Reflecting on the Holiday

So we come to the last blog post of the holiday. I wonder what image best sums up an amazing three weeks away. 

I think it is the awe of seeing the West Wall of Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim.

Even now the details of the various images on the West Wall surprise and thrill me.

Highlights

 

As I look back there are a few things which stand out, but in mentioning them I realise there are loads that I could include which space would not allow. 

After the impressiveness of Trondheim, the one that comes first to mind is arriving in Olden and seeing Drew in his 'home' element

with the rushing water at the centre of the valley

and getting that sense that in this town everything is very Drewish, even down to the sparkling water.

Then there was walking on the top of the Opera House in Oslo, which even know seems like a crazy idea, but was great fun.

Also Drew meeting a friendly troll (and a whole woodland of them) in Bergen.

In terms of achieving a long term aim, crossing into the Artic Circle for the first time in our lives has to be at the top of them.

Seeing a Church rolling from one place to another in Kiruna is also a memory you couldn't plan for, but thoroughly enjoyed at the time. It still seems unbelievable that you can load a church onto a trailer and move it, ever so slowly for two miles.

Finally, the pleasure of feeling we were coming 'home' as we arrived at the Thon Partner Hotel Kungsborn hotel right next to Central Station in Stockholm.

To Note

It was also impressive to note Drew's courage in overcoming his fear of heights (or as says: of drops) in the funicular in Bergan, in the cable car in Loen, 

on the bridge and the cable car in Tromsø 

Unexpected delights

There were also the unexpected delights which brought brightness to the whole holiday. One that comes to mind is the two ferry journeys that the bus took between Bergen and Olden - who knew a standard service bus would use a small ferry boat to cross the Fjords and what a delight each of those little unexpected journeys would be for us.

The delight of seeing a Cruise Ship leaving Olden as we arrived. It turns out, I found out later, that a former student of mine, Stephanie Richards, who studied with Linda (one of our regular blog commenters) on the Moodle in Schools project, taught by Professor Norah Jones, Catherine Naamani and I, was on that ship; with them being forced to make an unplanned stop in Olden due to the Storm Floris which was battering the UK and Norway at the time. That was a relief for Drew too, as he now knows why this, unscheduled ship was in the Fjord on that day. 

The comfort of the trains both the Oslo to Bergen and the Trondheim to Bodø ones was another real pleasure of the trip.

A special mention also has to go to Thon Hotels, who in no small part made the holiday, by providing great quality accommodation, in excellent locations with brilliant breakfasts. The hotels became a key part of our successful enjoyment of the trip and getting to sit next to the founder (at least of his statue) was also great fun.

Though the window in Room 502 of the Radisson Blu in Tromsø has to win the prize of the best view from an hotel in the holiday, by day

or by twilight

though the balcony of the Olden Fjord Hotel gave it a good run for its money. 

Memorable Meal

While all four of the Michelin starred restaurants were excellent, for me it is Fagn, in Trondheim, that stands out as the most memorable as the Head Chef took the effort to engage with us and explain what had inspired him in his cooking, that with the quality of the whole service, makes it the great foody find of the holiday for me.

That being said only one of the meals we had disappointed, the lack of heat in the Vietnamese meal at Lille Saigon was a disappointment, 

but one out of twenty two is a remarkable record. [Co-pilot's note: I must, dear readers, give an honourable mention to the delights of Bastard Burger - I know some people don't like burgers on principle, but it was a damn good tasty bit of dinner.]

Travel 

In the 22 days of the holiday we travelled a total of 2,500 miles (excluding flights). It was 1,354 miles by train, 867 miles by coach/bus, 188 miles by ferry and 20 miles on the underground.

In addition we walked 144 miles, an average of 5.75 miles a day which is equivalent to 12,450 steps per day, well above the somewhat random target of 10k a day.  Our longest walk day was 13 miles or 28,000 steps on the Sunday in Oslo. Our shortest walk day was .83 of a mile i.e. 1,800 steps, this was the day we travelled from Olden to Trondheim and, after two long bus rides, walked one block to the amazing meal at Fagn. 

Thankfully, our walking helped balance with our food consumption. I left Wales at 12 stone 10 lbs (80.74 kg) and returned at 13 stone 6 lbs (85.28 kg) - I reckon it would have been a lot more than that without the walking. 

Issues

We had a remarkably easy holiday in terms of what went wrong. Most years there have been somethings which have not worked - this year was so much easier than some of the past ones. Everything seemed to work as well, indeed better, than we might have expected in advance. 

The only challenges: 

(a) the inability to get photos off the camara 

(b) the absence of a functioning launderette in Trondheim.

were both annoyances rather than major problems and were solved in one day in Trondheim. Though I suspect I'd have finished the blog a day or two earlier if I hadn't had that big catch-up with photos, it didn't spoil any aspect of the holiday.

Overall it has been fabulous.

Thanks

Thanks to all of you who have made this journey with us, with comments on the blog, on Flickr and on Facebook/BlueSky - they have been a great help and encouragement both for informing the journey and for correcting my mistyping/misspelling. I suspect there are many more spelling errors to catch, so if you see any please let me know.

So, until next year, when we seem to be heading towards Portugal following Richard Sharpe in Wellington's Peninsular Campaign, farewell and see you soon. 

Farewell Norway we have loved you - I reckon we will be back

We start the day in Norway and end it in Sweden, thankfully, even with my fears, everything works out well with the travel. 

So, we end the day in Kiruna, more about that later, but first an update on last night. 

Light at this latitude

Here in Tromsø we are at the latitude of 69.65° N and while Midnight Sun season lasts from late May to late July, it is still the case this late in August that it remains twilight all through the night, so sunset (and rise) doesn't really happen. 

This was really evident on Sunday evening, Drew was so pleased with the view that he went down to take it without the window between us and the view. These were taken at 10.02PM!

Early Morning

I wake up this Monday morning at 3am and am ready to load all 387 of Saturday's photos before beginning the blog of last Wednesday - on the way to Bodø

Drew wakes up at 4.30am just as I finish the photo uploading and I make our first coffee of the day. The second one is at 5.30am and I continue working on the blog post. 

Breakfast

At 6am I start to shower and undertake my other ablutions, Drew does the same from 6.20am and we have a cup of tea (Earl Grey Hot as Picard would say) when we are both finished we go down to Breakfast at 7.00am.

Plenty of nuts and seeds on my yogurt, delicious as always

Drew repeated his two toast and two pats (or nipples as he calls them) of butter to melt

Drew then had rice again, combining it was egg - he says rice is a very good dish for breakfast - once you get used to it.

For the second day in a row my pickled, smoked and peppered fish and pickled vegetables didn't survive me clicking the phone and not noticing I'd missed the photo!

Drew went for the sweet stuff in conclusion including a Gluten-Free Apple Cake and five cookies.

Back to the room

We have made a pact not to be ridiculously early at the bus station, given how close it is. So we get back to our room at 7.40am, check we have everything packed. I finsh the blog post, Drew checks it and I deal with some emails while Drew and Captain Jack sit and watch the ships outside the window. 

The Local Bus 

Along with the day on local buses in Nordfjord on the way to Olden, today was the day that gave me most sleepless nights. Travelling for three and a half hours on a local bus in the UK would be uncomfortable, without the problem of luggage the seats would soon begin to hurt your posterior and your back. So when I saw this journey was 3.5 hours and that there were 101 stops, I had become very nervous. However, I shouldn't have worried, the bus was what we would call a coach and it had large luggage bays underneath, sorted by destination, and comfortable seats with power points, usb ports and wifi. 

We left the hotel room at 10am and are at the bus stop by 10.04am

Guess what? There was no queue, indeed when the bus came in at 10.13am there were only three of us there. Our luggage got packed under the bus and we were waiting for departure prompt at 10.30am.

It turns out that by departure time there are 21 of us on the bus. This is the route:

and these the directions

As happened in the previous experience the 101 bus stops are potential rather than actual and we only stop at 12!

The start of the route was very picturesque

But after we left Nordkjosbotn, the clouds came in and we got very few photos.

We change driver at Buktameon at 12.25am and depart at 12.30am, back on time having become 5 minutes late druing the earlier part of the route.  

Two other buses were at the Bukrameon stop. The one back to Tromsø and one that some of our passengers get on, going to Finesness, the port were we were berthed 3 days ago.

We go back onto the E6 road and continue our journey to Narvik 127 km away. 

We stop at Brandvoll where the bus meets with the 130 bus to Sjøvegan Sentrum 

And people swap between them as a well organised scheduled change over. 

A long fjord runs beside us from Bjerkvik into Narvik but the fog has come in, so there are no photos of it from here.

In Narvik, I note that the Railway Station is a little out of the town. Here the nearest bus stop is at a place called Bromsgård, so we are aiming for that. Drew gets the pleasure of pushing the stop button

And we arrive at Bromsgård at 14:18pm right on time and 55 minutes before our train. All my earlier fears assuaged. 

Narvik to Kiruna

We walk the short distance to the train station arriving at 2.25pm (though part of the delay is me sending Drew off for a photo of a statue we passed on the way.) 

This is of a statue of a local lady known as Svarta Bjørn - the brown bear. You can read more about her here.

The train was already on the platform, when we arrived. Narvik to Kiruna is the old Iron Ore line, built to get the Kiruna Iron Ore to the sea at Narvik in the time that Sweden and Norway had one king. 

Narvik station is historic in its own right being opened in 1902, two years after the foundation of the mine.

Narvik itself is well known to older Britain's as the sight of two failed attempts to regain it for the Free Norwegian government from the Nazi regime - more about that here. The Nazi regime relied on the Iron Ore from Kiruna for much of its industrial and military production and almost all of it came to the sea through here as the other ports further north are closed by ice during winter. The train looks quite archaic too!

We leave Narvik at 3.11pm

following this route

We stop twice at small stations in Norway and then enter Sweden, our third visit to the country. The border is just before the stop at Riksgrensen. 

We climb into the mountains at Bjornfell. I buy coffee and snacks for us and our charge is now in SKr - Swedish Krona, no longer the Norwegian version. Coffee on the train is refillable once you have bought one. 

This video has some images of the route from Narvik to Kiruna.

Kiruna - What's in a name

Since I'd first heard of this town, seven or eight years ago, I have always known it to be called 'Ki Ru Na' with an emphasis on each vowel, but since getting on the train it is clear that it is pronounced 'Kir ina' with only two sounds and the u forming a English 'i' sound. This really puzzled me, how could I have watched so much TV set in this town while hearing the name so differently - then I remembered, all the programmes I'd watched had either been on BBC4 on a Saturday evening or on Channel 4 - Walter Presents, and the voice seeing Kiruna and hearing 'Ki Ru Na' is mine, not the actors, as the programmes are subtitled, so I focus on the text not the Norwegian words!!  So, now I know!

Kiruna - why are we here?

As mentioned Kiruna has featured in a number of SVT (Swedish Television) programmes in Britain either on Channel Four - Walter Presents or BBC4's Saturday Nordic Noir series. The first one was Midnight Sun which was called in Swedish: Midnattssol. A spooky French influenced drama, it made for good spooky viewing in the evenings of the pandemic. This was followed up by a police drama called Rebecka Martinsson: Arctic Murders, which in Swedish is simply called Rebecka Martinsson, this is a much more gentle programme, as murder programmes go, with the life of the community, the shared space between Police Station and Medical Centre and other Kiruna specific elements focus on the charecters and the twon, not just on solving the murders. 

But these weren't the first I'd heard of the town because in Karin Fossum's series of books about Inspector Konrad Sejer, the first one: Evas øye – Eva’s Eye (often with an alternative English title of 'In the Darkness') really got me into the series. Though most are based in Oslo, in this one Eva Magnus and her seven-year-old daughter Emma are walking along the lake in a park in Kiruna when the girl notices a body floating in the water. Eva, who is an artist and a single mother, already seems distracted when she heads for the nearest payphone, presumably to call the police. Instead she makes a rather mundane call to her father, and then, oddly enough, whisks her daughter off to McDonalds as if nothing happened. The reason for her behaviour forms the core of a complex mystery pieced together well by Sejer. As we learn the nature of her connection to the body they saw in the Kiruna Lake, it was a great experience to see this place of evocative fiction in the flesh.

[Co-pilot's note: You may, dear readers, have become convinced that we are visiting this place because our valiant blogger knows of several (all be it fictional) murders that have taken place in this town - you wouldn't be wrong!!]

We arrived at Kiruna Train Station at 5.58pm, and since the company had moved the train station out of town some years ago, they provide a free bus service for people arriving on the train. 

The man standing with the luggage just ahead of us seems to be like a snail, with all his belonging packed behind him, so much that he can't sit down in the bus seats!

Camp Ripan

We arrive at the free bus stop at OK Parken at 6.10pm and walk the ten minutes to Camp Ripan, where we are to stay for the next two nights.

Don't be fooled, while Camp Ripan has a lot of camping and caravanette spaces, they also have comfortable cabin based accommodation. We check in and walk across the yard to our accommodation - cabin 68

Captain Jack is very comfy here

We are all settled in for 6.30pm and we walk back across to the main building where we have dinner reservation for 7.30pm.

Dinner on Day one at Camp Ripan

We are shown to our table and Drew begins with Lingon, a Lingonberry juice with a fizz

I stay with the sparkling water, which is nice and bubbly

For starters I have Löjrom 

This Blesk roe from the Ethnion Bayis served with confit new potatoes and onion rings, alongside lemon pannacotta and pickled red onions. 

This dense salty roe with two lemon jels and sharp peppery pickled red onion is perfect for me making the taste buds jingle.

Drew opts for Ren

Croquettes of smoked Souvas reindeer and grated cheese from Svedjan, served with parmesan crisps, lingonberry sauce, radish and red onion, Drew loved everything about this from the soft meat, to the crunchy crisps and earthy sauce.

Haydn, by now worried that he had become a pescatarian as he is eating so little meat on this holiday, decides it is time to make a change so opts for Fläsk.

The Pork Chop with warm potato salad flavoured with sweet mustard, served with blueberry BBQ sauce and béarnaise was wonderful. I'm not a fan of smears, but this one had so much blueberry flavour I could be tempted to change my opinion. I'd accidentally not eaten much meat this holiday, so tonight seemed the right time to start doing so - this piece of pork was perfectly cooked, with a rich flavour, reminding me that a life as a pescatarian or vegetarian isn't really for me.

Drew had a large generous Hamburgare 

It is interesting how many European languages use the name of Hamburg for these burgers, something which seems to have died out in the USA and in American owned burger places.

This juicy burger with cheese and bacon, served with fries and truffle dip was just right for Drew. He left the dip but consumed every bit of the rest - a very good sign of pleasure 

We concluded the meal with a double espresso each, served in a Sami produced wooden cup. Camp Ripan and the Kiruna community in general really seem to celebrate the Sami heritage of this area.

We head to bed at 9.30pm, travelling days are fun but tiring, so early to bed it was.