Graptolite - Land of the Midnight Sun
Graptolite's Sailing Log
Martyn Pickup & Heike Richter
Wed 24 Jun 2009 13:17
Well, where the devil have I been?
There comes a time when a man has had enough of the tropics and craves the
wide open spaces; the mountains and the clean air of the frozen north. Yes,
I've just had a week up in the Arctic and a change is as good as a rest.
I was invited to travel to Tromso, Norway on Thursday as a surprise birthday
guest of Heike. The surprise was all mine. Flights took me from Larnaca to
Tromso via Munich and Oslo.
Tromso is a long way north (almost 70 degrees) and well inside the Arctic
Circle and there is snow everywhere even at mid summer. The weather was
bright, sunny and crisp and being inside the Arctic Circle stayed bright,
sunny and crisp all night which was a very unsettling experience. There is a
nice little harbour which looks like it would make a good stop on a future
northern sailing expedition. There is also a Polar Exploration museum on the
waterfront which is worth a visit if you are into badly stuffed polar bears,
walrus, seals, dead sled dogs and polar explorers. They have the usual
Norwegian tourist stuff in town of reindeer skins, knitwear and wooden
trolls, for the tourists coming off the fjord cruise ships.
A cruise ship in port on Friday was part of the reason we were there as it
was yet another layer of surprise for Heike's parents, Roland and Rosemarie,
while they were on their Golden Wedding cruise to the North Cape. Heike
likes to surprise people.
Heike and I flew down to Trondheim for a night in the Brittania Hotel then
drove down through the fjord country to Geirangerfjord. There was a Harley
Davidson Owners rally in full flow in Geiranger which made me suspicious at
first as Heike is also a Harley owner but it was apparently just a
coincidence. We drove on through the Jotunheimen mountains (last seen by me
when I was a 16 year-old spotty Boy Scout) to Sognefjord where we stayed in
the very pleasant historic Walaker Hotel at Solvorn.
Driving and car-ferrying south we got to Bergen on Sunday where after
another brief meeting with her parents to drink champagne near the Bryggen,
(Heike and Rosemarie share the same birth date which was on Sunday), Heike
left for Germany to make some more money. Being self-unemployed I was able
to stay to explore Bergen for another day. Bergen has changed a lot since I
used to pass through here on the way to North Sea oilrigs in the late 70's.
The fish market in particular has become a big tourist trap with many stalls
selling smoked fish, crabs, lobsters and shrimp. The last time I was here it
was a very different place and I bought a bag of shrimp directly off a
shrimp boat and got probably the worst dose of food poisoning I've ever had
in my life. Thirty years later I suppose I have forgiven them and I dared to
risk some more shrimp and this time had no bad effects.
The return flight 'home' for me to Larnaca early this morning was via
Copenhagen and Frankfurt with a missed flight and an unexpected day's delay
in Frankfurt while Security slowly checked that a new freshwater pump for
the boat that I had in my luggage wasn't a bomb.
Flights and hotels arranged by Richter's Chaos Travel (Berlin) GmbH and Kaos
Travel (Cyprus) Ltd.