He lived only 40 minutes from us but more relevantly we lived only 5 minutes off the route he used to go and visit his daughter Jane who was married to the composer David Fanshawe.
Kevin would never notify us when he was going to arrive but there would be a loud knock on the door, he would then open the door and announce in a loud voice ‘Kevin here’. We also went to visit him at his house called ‘Fossil Bluff’ on the edge of the Malverns. His daughter Jane still lives there.
I used to have many conversations with Kevin about Stonington and life there in his time and have also read his book ‘Two Years in the Antarctic’. The explanation that I recall was that Sodabread was an abbreviation of ‘Sodding Bastard’. This makes sense in all respects as the language used would have been appropriate for the time, the slope was a ‘Sodding Bastard’ and certainly had no similarity to a loaf of bread. I certainly was told this by someone and cannot think of anybody else who would have told me.
As described in his book, (page 86), Kevin and five others made the first ascent in September 1946. In the book he says ‘on September 10 the depot load of 110 cases was on the top of ‘Sodabread Slope’, as the first slope had been called’. There appears to be no other reference to the name although it is mentioned many times in the book.