Travelling (Morning) Light. 1 x Harry Potter pillow, 1 x Softy
Tromsø [1,2] Travel to Tromsø, via Oslo, was relatively uneventful. Aside from all our checked baggage going AWOL in Oslo airport. There’s an oddly illogical quirk in Norwegian customs process whereby if you as a passenger are “in transit” to a connecting internal flight and your baggage goes missing (through no fault of your own), you’re not allowed to board your connecting flight (at least by the definition of that process). So, within the space of 5 minutes, we went from lazily lounging around the airside waiting area to running across the airport looking for our baggage when our names didn't appear on the departures board. We eventually had to re-enter security so we could board our flight to Tromsø. In the meantime I managed to locate our 4 bags on a forlorn trolley in a corner within the baggage handling area and got assurances from a baggage officer that they would “likely” follow us to Tromsø. With time running out to get on our flight we re-did the security thing and went on our way. Well, 3 of the bags came with us to Tromsø, my rucksack (probably the most indispensable item of luggage as it contained our tent) taking a further detour and triggering the requirement for me to fill out a “Property Irregularity Report” at the airport. We spent a nervous first 24hrs in Norway praying for the location and safe return of what would be our accommodation for the bulk of our trip. It arrived at the hotel the next afternoon looking embarrassed and violated. An interesting introduction to the underlying conflict between Norwegian process and logic. Also an interesting introduction to the good fortune of narrowly missed catastrophes (wrong side of the road rage anyone?) that we'd be blessed with throughout the trip.
Tromsø port with obligatory Hurtigruten cruise ship and Greenpeace vessel
So, Tromsø - the capital of the North or “the Paris of the North” depending on whether or not you’ve ever actually been to Paris - is a town in the northern province of Troms and sits 350 kms north of the Arctic circle at a latitude of 69.6492° N - the kick off point for the push South to Bergen for the remainder of our trip. The first real indication to us that we were "North North" was the Greenpeace vessel the Arctic Sunrise docked in port (see also photo above).
Bridge and Toblerone Church (not both visible in any single photo I took) on a glitzy street mural
Tromsø features the beautiful Tromsø Bridge our first of many hugely impressive Norwegian bridges, its span visible from our hotel room window. The other architectural item of interest was the Ishavskatedralen Tromsøysund Menighetshus aka the Arctic Cathedral or more colloquially the Toblerone Church. We sent ourselves a postcard from here and through the wonders of the Norwegian postal system, it was on our door mat when we came back.
The town has the feel of an outpost at the end of the world and kind of reminded us of Ushuaia (the most southern town in the world) - lots of wooden buildings at the centre in a centuries old town plan, surrounded by adhoc dwellings just as old but in a less planned, more chaotic layout at the outskirts. The city centre of Tromsø apparently contains the highest number of old wooden houses in Northern Norway, the oldest house dating from 1789. The neighbourhoods in the hills over the harbour where we took our evening strolls were definitely picturesque.
Our first culinary experience in Norway was Yona's Pizza and it was ungood. The queuing / ordering process was another time consuming triumph of process over logic. I'd love to say the fare was worth waiting for but..... "Nachos" was a half a bag of supermarket tortilla chips hastily poured into a basket with two or three small containers of squeezable sauces on the side. Ou est le cáit? The pizzas when they arrived were overdone and tasted no better than frozen pizzas - in fact they tasted exactly like overdone frozen pizzas. Extortionate prices for very low quality product. 1/10 (aka "shit out of ten") based only on the fact that we arrived hungry and left not hungry. But we were learning. We went on to discover the (still overpriced) joys of cortados and skillingsboller (Norwegian cinnamon buns) in the cafes. The low price Norwegian supermarket chain REMA1000 supplied the nutrition for the remainder of our stay in Tromsø (including a huge bag of smoked nuts which persisted throughout our almost three week trip mostly because it contained nerve agents which a high proportion of our crew had adverse reactions to).
...and all I got was this lousy photo of a t-shirt shop sign
The conference suite of our hotel hosted a criminally under-attended interpretive dance symposium while we were there.
Two nights in Tromsø was more than enough for us to get our bearings, load up on provisions like bencina blanca, notebooks for the girls for their time spent backseat travelling, an indispensable Norwegian road atlas, pick up the hire car and get on the road for what would be our biggest road trip ever. The first leg was a day long drive towards Lofoten islands. ~500km.
The First Leg To Lynx Foot
Systematic. Agile. Travelling Light.... Just.
Lofoten [3,4,6] | Soundtrack (right click and play on repeat in another tab in the background)
The primary goal of this extended family trip to Norway was to do as much walking as we could in one of the best naturally endowed countries on the planet. Top of the girls' list of things to do was an overnight hike where we'd walk to somewhere remote, camp and wake up in wilderness. I bought the book Eight Hikes Through Lofoten Islands to do some research, and while I had a shortlist of possible hikes, leaving Tromsø we hadn't decided which we were going to target.
Would you *look* at those beautiful bridges!
The Lofoten Islands / Archipelago is a stunningly beautiful part of the world. Epic scenery at a breadth and scale I've never experienced. We whistlestopped through the northern half a little to get to our first night camping so I think a return trip is warranted at some point.
After a long day's driving (during which we'd decided to tackle the Kvalvika hike) it was getting late and we were getting anxious to find a pitch for our first night camping in Norway, close enough to the head of that trail. The pressure was reduced a little by the usual "try and pitch before dark" constraint as it never gets dark. After an hour of fruitless detours up side roads, we'd almost settled on camping on public ground near a monument of some type when around 10pm we decided to give it one more push. Our efforts were rewarded in spades and we stumbled across a campsite in a stunning setting right on the beach. The girls would have stayed here forever - indeed we ended up staying for three nights, at least one night more than we'd planned. There were midnight trips to the beach to watch an insomniac sun try to set, flourescent jellyfish and hours spent building a highly detailed sand city. After a couple of bad campsite experiences later on the trip, we developed a strategy to first check online ratings on any site we visited. Interestingly, this fantastic campsite has exceptionally low ratings across the board (mostly for the personality disorders of its staff) and we'd have avoided it completely had we checked in advance. Goes to show that any strategy is better than no strategy but (some days) no strategy is perfect.
"Sand". The girls on Fredvang strand. This was taken sometime after 11pm.
Long shadows down at the beach at midnight
Bedding down on our first night. Note the standard issue eye mask. We brought head lamps and a couple of hanging lamps and ended up not using any of them even once due to the twenty three hours of sunlight in the land of the midnight sun.
Our catering setup. Uncle Travelling Ben smuggled from Ireland.
Waking on our first morning we had breakfast and tackled a small hike in the hills around the campsite and back down to the beach.
The view from the hill
Heading back towards Fredvang strand
Imagination Black Ops on the Beach
@ Å
We visited the very pretty fishing village of Å (yup, Scandanavian minimalism at its most extreme - a town name of only 1 letter) at the bottom of the peninsula, and queued for fresh baked goods at the local bakery. More cinnamon rolls.
A hike later in the day
Looking out over the majestically appointed Fredvang Strand after an evening picnic of aforementioned baked goods.
Preparation Culmination: The hike out to Kvalvika Beach
Kvalvika Beach [5] | Soundtrack (right click and play on repeat in another tab in the background)
From the Eight Hikes book: "The site of Kvalvika is one of the most underrated and truly remarkable spots in all of Lofoten. Facing the open sea on the northwest side of Moskenesøy, the beach is easily accessed by scaling its peripheral mountains."
We set out just after 2pm on a day which hit maybe 27 degrees, so the going was... moist. We later found out that most locals set out after 6 or 7pm to avoid the heat and the daytrippers.
Easily. Scaling. Mountains.
Kvalvika beach is a stunning oasis of natural beauty only accessible by boat or on foot via a pretty strenuous mountain trail. It was the recently selected target for our first ever overnight family hike. We learned from some Finns we met that when the Norwegians say "easy" when referring to a hike, it translates internationally to: "bring several changes of underwear and a large tube of Deep Heat."
The Beach : "..But for now we are young let us [p]lay in the sun and count every beautiful thing we can see.."
Kvalvika: əʊˈeɪsɪs noun
noun: kvalvika; plural noun: Kvalvikas
1. a sanctuary requiring great effort to achieve but which is considered more than worth that effort once attained.
synonyms: the meadow, goat oasis, dún álainn
The most well deserved and well appreciated Koka Noodles ever
Our pitch with some friendly natives
Fireside Chat, without the fire or the moon
2am and no sign of sunset
One Happy Camper
Bliss
We delayed the hike back to later in the day. I think we left after 4pm but it was still a strenuous workout. So proud of all my girls that we pulled this one off :)
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