Rotterdam (or Anywhere)

We were only at home for 36 hours after our trip to Sørøya – we picked up Suse from the airport (she had been to a conference), and the next day the three us were back on the road. This time the destination was Reisadalen, a narrow canyon-like valley. The clouds were hanging low when we left, and by the time we reached Reisadalen it was raining quite heavily. We spent the night at a campsite, Paul and I slept in a cabin while Suse slept in her van. The cabin was a bit like a shed and hadn’t been renovated since the 70s. The bathroom facilities next door were really modern though, AND there was a brand new sauna 🙂

The next morning we woke up to sunshine!

We drove to the end of the road, a place (well, couple of houses) called Saraelv. Here we went to Elvebåtsenteret, a company that rents out canoes and arranges transport by riverboats. We hadn’t made any appointment beforehand, we just showed up at the house and talked to the owner. He was really friendly and we easily arranged transport 20 km up the river by riverboat, with a canoe, so that we could paddle back the next day. We had to wait a few hours, which gave us time to pack our stuff and enjoy the sunshine while being eaten alive by mosquitos.

The riverboat was a long narrow boat, and the driver placed the entire (3 person) canoe inside it. There were plastic chairs in it with the legs cut off, so we had a comfortable ride. The trip upriver took about an hour, and it was beautiful. We passed a couple of waterfalls, lots of birds, and people fishing for salmon. The river is really clear, and quite shallow at times, but the riverboat drivers know the river very well. Just before we got to our destination, it was almost too shallow for the boat, and we could hear the propeller scrunching over the rocks at the bottom.

We were dropped off near a cute little cabin with a grass roof, where we planned to spend the night. Luckily there was nobody else there, as there were only 2 beds. The cabin was full of mosquitos, but Suse used a spray that actually made all the mosquitos leave! It was quite dark inside, but nice enough.

Almost every entry in the guestbook mentions mosquitos… you can see the extent of some peoples frustration in the drawing below… 😀

We quickly built a campfire to keep the mosquitos away outside as well. We spent a wonderful evening by the fire, next to the river. Every now and then a riverboat would pass, mostly with fishermen. It was so sunny and we were quite excited about our canoe trip back to Saraelv the next day. We even considered canoeing all the way back to the sea, and camping another night along the way.

Unfortunately, we woke up to a grey sky the next morning. Paul still went for a “swim” in the river, but it was rather chilly. Canoeing downriver was great fun, though you have to be a bit careful in the fast flowing parts. Suse was our captain and she steered us through all rapids safely 🙂 About halfway, we passed another cabin and we decided to stop for lunch. It was another grass-roofed log cabin, but a lot lighter and larger than the one we stayed in. We quickly got the fire going 🙂

While at the cabin, it started to rain. It took some courage to get dressed and back in the canoe, and we paddled back quite quickly. We took another group photo when we got back to Saraelv, quite different from the photo we took at the beginning!

We were quite soaked and very keen to get back to Storslett and a warm meal. Unfortunately, in my hurry I managed to trap my fingers in the sliding door of the camper van. Ouch!! That was really painful. Fortunately they weren’t broken, it was just really painful and I still don’t have feeling in one of my fingertips. When we got to Storslett we found out what had happened in Oslo and Utøya while we were away from mobile phone signal in Reisadalen, so it turned into quite a strange evening. We stayed at a campsite near Storslett, and we again opted for a cabin because of the rain. This one was tiny but very neat. Late in the evening, the sunset was spectacular. The light was so red that our faces looked funny 🙂

Incredible sunset… so beautiful!

The next day we were on our way to a fishing place, when suddenly we were surrounded by goats. Lots of them 😀 They were quite friendly, and we took a lot of photos. They belonged to a farm which had a shop selling goats cheese – excellent! We bought a big piece of mature goat cheese, so tasty.

Our fishing wasn’t very successful, even though Suse caught a big cod almost immediately. Not long after, Paul managed to hook himself in his chin 😐 Too many accidents on this trip! Fortunately he stayed very calm (I would have fainted straight away) and with patience freed himself. We were going to drive a bit further, but with all these accidents we decided to stay at a nearby beach and have a bbq.

It was a really nice wide beach, and we played games, had dinner and talked until deep in the night. It was a grey evening, but suddenly the sun appeared below the clouds for a spectacular show!

We took a lot of photos…

A while later, the sun was lighting the clouds from below and painted them a beautiful orange. This is my favourite photo of this trip…

This was the only night we slept in our tent during this trip, and it turned out to be a bad choice. It started raining during the night, and it didn’t stop for hours. We found out that our tent is not quite as waterproof as we were hoping… we woke up finding all our stuff was wet, so we quickly packed up and woke up Suse to ask if we could drive somewhere dry for breakfast.

The weather didn’t improve that day, so after breakfast we drove straight back to Tromsø. It had been a really fun trip, inspite of all the accidents and the not-always-cooperative weather 🙂

Last week we spent three days on the island of Sørøya. We were lucky enough to borrow our friend Suse’s Starmobil, a Volkswagen Transporter campervan. It took about 8 hours to reach the island, we took 3 ferries on the way! Here’s a map of our journey, click to enlarge…

This is where we spent our first night on the island. The sunset was beautiful, but it wasn’t very warm so we enjoyed a dinner inside the car. What a luxury to have a roof above your head while camping!

The next morning, I woke up before Paul and I spent some time looking for cloudberries. These berries only grow in Arctic regions, but they can’t be farmed. They look a bit like raspberries, but they are orange when they are ripe. People are quite competitive about picking them! I only found a couple of ripe ones, but they were SO tasty! I swear it’s like a tiny bite of a creamy cheesecake when you find a good one… 😀

Close to Hasvik, we stopped to look at the stockfish racks. Usually the fish are removed from the racks before the summer, but for some reason there was still quite a lot on those racks. It’s creepy to walk underneath so many dead, headless fish – I’m always paranoid a bit will fall off and end up in my hair 😉

We walked to a beach near Hasvik, where there was an abandoned Dutch whaling station according to our map. All we found were some old, rusty bits of metal, but it was a nice beach nonetheless! Lots of stuff washes up on the beaches on Sørøya, so beach combing is great fun. The fishing balls and rings often show where they are from, which is quite interesting. We found Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic and Spanish ones! We even found an Icelandic milk carton on the beach… long journey 😀

After our hike we continued along the road towards Breivikbotn. This stretch of the road is beautiful, and there were lots of flowers growing next to the road. The sun came out, and we enjoyed a nice coffee break next to the road. Yes, I could get used to the campervan lifestyle 🙂

Breivikbotn is a small fishing village, which also has a small shop that happened to open for 2 hours on Sunday evening exactly while we were there – ice cream time 🙂

A bit further along the road we stopped at Breivik, a tiny village with a couple of really nice sandy beaches. The weather was really improving and it was so beautiful there in the sunshine…

We decided to drive to the end of the road at Sørvær. Another very pretty fishing village, I took lots of photos there!

It was such a beautiful calm evening, with perfect reflections…

A lot of fishing boats… there was also a filleting factory here, and a Swedish company taking tourists fishing. Sørøya is well known for very big fish, and this attracts fishing enthusiasts from far away.

There was also a tiny petrol “station”… and some accommodation with original decorations next to the doors.

While I was taking photos, Paul was trying his luck fishing from the shore. No luck… He was quite frustrated not to have his boat with him, but it was hard to fit the boat and the engine in the campervan together with all our other stuff.

Later in the evening we drove the dirt road up towards Sluskfjellet. We found a great parking place high up, overlooking the ocean and the Åfjord lake which (just like Loch Ness) is rumored to have a monster in it – it was even indicated on our hiking map with a symbol of a monster :D. Unfortunately it was hiding from us 😉 From the parking place, it was a short hike to the top of Sluskfjellet where Norway’s northernmost weather radar is placed. Of course I had to visit 🙂 You can see a nice slide show of the building of the radar here.

The next morning the car was shaking like crazy – it was really windy with strong gusts. We skipped breakfast and drove to the end of the dirt road, towards Dønnesfjord. A really beautiful road!

The road ends in a parking place from where most people take boats across to a peninsula with several houses/cabins on it. You can also walk there, but it’s quite a long way so we just turned around and drove back. We stopped at a lake full of green plants, very beautiful! Paul flew his kite for a while, but the wind was so strong that it was very hard to get it back down.

In the afternoon we hiked to Nordsandfjorden, a beach about 5 km from the road. Luckily it was not so windy here, and warm enough to walk in a tshirt 🙂 These photos are taken from the place where you first spot the beach (and nature reserve) down below – so beautiful!!

We didn’t see anyone all day and had this amazing beach all to ourselves… it was full of driftwood so we made a campfire and had some dinner. We came to this beach to visit the “Nordsandfjordhula”, a cave where 133 people hid from the Germans during the second world war. The cave was signposted all the way from the road, but we still found it hard to find. The information signs fail to mention that you can’t reach the cave at high tide, and of course we happened to be there at high water… so the only thing we could do was wait until the water came down.

The information signs also says it’s an easy walk, which is true until you get to the beach. The last part to the cave involves climbing over extremely slippery rocks full of seaweed and algae. I fell down once, didn’t really hurt myself but I was all covered in algae (my hiking boots still smell terrible!). The cave is worth it though, it’s very big. There is a central part near the entrance, and then you get to a T split with two tunnels each about 100 m long. Quite impressive, it’s a cold and narrow cave with water dripping from all walls and ceiling. Can’t imagine hiding here for a long time! You can still see some items that were left behind, like some shoes, cooking supplies, glasses, fireplaces, etc. They didn’t actually stay in the cave for very long, somebody had betrayed them and the Germans came with a ship to get them. See here for more information.

We started walking back very late, it was about midnight. Paul had found a whale skeleton on the beach and was very keen to bring a piece home. We used a fishing net on the beach to tie it to his bag, and he managed to get it back to the car – a 5km hike crossing a hill! For me it was a relaxing experience, as he for once was walking slower than me 😉

On our last day on Sørøya we woke up to rain. We stayed at a beach with some very basic camping facilities (an outside cold water shower and a toilet). Paul was keen to use the shower, an experience he called “character-building” :D. It cleared up later in the day, and we visited another (smaller) cave near Hasvik. In the evening we took the ferry back to Øksfjorden, and we decided to drive back to Tromsø that night, even though it meant taking the long way back as it was too late to catch the Lyngen ferries. It turned out to be the most magical night ever, we just had to stop in Sørkjosen to enjoy the view of the calm fjord at sunset, with fog rolling in…

Paul tried his luck fishing from a small beach, but only caught a few very small fish. What a fishing spot though 🙂 we also saw some dolphins, or perhaps they were Minke whales.

Eventually we were surrounded by fog. Unfortunately my camera battery was almost empty and it was very hard to keep taking photos – quite frustrating when it’s such a beautiful evening 😉

The drive along the Lyngen Alps was beautiful in the midnight sun, with fog banks, lots of flowers, mirror-like fjords, the moon, and even a rainbow! Ohh how I wished I had bought an extra camera battery… though I don’t think we would have made it home that night if I had 😉

It was a great trip, a nice experience trying a camper van, and above all discovering Sørøya. It’s a real hidden gem, with hardly any tourists knowing about it, but so incredibly beautiful… can recommend it to anyone! I hope we can come back one day too 🙂

With my irregular shifts, it’s quite hard to work out regularly, unless you like going to the gym – which I don’t. And even the gym isn’t open in the middle of the night 😉 I really wanted to get in a better shape though… so in the end, I decided to try running. And that same day (in early February), I entered myself for the “Adidas Mila” (a Norwegian mila (mile) is 10 km) during the Midnight Sun Marathon on 25 June. I thought it would be good to have a goal!

I had a podcast series on mp3 with music and instructions, at the end of 27 lessons the aim was to run for 30 minutes. The only thing I needed was a good pair of running shoes with spikes, which are easy to find in Tromsø. At first the running intervals were 2-3 minutes, which was quite a challenge for me then! I remember how proud I was when I first ran for 5 minutes 🙂 I ran about 3 times a week, even when I was in Oslo for work. There were times when it was tough and I came home after each lesson extremely exhausted, thinking about quitting.. but fortunately things always got better after a while. At some point I bought a gps watch so I could keep track of distances and speed, which made it more fun for a geek like me :D. At the end of April I finished series 1, and was able to run for 30 minutes. I was quite slow though, running slightly less than 4km in 30 minutes while the podcast aimed for 5.

I started series 2 in May, another 27 lessons to get you from 5 to 10 km. I got about halfway through this series when the 10 km run was already approaching… so one afternoon last week I decided to just try and run 10km, to see if I was able to do it. I was! I wasn’t very fast, but I didn’t need to walk and I felt quite fine. Ready for the race!

The Adidas Mila started at 19:00, so I had to “wait around” all day, which was hard – it made me nervous. Here I am at the start, quite anxious…

There were two firebreathers providing entertainment at the start, but as I was standing quite far back I didn’t see any of this! All I noticed was some flame at some point and wondered what was going on. Good thing Paul took these great photos 🙂

And off we went! I’ve been running on my own all these months, and it was strange to run among so many people now. I found it quite tough to keep my own pace and ignore all the others. After about 2 km, it got calmer and I was running with the same group of people for the rest of the race. It was great to reach the halfway point, have a sip of water and know I was on my way back! I was running faster than I normally do, and this got me in trouble eventually – I had to walk a few times to catch my breath. The supporters along the way were great though, cheering you on and making you smile :).

The last km seemed the longest one, but having the finish in sight helped a lot. I also managed to beat my time from earlier this week, and finished in 1h12min30sec. Not bad!! I’m very proud of what I achieved in those 5 months of running… where at first 3 minutes of running were an eternity, and here I am running for more than an hour :). I am still a very slow runner (I finished 476 out of the 524 female runners…) but hopefully that will improve with time. Running is quite addictive, and I won’t stop here!

What’s next? There’s a Polar Night Half Marathon in early January, and Paul suggested I could run the half marathon by then… and that he might join me 🙂 Hmm, I don’t know yet. It’s a great goal to work towards, but it requires a lot of training and I definitely have to become a bit faster. It’s still more than 6 months away though, so perhaps it’s doable? We’ll see! I might give it a go 🙂 There’s also a 10km race during that event, so if it doesn’t work out I’ll enter that one.

Either way, I found a new hobby 🙂 I love the freedom of being able to work out whenever, wherever. I’ve run on snow under the northern lights, at 1 in the morning in the midnight sun, in Tromsø, in Oslo, in Helsinki… and enjoying my new level of fitness 🙂