Day seven
After a demanding tour into the mountains yesterday I took it easy today. Some of my “activities”: talking with my friends, cutting vegetables for the soup, sleeping, walking the dog and taking some images at the seaside. One of the traditional Nordland boat of my friends and one of the coast itself.
Day four
Today I only had 80 more kilometres to drive making it a total of 906 since my departure in Skelleftehamn. I started early and arrived in Haukenes on the Vesterålen at 9:30. The only picture I took was the view of the town Sortland seen from the Sortlandsundet.
The reason why I wanted to arrive so early was the plans of my friends that I’m visiting here. Today it’s the first day where you can see the sun again from their upland meadow Langbakken. The last day with polar night, that means no sun at all was 8th of January, but it took ten more days until the sun rose high enough to climb over the mountain tops of the Lofoten in the south.
We went up the hillside to the lavvu – a sami tent – where we first stood outside to greet the neighbours joining us and than sat in the tent round the fire altogether and ate and talked.
And finally – much later than expected – the sun found a gap in the mountain skyline! We all jumped out of the lavvu and looked at the first sun you could see from Langbakken since late November. Hooray!
The place where I am and will stay for the next days: Nøisomhed Gård, Haukenes, Vesterålen.
Day three (part II)
After leaving the reindeers behind I continued to the Norwegian border. But first I made a picture of the strange looking railway station in Vassijaure, the last photo from Sweden for some time. Soon I reached the village Riksgränsen and right after it the Swedish-Norwegian border. I took the first parking opportunity and made the first photo in Norway of my tour.
Just some miles (a Scandinavian mile is 10 km) later I could see the first fjord. And shortly after this another typical Norwegian happened to me: A construction site with a “follow me” car because due to work in the tunnel the road was only one-way.
I continued on the E10 to Bjerkvik. Shortly before Bogen i Ofoten I took a side road and took a picture of the beautiful sunset colours above the snowy mountains. Soon I reached Bogen and made two other pics:
… and another image in Kongsvika in the dusk:
The whole trip was amazing, mostly because of the varying landscape. Sometimes the road follows the coast line of a fjord, sometimes it crosses the fjell – the mountains. Once temperature dropped from 0 °C to -15 °C within two minutes just because I left the coast and entered the fjell.
I changed plans and made an additional stop in Lødingen where I am right now. When I arrived it was already too dark to take pictures, but I had a nice two-hour evening walk. First I followed the coast line (including wading, almost slipping on the ice and a bit of simple climbing) and then followed a forest path back to civilisation. It was great just walking through the lonely nature after having been sitting in the car for three days!
Tomorrow morning I’ll head to Stokmarknes and take a (late) breakfast with my friends. I’ll stay there for some days and I’m really looking forward to be outdoors instead of sitting in the car.
Day three (part I)
Today I got up early, no wonder after more than 10 hours sleep. I packed my things, cleaned the room and left Abisko heading westwards. It was still twilit and I was quite alone on the road.
That changed after 18 kilometres: A huge herd of reindeers blocked the road. I slowed down and slowly, slowly drove through the reindeers. Right after the reindeer crossing I found a parking place. Good to exit the car and take some images of these beautiful and gentle animals.
The reason why the reindeers were hanging around was probably the pile of big bags lying beside of the road. I guess they contain reindeer food.
After half an hour of taking pictures and watching I entered the car again and continued my journey to Norway.
Day one and two
Round half past nine I started “Nordkalotten 2015”, my long journey through Northern Sweden, Norway and Finland. The first destination is Stokmarknes, which is 880 km away and according to Google Maps it takes eleven hours, nine minutes from my home in Skelleftehamn. I’m not a long distance driver therefore I divided the journey into three parts.
When I started sky was completely cloudy and overcast but right after Vidsel the sky started to clear up and the temperatures dropped from -8 °C in Skelleftehamn to -21 °C in Solberget (with a daily minimum of -23 °C). On the journey I had to cross the river Luleälven three times and on one of the long bridges I could see the sun slowly going down.
I’ve been in Solberget many times and I’ll be there again in February. This time I stayed only to sleep and continued the next day. I one woke up when Sesam, the tom cat and secret owner of Solberget lay down on my feet in the dead of night.
The evening before temperatures increased and it started snowing. When I woke up almost 10 cm fresh snow covered the ground and my car and it was only -2 °C. Half past nine I continued my journey heading for Gällivare, Kiruna and Abisko. It was cloudy the whole time but fortunately almost no snow fell. That made driving as easy as on the first day. Just some kilometres before Abisko sky cleared up a bit. I was lucky and could hire the same nice room where I already stayed last February for a week.
Tomorrow I’ll enter Norway and continue to Stokmarknes.
I just have to test the computer I take with my on my journey before I leave tomorrow.
Copying images to Lightroom: CHECK
Finalising in Photoshop: CHECK
Uploading photos to the blog: CHECK
And here’s the test photo from today: The fence in my back garden.
I’m almost a bit sad to leave this fine place but the pleasant anticipation prevails.
Oh yes.
Publishing a blog article: CHECK
Actually I planned to start my long journey ”Nordkalotten 2015” on this weekend, preferably on Saturday, but I have to change plans a bit. It’s not the car that leaked fuel to blame for it, it will be repaired tomorrow. It’s not the parcel that arrived in Germany too late and was resent to Sweden, it already came on Monday. It’s not the planning or the fact that I have to buy some minor items for the journey.
No, it’s a viral infection with fever that has caught me since Sunday. It seems to be much more tenacious than other colds I caught over the last years and I don’t know when I’m safe and sound again. I just have to wait, which is hard for me because I never have had much patience.
Of course I’ll let you know, when I’m able to plan again. Stay tuned.
Another aspect of travel preparation: Getting a feeling for distances. I tried to get a feeling for distances by designing a map:
I marked some larger towns on the map and used Google Maps to calculate the distances. Then I wrote the distance on the connecting lines. Are you wondering what the numbers mean? It’s miles! But neither statute miles nor nautical miles, it’s Swedish Miles or Norwegian Miles which nowadays are exactly 10 kilometres. There are commonly used in everyday language and no one would say “It’s 30 kilometres to Boliden”, when you could say “It’s three miles” instead.
But numbers are dangerous. The numbers on the map are just miles on the shortest way between point A and point B. Not more. There’re saying nothing about detours, weather conditions, photo breaks and the fact that you’re not allowed to drive faster than 60 on many Norwegian roads. And the map says nothing about all the small nice places – known and unknown – that I want to visit. And a lot of roads to these places are dead ends, you’ll have to drive back the same way doubling the mileage.
But numbers are interesting too. Take your magnifier glasses and seek for Inari. Found it? You see Kirkenes—Inari is 20 miles. OK, that’s not too bad. But have another look for Vardø. Vardø–Mehamn is 61 miles, more than 600 kilometres even if it’s just 14 miles as the crow flies. That’s because my car is neither able to fly or to swim and I have to follow the roads. And there are a lot of fjords in Norway forcing you into endless detours. Sometime you can already see your destination but have do drive two other hours to arrive. Sometimes that’s great, sometimes you just want to arrive at some chosen destination.
That’s why I added the red dots between Tromsø and Kirkenes. That’s the stops of the Hurtigruten, the famous Norwegian ships. If I’ll take the big tour even to Kirkenes – one of the things I will decide much later – I definitely will take the Hurtigruten to cut down the miles sometimes. And I’m looking forward to that too, it’s always nice to be on a ship.
Now I have only two days job left, then my free time starts: 108 days till Easter Monday. But I won’t start the journey before the 8th of January. That gives me some more weeks for additional planning …
In round about five weeks I’ll start my long winter journey through Northern Scandinavia. There are three types of planning:
I’m still not sure mow much I should plan the route of my journey, and I’m right in the middle of organising, but part three seems to be almost done. That’s partly because I already have a lot of equipment (and in parts more than I need …) and partly because I ordered a lot of stuff the last weeks and many small and big parcels arrived here over the last weeks.
And that’s some of the items I ordered the last weeks:
And guess, what was the most expensive part? Believe it or not, it’s the L-Bracket which was more expensive than even the down pants!
What you see on the photo is just a part of my purchases: With the down pants I ordered the matching down parka, with the smock I ordered bib overalls of the same material.
The tripod got a new ball head and the tele lens a new foot matching the ball head. (My thanks to Jochen for the tips!)
For the car I bought snow chains, a 10 litre petrol canister and a jump starter, which is an external rechargeable battery that will provide enough power to start the car if the original battery is not working. (My thanks to Delle for the tips!)
The only things to buy that are left: A bigger waterproof bag for the camera and a roof box for the car. I know, I know, I could travel with much less equipment but since I have bought the car some years ago I love to take a lot of things with me. And know – back to planning.
down pants – Daunenhose
rechargeable – wiederaufladbar
power inverter – Wechselrichter
L-Bracket – L-Winkel
tripod – Stativ
bib overalls – Latzhose
ball head – Stativkopf/Kugelgelenkkopf
snow chains – Schneeketten
I never ever travelled for more than three weeks, two weeks in the winter. Now I’m planning for two month. And beside of which places I want to visit I have a lot of questions in my mind:
And last but not least:
Well, I’ll see.