited data package here, every byte of data has to be paid for, which really concentrates the mind on what you want to use it for.

However, the Internet exists and the communication it enables still feels like a marvel to me. When I was growing up and my father was away with the Royal Navy, the communication method of choice was letters and postcards which took weeks to arrive. When I travelled in Peru in the mid 2000s – I could email from an Internet cafe or on special occasions I could find an international phone shop and make an expensive call home. Now I can use any number of devices and apps to call friends and family, as if they were only a short distance away. I wonder what’s next?

I recently wrote about the perfectly formed and friendly FIGAS, so thinking about flying and having recently flown to the UK and back it must be time to talk about … the Airbridge.

Those of you who live in Cowes on the Isle of Wight (and possibly in other harbours) will know about Floating Bridges, a.ka. ferries that connect the road on either side of some water by boat rather than a physical bridge, so you understand the concept already.

The Airbridge is a plane rather than a bridge, that connects the Falklands with the UK. It flies the route twice a week and takes 18 hours airport to airport or in reality RAF Brize Norton to RAF Mount Pleasant.

It also connects Ascension Island with the UK, Ascension is a midpoint stop on the 16 hour flight. The Airbridge has just started using Ascension again, after several years of having to use Cape Verde and other places, whilst the Ascension runway was made fit for large, heavy planes. A huge engineering and construction project in the middle of the Atlantic.

Here is the Airbridge at Cape Verde airport on my most recent trip south – an early morning sojourn in the low 20s and lots of sunshine – a bit different from the conditions at either end.

As you can see the plane looks like a normal commercial flight on the outside and it does on the inside too – no jump seats for us, but normal passenger seats with premium economy legroom and nice cabin crew. The other good news is that the flight is generally not filled to capacity, so you may well have an empty seat next to you, it’s rare to feel like a sardine.

Without doubt all 18 hour flights are boring, no matter who you are flying with. Airtanker (who run the flight) fill in the hours by feeding you – a lot. Not only are there many meals and snacks but I’m coming to the conclusion that the food portions are based on feeding the Infantry and the Marines. For example breakfasts are at least – a cooked breakfast, a large yoghurt, a croissant, fruit and fruit juice and there might be seconds if you want. It makes sense, as I once remember a friend telling me about the British Olympic rowing squad eating all their food and all the spare food on a long haul BA flight and still being hungry. No danger of that on the Airbridge.

So that’s the good news – but there is some bad. Firstly, the Airbridge is not very reliable… about 1 in 5 planes is delayed, often by 24 hours, or diverted, or worst of all cancelled. The major reason for this is weather and particularly wind direction. Apparently the location of RAF Mount Pleasant is not ideal, being near a range of hills. When the north wind blows, it causes an effect called rotor winds, which can do unfortunate things to planes, so on the whole the RAF prefer planes not to land or take off in northerlies. This is complicated by the fact that it’s expensive for the plane to be stuck at Cape Verde overnight or diverted to Montevideo (as happened recently) – although passengers are generally quite happy to be somewhere warm for a day or two. All of these factors lead to a deal of caution and delays when the wind is forecast to be northerly.

The second quirk of flying in and out of RAF airbases is that the military like you to be there early and then they like you to wait. This is particularly true at Brize – the plane’s scheduled takeoff is around 1am and check in opens at 7pm and closes at 10pm. There are dire warnings about making sure you have left enough time to check in – so most people get there between 8 and 9pm. As it’s an RAF base, not Heathrow, there are a minimal number of things to do once you’ve checked in – the military passengers set the gold standard in waiting. They have generally brought cards to play in groups and if it’s a particularly long wait will stretch out on the floor (sometimes in a sleeping bag brought for the purpose) and go to sleep. I’m perfecting my going to sleep sitting up skills – I haven’t tried the floor yet but I can see the appeal!

However, despite its quirks the Airbridge is a vital link for the Islands and once you’re aboard it’s a pretty good service. It makes a good story and once you’ve got where you want to go, it’s all worthwhile!