Thursday 19 June 2008

Beautiful Vikspollen

Diary notes from Tuesday 17th June:

Funny day today, this was the last place I was expecting to stay at. Earlier I was exploring the dead-end side roads down to Ure and Mortsund, but not much going in the way of cheap accommodation at either of those. Mortsund struck me as being a particularly geared to up-market motorists - and the woman who runs rorbu rental there was very disdainful, so I quickly moved on.

Back in Leknes it was raining and chilly as I spoke to Margaretha to tell her about my earlier chance encounter with South African friends of her late ex-husband Noel - I can't believe that I bumped into Dereck and Margie, who also have connections to the University of Surrey, this far North! M. seems to be a touchstone, the one who would have 10,000 Linked In connections once she's found out how it works...

Nowhere obvious to stay in Leknes, so I decided to head towards this beach instead, primarily because it is on a small road and is marked on the map as a swimming beach. It turned out to be a good choice too - no-one else around, but a nice flat strip of grass between the road and the beach which drained well. Fortunately the lavvo turns out to be fine in really wet weather too because this photo was taken just after midnight when I went out to tighten the guylines because the wind was rising - it really rained heavily between 04:20 and 09:40, but then everything dried out in the breeze, so I was able to avoid packing a wet tent. And it was completely dry inside the tent during the worst part of the storm while I was lying in bed with my hands behind my head, waiting for the first drips to appear...

I've had one or two problems with my brakes over the last few days (now on my second set of brake blocks all round) . The issues have mostly been with the left rear brake block binding on the rim - but I've been able to even up the tension between the cantilever arms by tightening a spare Allen bolt and nut onto the straddle cable just where the yoke is, to prevent the stronger spring on the right hand side pulling the cantilever arm with the weaker spring onto the rim. It's the little fixes that matter! No more squeaking, everything is gliding super smooth again.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can't really get my head round the 24-hr light you're experiencing, the nearest for me having been in Scotland, where there was still dark for a few hours. The pic of your tent (could this be the lavvo, am perplexed by that word?) gives me some idea. The door you show is very beautiful: I happen to be listening to Sigur Ros which goes well with it. Thanks for the self-portrait, managed to look at yr flickr collection with Dad yesterday. M was v attentive when I read out the collected chronicle. Jen

Anonymous said...

Just been looking at your flickr collection more carefully, there are some lovely images. The interiors of the huts, cooking arrangements esp are definitely worth a closer look. One reminds me of a kitchen in a Catalan hill village from 2 weeks ago, dominated by a raised platform with a drain for putting the grapes into and squashing, draining into the cellar below. Not that great ergonomically for modern cooking. JS