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The North Polar Expedition in Winter Holiday was a plan devised by the Amazons to race to the North Pole, a small summer-house at the Head of the lake. Nancy says

.. nothing ever happens in the winter time ... so we started a Polar expedition. Peggy adds as soon as we could we'd go to the North Pole over the ice .. (WH3).

Nancy complains that the beastly Arctic won't freeze (WH3). When they hear that Nancy has the mumps John says There's no point in going to the Pole without you, and Peggy adds But you can't make much of an expedition with only one.. But Nancy realises that It just puts everything right ... it means another whole month as they will all be quarantined, not just her (WH8).

The Expedition included the Swallows, the Amazons (pending Nancy's return to health at the last moment) and when they join the group the Ds.

They practice by crossing High Greenland, where they find the cragfast sheep (WH11).

Captain Flint who was in foreign parts for the winter saw in the papers about the lake freezing .... and thought I wouldn't miss it, although he was half afraid I'd find a thaw by the time I got back (WH21). He provides logistical support, including the Key:

I've got to make sure that those particular (polar) bears will let us have the key he said. Dick asks Key .. to the North Pole? (WH23).

When Captain Flint returns from a long trip and Roger asks why his sledge is all black with coal dust, and later has an enormous packing-case on it the others don't want to know (WH23). Earlier Nancy thought of how to get the doctor to do those odd jobs she wanted done about the Pole .... but decided that now was not the moment to talk to him about the transport of hampers and coal-sacks and getting the people who owned the North Pole to let the expedition have the use of it (WH20).

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