You think it's cold here? Meet the Scottish postie who won a dream job in Antarctica (but has no heating, no mains electricity and has to wash in icy waters)

Our weather may be bad at the moment, but spare a thought for a 25-year-old Highland woman who's been iced in on Goudier Island in Antarctica.

Laura Martin, a student outdoor instructor from Kingussie in the Scottish Highlands, was selected from more than 2,400 people from 83 countries to work at the world's most southerly post office earlier this year.

She is part of a lucky quartet that has travelled 11,000 miles to be a seasonal postie for the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust on a salary of £1,100 per month.

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Laura Martin (pictured) takes a diving in the freezing waters of the Antarctic. She is one of four people who was picked for a seasonal job at the post office on Goudier Island

The post office at Port Lockroy is known as the Penguin Post Office as around 2,000 of the animals live on the tiny island

Laura Martin, who was a geography student at St Andrews, was among 12 on the final shortlist before being selected for the job.

While the job is relatively easy - the staff have to hand frank 70,000 postcards and letters being sent all over the world from the Penguin Post Office - the working conditions are much more challenging.

Port Lockroy, where the post office is based, stands on a grizzled outcrop named Goudier Island, which is the size of a primary school playing field.

There's no running water, no mains electricity, and the average temperature is minus 10 degrees Celsius.

There is also no central heating, no phone signal, and no means of communication with the world other than VHF radio. And no darkness, either - being the southernmost tip of the globe, it is daylight pretty much 24 hours a day.

The team of four spend five months from November to March running the shop, post office and museum operation at Port Lockroy, which is visited by about 18,000 cruise ship passengers each season. 

There's no running water, no mains electricity, and the average temperature is minus 10 degrees Celsius on the island. Even so, a brave Ms Martin has decided to go for a dip

Applicants had to have the ability to put up with 2,000 'smelly' penguins for company and clear prodigious amounts of penguin poo from the pathway.

The job advert had also warned that there might be no showers for up to a month and successful applicants would be living in close proximity to three other people.  

As well as Ms Martin, Adele Jackson from Clayton West in Huddersfield, Rachel Morris from Saffron Walden in Essex and Iain Pringle from Nocton, Lincolnshire, were selected for the role.

However, severe ice has prevented cruise ships visiting the Penguin Post Office at Port Lockroy.

In a blog written by the staff who run the post office, the team wrote, 'Anticipating that the ice would prevent ships from visiting, we collected buckets of the clearest glacier ice.

Ms Martin is a student outdoor instructor from Kingussie in the Scottish Highlands. After leaving university, she worked teaching English at a primary school in Hong Kong and also spent time in Canada while at St Andrews on an exchange programme

'We rely on ships to refill our water containers and in their absence glacier ice from the sea is our only source of fresh water.'

'The ice stayed solid for two days. It cleared for a very brief spell of half a day before returning with heavy snowfall.

'Ice build-up around the Neumayer Channel and the Gerlache Strait made it difficult for ships to reach several of the popular landing sites.

'The week of ice has meant ten ships have had to cancel their visits to Port Lockroy.' 

But the icy weather hasn't stopped Laura Martin taking a swim in the freezing Antarctic waters for the second time since arriving a couple of weeks ago.