Since myself, Martin and Charlie – the Catlin Arctic survey explorer team – were dropped off on the Arctic ice and collected our very first science samples, we've had an eventful time. We've had a mixture of really evil cold and windy weather, beautiful sunny days, gloomy foggy days and of course a storm or two.

All part of the Arctic experience – but this time one of the horrors has been incredibly strong north winds. The cold is amplified but we also feel as if we are living in a grinder. No matter how far north we trek, we are constantly being driven south by the wind. So at the end of each day we are almost back where we started. It's annoying – but we are ploughing on and hoping for the wind to change soon.

We've also been seeing vast areas of open water and very thin ice – it's the first time any of us have experienced anything quite like this on such a large scale. The way the ice is behaving is simply the strangest we have ever seen. We've spent days on ice that was bending, bouncing and wobbling as we passed over it. Martin's feet went through a few times – his walking on thin ice technique rather resembling a rhino!

There was one massive area which I knew would not take our weight – and having tried to skirt around it for quite some time I decided that I would have to go for a swim. The idea was for me to swim over with ropes attached back and front to the sledges, and then for me to pull the others over, sitting on the floating sledges one by one. As it turned out, once I'd got my immersion suit on I was able to slither across the ice on my belly like a snake for about 30 metres and then pull the guys across.

We've had a few more problems with the scientific equipment freezing up but have managed to overcome the glitches and have carried on with the drilling, water-sampling, bottling and filtering. It's an activity that we do every three days, in the hope of gaining greater insight into ocean acidifcation up here in the Arctic.

The most exciting highlight of last week for us was spotting some very fresh footprints – some from an Arctic fox and others from polar bear prints. From the prints it appeared that the bear had suddenly broken into a gallop – I'm just pleased that it wasn't heading our way at the time.

Last weekend we were hit by another storm and were struggling against frostbite in our hands and toes. But things have settled down again now and we are pleased to report that our progress across the ice has got a bit better now. We are still continuing to do about five miles a day on our trekking days – but the southerly drift of the ice seems to be slowing down so our actual distance covered should get a bit better.