FROM penguins to pastries – a cafe in Dorchester has recruited a chef from Antarctica.

Chris Walton has come to The Loft cafe, in Antelope Walk, from the icy depths of the South Pole, where he worked as a chef at a British Antarctic Survey research base.

After spending around 20 years working in restaurants in Weymouth town centre the 41-year-old opted for a change of scenery.

He said: “I’ve worked in quite a few restaurants in the town but it was just too hot and too mundane so when I heard about the opportunity I jumped at it.

“It was in 2009 that I heard an advert on the radio saying ‘chance of a lifetime to work in Antarctica’ and I thought it was too good to pass up.

“The first time I went from November to March, which is summer out there, it wasn’t hotter than minus five the whole time and in the winter it gets down to around minus 46.”

Mr Walton, who lives near the seafront in Weymouth, added: “I loved it so much out there that I went back for another 18 months.

“It was kind of cool the first time I flew over and saw it out the window and saw all the ice sheets and crevasses and masses of blue sky.

“We were 16 kilometres from a colony of emperor penguins which was amazing, we got to see them hatching from eggs and then grow into fully fledged chicks – there were 8,000 of them.

“When we went to visit the colony we had to abseil down a 30-metre ice cliff, your hands are just freezing up while you’re doing it.”

Mr Walton said: “Coming back home was odd, especially travelling back through Africa and going from minus 20 to 40 degrees in one journey.

“You forget what other people look like because there were only 11 of us out there during the winter.

“It was a bit of a challenge feeding that many people in those conditions, we only got one delivery so if you forgot something you can’t just go down the shop.

“You improvise a lot and make almost everything from scratch.”

Mr Walton will be heading back out to the South Pole in November for another 18 months.