The North of Norway

After wending our way down and then back up the Lofoten Islands we eventually made our way onto the Vesteralen archipelago and the island of Langoya, the third biggest island in Norway.

We headed straight to the North of the island and down a pretty good unpaved road to the tiny town of Nyksund. This small fishing village was abandoned in the 1970’s but since 2003 it has seen a revival as a tourist destination, with a thriving restaurant scene (well 2 restaurants!) and around 30 inhabitants (in the summer).

The town has two rows of buildings separated by a waterway and a small protected harbour and we enjoyed mooching around the old derelict buildings from its old industrious days.

After visiting Nyksund we made our way back down the unpaved road and up to the Northern tip of Langoya and the town of Sto.

We’d come all the way to Sto for a whale watching trip that we had booked for the next day. Fortunately there was an abandoned campsite on one side of the Sto harbour which allowed us to spend the night within walking distance of the departure point for the boat tour.

The next morning at the harbour a lot of people appeared out of nowhere and in total about 60 people were loaded onto the whale watching boat. There was plenty of room in the boat’s cabin downstairs with airline style seating but as soon as we got going it became quite unpleasant as there was little air and some persistent swell so everyone relocated outside.

Up on deck there was seating for about 40 people and although Sarah was lucky enough to score a seat I was relegated to sitting in the elements on the bow of the boat which was the bounciest place.

We set off from Sto and headed Northwards towards the Bleik Canyon which is a feeding ground for sperm whales. Unfortunatley we weren’t lucky enough to see a sperm whale however it wasn’t too long after setting off that we saw some minke whales. These are sneaky whales, they only came to the surface briefly before diving back down so you had to be quick to see them.

It took us around 3 hours to reach the canyon and once here we spotted a big pod of pilot whales. We managed to have very good sightings of these small whales over the course of about an hour.

The swell calmed down in the afternoon and the water was much flatter than on the way out so the journey back in the sunshine was very pleasant. We also saw a Basking shark on the way back which is apparently a very rare sighting.

On the way back they served up an amazing fish soup made with locally caught fish. It was so delicious that we both had seconds.

The trip involves visiting the island of Anda which is close to Sto. We saw razorbills and puffins here but the highlight was a fairly large number of Sea Eagles which were both perched on the island and flying around.

It was a long day at sea, about 8 hours in total and we were surprisingly tired by the time we got back to shore so we decided to stay in Sto and have a down day, which was a good opportunity to get our laundry done – a service that was provided at the local café.

When we eventually left Sto we headed to the next door island, Andoya and drove to the Northern tip of this island where there is a ferry across to the island of Senja. We arrived at the ferry queue 2 hours before the departure time and were parked in lane 3 of 4 lanes. When the ferry was loaded only those in lanes 1 and 2 got on and the next ferry wasn’t until 9am, the next morning. We decided to move into lane 1 and spend the night in the queue as did many others, with those in cars heading off into town to find accommodation, leaving their cars in the queue. By 7pm that night lanes 1-3 were all full. This was the busiest ferry crossing that we had seen which wasn’t helped by the fact that it was also one of the smallest ferries.

Resigned to spending the night here we went into town to look around – although there wasn’t much to see. We did find a wine bar and sat down for a drink. This was the first time that we’d actually been to a bar in Norway and our concerns about the cost of the drinks was realised as a bottle of beer and a small glass of wine came to €20! Needless to say we did not stay for a second round.

In the morning we were pleased that we managed to get loaded onto the first ferry and watched from the back deck as a lot of the queuing vehicles failed to board. It is clear that this is a real bottleneck and if you decide to travel this way you need to leave plenty of time.

I can understand why lots of people want to go to Senja though. The drive across the island was absolutely spectacular as we drove around the fjords that split the island.

We stopped for the night in a beautiful valley, ooposite a highland valley with a waterfall cascading down from it.

The following day we started our drive across the island and stopped off at a small parking area next to the coast.

This was the the start of a short walk down a rocky coastline to some pools with amazing reflections of mountains across the bay. It was fun to clamber around the rocks to get the best angles.

The best know hike on Senja is the Heston hike where you get views of the foreboding Segla peak. This is a climb straight up from fjord side to a ridge with great views across to a jagged pyramidal mountain that towers over the fjord with a sheer drop.

Once you reach the top there are incredible 360 views of fjords and mountains. It’s a pretty easy hike and the payoff on reaching the top is amazing.

After the Heston hike we drove to the ferry to leave the island. Fortunately the queue for this was nothing like the queue to get onto the island and we easily made the first ferry. This carried us across to the mainland, near the city of Tromso.

Before hitting Tromso we stopped in at the island archipelago of Sommaroy, which in the sunshine looked more like it was in the Pacific than the Arctic. It was only a quick stopover as we couldn’t find anywhere to park for long. While here, we took the opportunity to stretch our legs on the beach but unwittingly disturbed a nesting bird. Sarah wisely backed away at its cries but I was a little slower to react and as a result was dive bombed repeatedly before it very accurately shat on my head, much to Sarah’s delight!

We arrived in the pretty town of Tromso on a lovely sunny day. It is definitely worth a visit although we were there only briefly. We managed to park in the downtown area and walked along the waterfront ticking off the main tourist sights.

The highlight of visiting Tromso for us were the botanical gardens. These are the largest Arctic Botanical gardens in the world and have arctic plants from around the globe. It was clearly a great time to go and many of the plants were in bloom.

After leaving Tromso we stopped briefly at the Arctic Cathedral which is a modern building. We didn’t want to pay to go inside so we only admired the architecture from the outside.

Tromso was the furthest North we were going on this trip and from here we started to head back south. We stopped off for a very windy night on the pretty Storfjord before getting up early the next day and heading to the trail head for the hike to the Steindalsbreen Glacier.

It was a grey overcast day when we arrived but the forecast was for gradual improvement so I set out on the hike to the glacier. This a fairly straightforward 7km hike, which takes you through forest alongside a river before climbing up and over the first moraine of the glacier. You then trek through a big glacial valley before climbing over another moraine and descending down to a glacial lake with a huge glacier tumbling into it.

There is only around 600m of climbing to get to the glacier but because it is pretty remote there aren’t many people on the hike. I hadn’t had any views of the glacier on the hike up because of the low cloud but as I arrived the clouds began to clear and I was rewarded with some great views.

This was a great hike to sign off our time in Norway but we had one more destination before driving inland and into Sweden and that was the town of Narvik.

Narvik is a modern town with not a lot to excite tourists. It does have a few museums and we choose (perhaps wrongly) to go to the car museum. This is not something I would recommend if you happen to visit the town. We did however enjoy a very good lunch at a fish restaurant (Fiskehallen), which was also fairly reasonably priced. The arctic char in particular was excellent.

From Narvik we started to drive East and after stopping for a night next to a beautiful mountain lake we entered Sweden and said goodbye to Norway after a fantastic couple of months (although the second half with sunshine was definitely better!).