Aug 2018 - (with Gemma) Amazing hike today. Total peace and quiet and a fantastic, if long, route. After leaving the ship, it was a long walk in past the small town of Narsarsuaq and initially into Hospital Valley. In 1941 the United States built an air base at Narsarsuaq code-named Bluie West One (BW1). (Bluie was the Allied military code name for Greenland.) Thousands of planes used BW1 as a stepping stone on their way from the aircraft factories in North America to the battlegrounds of Europe. A 600-bed hospital was built in order to deal with casualties from the Normandy landings. After the end of the war, BW1 continued to be developed, and was a major hospital site during the Korean War, with the military hospital expanded to 1,000 beds. However, it was rendered surplus by the advent of mid-air refueling and the construction of the larger Thule Air Base in northern Greenland. We then ascended into Flower Valley, a wild meadow with a milky-blue glacial stream meandering through it - stunning. It was then the tough climb up to the plateau alongside the waterfalls with some fixed rope sections. A number of false summits later and the glacier is revealed. The view made the hard work all worthwhile. We scrambled down towards the glacier’s edge and soaked it all in before the fun but arduous return.