Rotterdam (or Anywhere)

On a sunny evening last week, we decided to go for a walk. Ti-på-topp, Troms Turlag and Tromsø photo club are working together on a book of summer hikes/trips around Tromsø, and as a member of all three I have trying to contribute as much as I can. I had been sent a list of trips that they needed more photos of, which I thought was quite a fun list – this must be walks that are worth including in the book yet receive few visits 🙂 We peered over the list, excited about all the mountains and places we’d never even heard of, and finally decided to visit one of them: Madseng. It’s a beach that can be reached by climbing up to a pass between two mountains, close to Tromvik on the outer coast – which I think is one of the prettiest areas around here. The walk looks easy, about 3 km one way and the highest point is at 300 m. Piece of cake we thought 😉

As you can probably guess, it wasn’t such a piece of cake after all. We had to cross a large bog, so bad that I once sunk in until my knees – with both legs! (hurray for gaiters 😉 ). On the way back we found there was an easier way to cross, so I guess we were just unlucky here. Climbing up through the forest we thankfully found a path which made it a lot easier, but later on we kept losing the path and it’s surprisingly difficult to walk through a forest without a path. Anyway, it was all worth it, it was so pretty there!!

There was cottongrass everywhere – so pretty! And in the forest there were a few little streams winding their way with little waterfalls – like in a fairytale 🙂

Crossing another field…

We had planned to go down to the beach, but the last bit is very steep and goes through thick overgrown forest. The path seemed to stop and we struggled to find a save way down. In the end we gave up, and just found a rock with a good view for a tea break 🙂

The light was beautiful and there were flowers everywhere.

On the way back we stopped in one of the fields full of cottongrass for some more photos… at midnight!

Paul had brought the fisheye lens and got some amazing pictures!

Walking back went a lot faster since we made sure not to lose the path and managed to avoid the worst part of the bog. The light was beautiful in the middle of the night, we made it back to the car at 1:30 in the morning 😀

It was a great trip, I’m really looking forward to the book coming out which will feature more than 100 hikes (and mountains) like this!

We’ve had two days of beautiful sunny weather in Tromsø, and yesterday we even had temperatures of 22°C! We’ve been making the most of it, as you never know how long it lasts – today is cold, grey and rainy. Last night we drove through the new tunnel to Vikran on the Malangen peninsula. The roads are really quiet there, and we parked our car and continued by bike 🙂 It was so beautiful! Summer is at its peak and flowers are everywhere, like this field full of buttercups…

We explored Kobbevågen nature reserve, a really nice area of beaches and shallow sea that falls dry at low tide. We saw a group of swans here, I don’t think I’ve ever seen swans around Tromsø before! In spring lots of birds pass through this area on their migration, and to a lesser extent also in autumn. Must remember that to visit at the right time 🙂

We had planned a nice picknick break but unfortunately the summer weather has woken up the mosquitos – arghh. So after a quick drink we cycled back to the car and drove back to Tromsø. A nice little trip, and fun to find a new area to explore.

More photos soon – I’ve also just come back from a wonderful week in Switzerland but it will take some time to go through the photos I took there 😉