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| Trondheim - our last major stop |
The Coastal Steamer has been running along the Norwegian coast for over 100 years. For the past few years, it has also been known as the Hurtigruten - the name of the most recent company to run the route. Every day, a ship calls in at each of the 34 ports. Each ship takes 11.5 days to sail the return trip from Bergen to Kirkenes. Whilst not designed as a tourist experience, tourists have become an integral part of the journey, I think, primarily, to keep the business afloat. The traditional role of delivering mail and goods, and ferrying locals is apparently not that lucrative. Anyway, we hopped on board the MS Richard With in Kirkenes for a 5 night journey down to Bergen. We didn't really know what to expect - apart from a lot of peace and quiet and some beautiful sights. What we got was so much more...
The ship was above expectations. The cabins were pretty damn comfortable (my source of comparison was the boat I was on in the Galapagos Islands, where the cabin wasn't large enough to take your shirt off without banging into a wall). The food was way above board. The number of things to do? Well, way more than I had planned for. I had expected to get bored and have to resort to reading my book a lot more than I wanted to. Thankfully, this was not the case. There was plenty of time to relax and read, but with multiple stops every day - randing from 5 minutes to 3.5 hours, there was plenty to see - whether it from the ship or on land. But the most impressive thing? Easy! The scenery of Northern Norway and the Central Fjords! Of course what could have been the worst part - the weather - never caused any problems. For an area of the earth prone to lots of rain - we were fortunate to be bathed in sunshine and [relatively] warm weather nearly all of the time.
On the first two nights we were treated to the Aurora Borealis. The displays were very dim, but impressive nonetheless. When you experience a crappy version of something amazing for the first time, it's still amazing. So there is that one - ticked off my "to be satisfied with" list. I loved it. The displays were pure green - it appeared like wispy glowing clouds against the backdrop of a black sky with plenty of stars about. There is no blaming people for thinking the lights are something magical.
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| Vardø - the first stop on the Southbound voyage |
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| Inside the old military fort at Vardø |
Of course, the land based sights were totally out of this world. The more I think about it, the more I realise is how fantastic the landscapes look given how deep we were into the Arctic. My mental picture of the latitudes at the top of Siberia and Alaska involved lots of snow and ice sheets - not craggy mountains and flowing water. In the Finmark area - that's all there was: craggy, bare mountains that dropped in and out of the ocean like someone was still forming the land. The bare land, sparse settlements, and pure air gave the area a feeling of perfection and of being untouched. Just beautiful.
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| Hammerfest |
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| Letterboxes in Hammerfest |
The Norwegians claim Hammerfest as the northernmost city in the world, but has a population of around 10,000 only. Norwegian, like Danish, uses the word 'by' to mean both city and town. This lack of differentiation means that Hammerfest is a city and therefore they claim the prize. However, it definitely does not have the feel of a city that is close to the North Pole. The weather is mild and it's a town like any other in Northern Norway - pretty, full of character, spotless and charming.
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| Hammerfest Church |
After rounding the top of mainland Norway, the journey South-West presented us with a sudden change from desert-like barrenness to trees and forests of the "slightly less Arctic, but still in the Arctic" region. Being late September, the trees put on a display of multiple colours - from deep green to light green, orange, yellow and grey. Really a fantastic site. All of a sudden the towns seemed a bit larger, there was more life around, bridges started appearing between the hundreds of islands and the mainland, and crazily enough, the weather felt cooler!
Islands really are something else here - they go on and on and on. Some with no houses, some with only a dozen. Then the bridges - the classic arch bridge - everywhere. It's as if they were mass produced in a factory and then dropped into place, one by one. Quite an amazing feat - and the fact that so many small and sparsely populated islands are connected (either by bridge, or by undersea tunnel) is testament to the money flowing around this country.
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| Trollfjord |
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| Brønnøysund |
Although I rather enjoyed the many hours I spent gazing over the ship's railing into the distance, there were some specific highlights along the way. Raftsundet, a 20km strait dividing the Vesterålen and Lofoton Islands was pretty cool. This is an exceptionally pretty part of the voyage where the distant sun casts beautiful shadows on the mountains towering out of the ocean. The mountains indeed look grand and barely touched by humans. Towards the end of this strait we entered Trollfjorden for one of the very few 'additional' bits done purely for tourist purposes. This deep, narrow fjord cuts through the mountains in a very eerie way. The entrance to the fjord is only around 100m across and the captain performs a pretty impressive 180 at the end where there are towering cliffs and waterfalls around the ship.
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| My favourite bridge, just south of Brønnøysund |
Another great site was Torghatten - the famous mountain with a hole through it. Legend has it that the hole is a result of an arrow shot at a lovely gentleman who was chasing 7 women (or something like that). Turns out that it was the result of water penetrating a weak spot in the mountain many years ago when that part of the mountain was at sea level. Either way, it looks cool!
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| Nidaros Cathedral (below, the ornate entrance) |
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| The 'out of service' bike lift |
There were of course some land based points of interest. The lengthy stop in Trondheim though, I think, was my favourite. We arrived very early on a Sunday morning, meaning that the city was pretty dead, but the stillness made it fantastic to wander around. The colourful old warehouses by the river cast perfect reflections in the water, Nidaros Cathedral stood out like a real impressive giant in an otherwise quaint city - a truly impressive national monument.
Of fascination to me, of course, was the technical innovation - the
bicycle lift built in 1993 to help cyclists get up one of the hills in
the town. It truly was built for lazy cyclists as the hill really didn't
seem that bad, and at NOK 100 a pop, it did seem a bit crazy. However,
in typical bureaucratic fashion, this fantastic idea was 'out of service
while being improved' new EU regulations meant that it could no longer
be used in its present state. Typical - engineers are thwarted by lawyers!
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| Trondheim on an early Sunday morning |
Another stop I found interesting was Stockmarknes. This is where the Hurtigruten Museum is located - the interesting part for me though was the fact that they had the Finmarken, one of the earlier Coastal Steamers located there on shore.You could climb aboard this ship (if I remember correctly, it was in service from the 1950's to the early 1990's). Talk about a different class! Although not really that old, the common areas definitely had that 70's and 80's feel about, and the cabins were very much a step back to simpler times. Many still had en-suites, but the beds and furnishings looked very basic and nothing like the comfort we have aboard our ship. It was fun to wander around it though. Of course, like many of the other towns, it was very picturesque and had a number of houses with absolutely priceless views!
We are almost at the end of our journey now. The last day or so, out of Trondheim Fjord and down the coast towards Bergen. The landscape, although still rather beautiful, is not as dramatic as what we have had until now. I can quite happily still sit here and watch it pass me by (especially when considering the alternative might be to deal with whatever meaningless rubbish might be taking up my time in the office). The ship is getting quieter as some of the tourists have left. Although there is less German and [American] English about, this has simply been replaced by an increase in Norwegian - the bigger towns must mean more locals to use this for their local transport.
So, could anything be improved? Sure! More young passengers! The average age of the passengers must have been close to 100, and at times, the main viewing lounge seemed a bit like a geriatric ward!
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| A couple of my favourite sunset shots |
The Coastal Steamer has been running along the Norwegian coast for over 100 years. For the past few years, it has also been known as the Hurtigruten - the name of the most recent company to run the route. Every day, a ship calls in at each of the 34 ports. Each ship takes 11.5 days to sail the return trip from Bergen to Kirkenes. Whilst not designed as a tourist experience, tourists have become an integral part of the journey, I think, primarily, to keep the business afloat. The traditional role of delivering mail and goods, and ferrying locals is apparently not that lucrative. Anyway, we hopped on board the MS Richard With in Kirkenes for a 5 night journey down to Bergen. We didn't really know what to expect - apart from a lot of peace and quiet and some beautiful sights. What we got was so much more...
The ship was above expectations. The cabins were pretty damn comfortable (my source of comparison was the boat I was on in the Galapagos Islands, where the cabin wasn't large enough to take your shirt off without banging into a wall). The food was way above board. The number of things to do? Well, way more than I had planned for. I had expected to get bored and have to resort to reading my book a lot more than I wanted to. Thankfully, this was not the case. There was plenty of time to relax and read, but with multiple stops every day - randing from 5 minutes to 3.5 hours, there was plenty to see - whether it from the ship or on land. But the most impressive thing? Easy! The scenery of Northern Norway and the Central Fjords! Of course what could have been the worst part - the weather - never caused any problems. For an area of the earth prone to lots of rain - we were fortunate to be bathed in sunshine and [relatively] warm weather nearly all of the time.
On the first two nights we were treated to the Aurora Borealis. The displays were very dim, but impressive nonetheless. When you experience a crappy version of something amazing for the first time, it's still amazing. So there is that one - ticked off my "to be satisfied with" list. I loved it. The displays were pure green - it appeared like wispy glowing clouds against the backdrop of a black sky with plenty of stars about. There is no blaming people for thinking the lights are something magical.
Islands really are something else here - they go on and on and on. Some with no houses, some with only a dozen. Then the bridges - the classic arch bridge - everywhere. It's as if they were mass produced in a factory and then dropped into place, one by one. Quite an amazing feat - and the fact that so many small and sparsely populated islands are connected (either by bridge, or by undersea tunnel) is testament to the money flowing around this country.
Another stop I found interesting was Stockmarknes. This is where the Hurtigruten Museum is located - the interesting part for me though was the fact that they had the Finmarken, one of the earlier Coastal Steamers located there on shore.You could climb aboard this ship (if I remember correctly, it was in service from the 1950's to the early 1990's). Talk about a different class! Although not really that old, the common areas definitely had that 70's and 80's feel about, and the cabins were very much a step back to simpler times. Many still had en-suites, but the beds and furnishings looked very basic and nothing like the comfort we have aboard our ship. It was fun to wander around it though. Of course, like many of the other towns, it was very picturesque and had a number of houses with absolutely priceless views!
We are almost at the end of our journey now. The last day or so, out of Trondheim Fjord and down the coast towards Bergen. The landscape, although still rather beautiful, is not as dramatic as what we have had until now. I can quite happily still sit here and watch it pass me by (especially when considering the alternative might be to deal with whatever meaningless rubbish might be taking up my time in the office). The ship is getting quieter as some of the tourists have left. Although there is less German and [American] English about, this has simply been replaced by an increase in Norwegian - the bigger towns must mean more locals to use this for their local transport.
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