Correspondence from the Archive of K.L.

Dear Sir,

I thank you for your letter of the 24th instant, and for your desire to hear more of my ongoing explorative journeys. I cannot promise to these tales will engage the interest of any but the most diligent observer of cartographical expeditions, but at least I can strive to relate my ‘adventures’ (how I hate that word) honestly and with the immediacy that must necessarily arise as the journey unfolds.

I will begin, if I may, with a brief summary of the aims and objectives of this current expedition. You may be aware of the speculations that has gained some fervour within certain cartographical circles, that there exists a land-bridge connecting the southern end of the Hiberian Peninsula in Argentina to the Matron’s office at the Sisterhood of the Mercenary Virgin Ladies School in Trent. I need hardly stress the strategic importance of such a geological oddity should it be proven to exist.

As you noted in your correspondence, I have just recently returned from a perilous attempt to be the first white man to reach the North Pole from below. I am happy to report that the mission was a success, although not without terrible losses to my team of Novocastrian Tunnelling Geese. You can imagine, therefore, that my plans for the coming months were limited. I had hoped merely to rest at my country estate, and perhaps complete a short treatise on the significance of the Lobster motif in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”. I was (I hope understandably) reluctant when initially approached to assemble an expeditionary force and claim the route for the Queen.

I was eventually swayed by the entreaties of the Queen herself, particularly her promise of unconditional funding for future expeditions and her corresponding threat of unconditional hanging should I refuse. For all the harsh words of her detractors, Queen Epstein Barr XIV the Fourth is a persuasive negotiator and a beautiful woman beneath her sweaty and pustulant exterior. We are all better off for her modern, sassy management style.

Once I had resolved to undertake this madcap escapade, I sought to equip the greatest expeditionary force yet seen in this or any other paragraph. With the patronage of the Crown I was able to purchase 70,000 yodelling badgers (for the inevitable mountain crossings) and 12 packets of scroggin.

Finally we were ready, and our team left London on the 30th of February (another ultra-leap year!). It was a breathtaking sight; the 70,000 badgers in their Lycra body suits, the remaining 7 packets of scroggin (I had become peckish in the long wait for departure) glinting in the weak morning sunlight.

The good times did not last, however. We were only seventeen minutes south of London when the badgers unionised, demanding better working conditions. The Federated Badgers Union (FBU) successfully negotiated joint custody of the remaining two packets of scroggin and a third share of any merchandising or film deals arising from the journey and any associated shipwrecks and/or cannibalism.

The negotiations complete, we pushed south for several hours through the oppressive mildness of the English spring. It was a Sunday, and no cafes were open. Fortunately, thanks to a loophole in their contract, I was able to eat the yodelling badgers and did not have to go without tea.

Sated and dripping with badger fat we continued south. The remaining packet of scroggin and I took shifts at the helm of our badger-skin canoe as we crossed the channel into unoccupied France. From here my recollection of the voyage is hazy. I was taking a lot of Laudanum to manage the unbearable lightness of being and spent several days unconscious as our stinking raft of death drifted down the Spanish coast. I recall that during these dark days the scroggin tended to me as one would a child that had grown up, become an explorer, embarked on a mission such as that related thus far and gotten wacked off its tits on habit forming opiates.

I must end this section of my tale here. I can hear the whooping of the local chimp militia calling us to afternoon prayer. I pray that I am able to leave Scotland as soon as possible, the food here is terrible.

Thank you again for your interest, I will write soon with further details of the expedition that thus far has taken me further and harder than I could ever have imagined.

Yours Postally

Kensington Longreach Esq.
Gentleman Explorer