Newlywed and 3 British women to run world’s coldest post office

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Newlywed and 3 British women to run world’s coldest post office

It was one of the strangest job alerts: a call to run the world's most remote, coldest post office on an island with no permanent residents and count penguins in almost continuous daylight.

6,000 people applied for the four jobs on Goudier Island in Port Lockroy, and now the winners have been announced: a newlywed who will leave her husband behind for a solo honeymoon and three other British women who are equally thrilled by the adventure ahead.

Mairi Hilton, Lucy Bruzzone, Clare Ballantyne and Natalie Corbett, have been selected by the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust charity to exchange their home comforts for five months in subzero temperatures, with no electricity or flushing toilet, sleeping in bunk beds, and they could not be more excited.

Hilton, 30, from Scotland, who spent four years completing a PhD in conservation biology in Australia, will be responsible for monitoring the island's colony of 1,500 gentoo penguins.

This will be my first time in Antarctica and I'm very excited to set eyes on the white continent, said Hilton, a conservation biologist. I have no idea what to expect when we get there: how cold it will be, how cold it will be, how cold it will be, how we have to dig our way through the snow to the post office? Bruzzone, 40, from London, previously spent three months in Svalbard as chief scientist on an Arctic expedition. She will be the base's leader and described her new job as a lifelong dream Ballantyne, 23, from Lincolnshire, has just completed a master's in earth science at Oxford University. She will deal with approximately 80,000 cards that are mailed each year from the site to more than 100 countries.

She said that she was most looking forward to stepping on to Goudier Island and taking in the cacophony and pungent smell of the penguins, the backdrop of the glaciers and Fief mountains, and being able to call it home for the next few months.

Corbett, a 31-year-old newlywed, is from Hampshire, where she runs a pet accessories business. She will be in charge of running the gift shop in the oldest permanent British base on the Antarctic Peninsula.

The site has not had visitors for more than two years because of Covid but usually welcomes around 18,000 people a year, between November to March, the Antarctic summer.

Vicky Inglis, 42, from Aberdeenshire, who previously stayed on the island, will join as a general assistant for 10 weeks.