Midnight sun in Andenes

Everything seemed to go really well today. I left Nigel and Ingvild Turrell's cabins at 9 o'clock, my earliest start of the month, with the weather overcast but www.yr.no promising improvement during the day - which indeed I soon felt because by 10.00 I was changing out of my woolen Icebreaker top for the first time in four or five days, and into a short sleeved shirt. I was curious - as were all the other tourists staying at Andøya Friluftlivsenter - as to what the function was of the tall wood-boarded funnel shaped buildings next door to the hut I was staying in. Initially I decided they might be huge composting bins (15 metres tall) but eventually my curiosity got the better of me and I opened the near one to find out ... it turns out to be a wooden roundhouse for feasting inside, with a large open fireplace in the center and reindeer-fur rugs on wooden trestles all the way around the circumference. I'd almost decided before opening the door that, given the number of times it was being pulled open by inquisitive visitors, it could be attached to a dynamo to generate power for the center. Inside it was dark, smoke-black, and primeval ... large dried cod-heads swinging in the shaft of sunlight lighting up the fireplace.

The rest of the ride today was fine, gentle with few hills, but a little tough at times later as the breeze picked up. It's a very quiet road up the west side of Andøya with just the odd bobil and some lovely white beaches. I'll upload some pictures when I've gathered a few more.

In the end I covered 74 km today in just over 5 hours, which tells you something about the headwind - without it, I was contentedly cruising at 22 kph, but when I came around a bend into it my speed dropped to 9kph.

Andenes is famous for its rocket testing ground - I saw only one, mostly as a peculiar vertical contrail in the sky five kilometers away, with a "pop" at the end of the flight. This side of the island is also studded with radio listening posts and radar domes - so there's obviously sensitive military work going on here too.

I've met several other cycle-tourists today, including a tall but whippet-thin Norwegian from Bergen with a name like Åtler (? must check) who is riding a gorgeous Thorn Raven Tour (the later model of the bike I have) from the North Cape to Lindesnes, the furthest southern point of Norway, in five weeks. We exchanged details of good places to stay and took photographs of each other's bike for good measure. Sensibly, he is traveling with half the weight that I have.

Andenes camping (where I'm staying tonight) is fine - the tent is again at the top of a spectacular white beach, and this time the campsite has a shower block and toilets just a few minutes walk away. Other people are very friendly and those with dogs are keeping them a respectful distance away from my tent.

At the moment I'm planning to watch the midnight sun (perfect evening for it), and tomorrow I'll try to catch the 13:00 ferry to Senja after getting enough cash out to see me through a week of travel in areas with no cashpoint machines... or supermarkets.

Rest day at Traneber Hytte, Andøya Friluftsenter

It's not a large room, in fact it is nearly the smallest of the trip, but it is nice and warm and comes well equipped for cooking, and with duvets and pillows. The view from the windows is of waving cotton-tufts on the bog on three sides, and of the mountains and wide fjord two hundred meters away and below on the other. The holiday season seems to be picking up, nearly all the huts are occupied this weekend.

This is a cosy place run by Nigel and Ingvald, who bought about 100 acres of peat bog above the road here in 1993 and have gradually transformed it into a little hut ground with hard standing for about twenty caravans, and those little sheds that Norwegians like to park their caravans next to (with the sliding door that connects the shed to the caravan when they've set up). Nigel seemed a little forbidding at first, but I suspect that he may find English visitors irritating now. Hope he won't mind me saying that is a dead ringer for Alan Rickman playing the Sheriff of Nottingham in 'Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves'.

Relaxing after a hot shower and a day spent riding hard into the headwind, I spent a good hour or two sitting on the porch of the cabin, talking to a Dutch couple in their seventies who have driven here to Andøya Friluftsenter in a hire car picked up in Svolvær last week. I should probably have dressed a little more warmly because I picked up a bit of a chill. This morning it's cloudy and cool, but yr.no promises sunshine and warmer weather tomorrow, so I am staying here - 300 kr for the cabin and good mobile phone coverage (430ms ping times to the Blogger servers, 10 times better than I was getting in Bø!)

I'm going to explore the area on foot a bit and wash my cycling clothes I think.

This ... is Sortland

Saturday 28 June, midday: This is a hasty photograph of the main shopping street in Sortland, taken as my bike was starting to topple over, and a little bit too dark perhaps. The crowds were out, and I was racing to buy food for the exposed two or three day ride up to Andenes before the shops started to shut.

There really doesn't seem to much to the largest town in the islands besides this street and a preponderance of blue buildings (Sortland has been through something of a make-over in the last ten years to make it more attractive to visitors). But it certainly bustles on Saturday mornings, and made me think about how my perspectives on crowds have changed after just a short time in this landscape of wide open vistas and very small settlements.

Fortunately I found everything I needed, including a liter of Coleman fuel for the petrol stove, and two "turmat" dehydrated meals in foil sachets to be used as 'reserve proviant' in case I have to hole up somewhere to wait out bad weather (it's a fair way to Andenes). The two front panniers are bulging with food, and I'm looking forward to supper tonight already- grillpolse with pasta sauce, mash potato and courgettes.

The sun is out but it's cold - 12° with a fierce Northerly wind blowing in my face as I ride North along Andøya towards the Andøya Friluftsenter about 35 km away at Buknesfjorden. The wind is keeping my speed way down at about 9kph, and I am thinking seriously about whether I should catch the Hurtigrute from Risøyhamn to Tromsø to tackle the big island of Senja with the prevailing wind behind me for a change.

Porridge, anyone?

Photo taken at 01:30 this morning of fish racks on the beach outside - the schoolhouse I'm staying in is the orange yellow building just behind the left-hand-most rack.

Oh dear, I think I'm going to have to lie down for a bit longer. I made the mistake of absentmindedly cooking up porridge with bananas and sultanas for a family of three this morning, and since there's no bin here I felt obliged to eat it all - about 1.5 litres of it...

Never mind, the sun has come out during the night and there is now more than enough blue sky to make a Dutchman a pair of trousers. I plan to launch myself on a porridge-powered odyssey to Nyksund at the top of the archipelago, which was rescued from the elements by an enterprising group of young people a decade ago after being abandoned by its former inhabitants. It is something of a holy grail for German cyclists to get there and stay in a rebuilt rorbu apparently.

The old schoolhouse, Hovden

Hovden is a tiny settlement at the end of a long and winding single-track lane from the crossroads at the center of the Bø commune at Rise. I arrived in a rain squall two hours ago, and it looked for a time as though I'd be camping tonight on a patch of ground next to the village hall, which is situated on some flat land between Hovden's two outstanding white sandy beaches. Which would be ok if there was a washblock and toilet, but the site seems to be without facilities and fairly windswept.

This settlement has been a fishing village since the Iron Age, and is famous for being the place where the Gulf Stream is closest to the Norway coast. It's also a great place to see the Midnight Sun on the horizon as it comes close to touching the waves before it starts to rise again - however the clouds tonight preclude that.

So it seemed like a natural overnight stopping place - the furthest western point settlement in the Vesterålen islands - until I found that the campsite has nothing more than an honesty box (30 kr) and a tap. The chill weather had got to me. So I cycled around until I found a small notice explaining that the old school house could be rented by the week, with a contact number. The lady I rang was in Sortland, but put me on to Gunnar who lives in Hovden - after a brief chat in Norwegian he cycled down from his house to me with the key for the school. I have free run of the upstairs, comprising a kitchen and living room with two divan beds plus a hot shower downstairs next to the schoolroom, now converted to a cafe that opens in the peak season. I must say I feel I've done very well for myself!

Last night I was able to get a room in the Sjølys sjøhus at Vinjesjoen, a squat concrete building that is 90% freezer storage for fish from the boats, and 10% accommodation for the trawler crews during the peak season. Interesting building - very industrial looking with few concessions to interior design, but great big drying cupboards with warm air blowers; I got my washing bone dry in an hour after arriving there. Unfortunately I haven't been taking many pictures of the landscape for the last two days because the weather has been poor enough for the SLR to stay under wraps in an Ortlieb dry bag. Olaf who runs the place is in his late 30's and seems to have worked himself to the bone during the peak fishing season - now he and his crew seem to have plenty of free time. He's off to the Bahamas for two weeks in September with his wife so he can't be doing badly out of it; we chatted for about two hours yesterday and this morning, particularly about the Hurtigruten fleet which is burning a big hole in the company accounts now that the price of fuel has gone through the roof. He has heard rumours that they may cut the daily service to the bone next year, because they just aren't getting the volume of customers for cruises that they need on the legs above Trondheim. He also told me that the newer boats have had some alarming design defects exposed by the winter weather - basically they don't shed water as well as the older designs, and there have been a couple of fairly serious incidents with the Fram and the Nordlys in recent years. These have been kept out of the press, fortunately. He tells me that the smaller M/S Lofoten is currently in Svolvær, so I may try to catch this higher up the coast to get back to Stamsund. He also tells me that spring is very late in the Troms region, and indeed had pictures on his cameraphone showing banks of snow by the roadside on the way to Tromso a few weeks ago. It looks like I may have come a little early for the season this year!

The picture above was taken on the way to Vinjesjoen as I cooked boiled eggs and chicken noodles in a post stand shelter out of the rain, by the way.

The rain and cloud of an hour ago are lifting - I'm off out for a walk along the white sandy beaches here. Everything looks gorgeous in the evening sun, but I know that this is likely to change again in an hour or so.

More pictures on Flickr

I've had to be selective with my bandwidth because mobile reception is very poor here, and is about to get worse again as I head out towards Hovsund and Nykvag - pictures from the last week are now at http://www.flickr.com/photos/webbje though.

I'm on the Vesterålen islands now

This bridge over Långøysundet separates the Stokmarknes district from the island of Långøya, and the famous Eidsfjorden, which a hundred years ago was crammed with fishing boats pulling up vast numbers of sild for sale in Europe. The fish stock has collapsed now, so the communities are much smaller. I cycled along the east side of the fjord to Stranda two days ago, and then turned down the 820 towards Bø, sitting out a day and half of very heavy rain and low cloud at cabins at Skjellebogen just before the Ryggesdalen tunnel. The mountains here get a lot of rain, because they break the strong winds funneled along the coast and stick out as the most westerly land on the Atlantic seaboard. The cloud is just starting to lift here in Vinjesjoen, so I've packed the bike up ready for a dash up the coast towards Nykvag and Hovsund between showers.

Sankthans two days early

Sunday 22 June, 06:00 - I had my Sankthans bonfire on the beach last night (a small one, for cooking over, rather than for celebrating midsummer and driving off the witches) because I appreciated that the weather was taking a turn for the worse. This photo was taken as I sat shivering in the tent the next morning, warming it up with the tent heater, which consists of Thermos #2, cotton wool, and about half a bottle of methylated spirits.

Fortunately everything inside the tent remained dry after a night of heavy rain, and lighting this took the chill off the inside quite quickly. It seems to burn for about forty minutes per fill.

Fantastic afternoon at Grunforfjorden

Saturday 21/06: The colours were just amazing this afternoon - I don't think this hasty thumbnail shows them off very well. The ride from Svolvær to Laukvik started uniformly grey, but by lunchtime the sun had burnt off all of the cloud, and the shallow water of this fjord was turquoise. No-one else around. I took about a dozen photos on the causeway but I've had to be selective in what I have uploaded to flickr because the mobile reception is so poor where I am at the moment. I could have stayed in Laukvik but it seemed a better idea to get to this beauty spot before the clouds returned, and indeed by the time I'd found somewhere to camp on the shoreline they were already rolling down to cover up the view again. A really magical place when the sun shines though.

The wind vane on Straumnes Church

I didn't spot this last time I came this way. The weather improved dramatically after I left Svolvær and it became very hot and sunny. I stopped for an ice cream at Sandsletta Camping on the very enjoyable road to Laukvik, and got into a deep conversation with Marius, who comes from Sweden but managed to get a holiday job at the campsite for the summer because he loves to be as far North as possible. He told to me to look out for the church tower at Straumnes near Laukvik because the Mickey Mouse-like hand on the wind vane broke a couple of years ago, and whoever repaired it left it pointing prophetically straight up.