Rotterdam (or Anywhere)

Paul had his birthday yesterday, but as the weather suddenly cleared up the evening before, we decided to go for an early birthday BBQ on the beach at Grøtfjord. I never get bored of this place, it’s such a pretty beach…

We stayed on the beach until about 23:00, when the sun is still up but it disappears behind Vengsøya. The light was so pretty on the way back to Tromsø that we stopped several times to take some photos…

At Eidkjosen, Lance (the research ship that Paul spends a lot of time on) was also reflected in the calm waters – beautiful!

One final stop on our way home, on Tromsø island looking towards Kvaløya.

The next day, on his actual birthday, we kept changing our plans. We were going to eat sushi at our favourite restaurant, but it was warm and sunny so we decided to go for a boat trip to Hekkingen. But by the time we were ready to put the boat in the water, it had clouded over. We’re a bit spoilt, so we decided not to go. Instead, we tried to reach Torsnes beach near Sommarøy. It looked like an easy trip on the map, but it turned out to be a nightmare 😉 Lots of marsh and too many small trees, terrible amounts of mosquitos, and finally we couldn’t cross the ridge as you had to climb nearly vertically on huge boulders. Never mind… at least we got some nice views of Sommarøy…

Next time, we’ll follow the beach at the bottom of the ridge instead of trying to cross it 😉

Last week the weather was stunning, so when Hannah asked me whether I was up for a trip, the answer was yes :). I did have to be at work by 15:15 though, so we needed to start early. We picked one of the mountains from Turboka: Middagsfjellet (678 m high) on Kvaløya, near Grøtfjord.

The first part was steep, but we quickly made it to the ridge – with very festive markings and a fantastic view towards Nordtinden, Skulsfjord and Bellvika.

We had about 5 hours to make it to the top and back, which was definitely doable but it did mean I couldn’t stop as often as I normally do. Which in turn meant that I didn’t take that many photos 😉 But luckily Hannah is a lot faster than me, so I could leave the photo-taking to her: the results are here.

We were slightly disappointed when we got to the top, as it’s a plateau where the ridge actually blocks a lot of the views – we couldn’t see Grøtfjord for example, nor the valley between us and Orvasstinden. But hey, the view towards the open ocean was still impressive 🙂

On the way up we avoided the snow, but on the way down we actually followed the last remains of snow – it’s much better for your knees than loose rocks. The snow didn’t always hold us though, and I even managed to scrape my leg open by falling through the icey snow – who knew that was possible?!

On the way down we went down a steep valley instead of following the ridge all the way. This was an attempt to save time, but it was a bit of an overgrown jungle which slowed us down. Still, we made it back to the car with about 10 minutes to spare 😀 It was a great hike, in fantastic weather – which left me quite severely sunburnt though (in spite of applying sunscreen several times). I can never decide if hikes before work are a good idea – on the one hand I am very happy I went for a nice trip while the weather was good, on the other hand it makes for a very tired person on duty 😉

Here’s a map and a height profile of our trip…