Overview

This trip has been years in the wanting and months in the researching and organising. The aim is to see the Northern Lights but I know the chances are low so ever since I booked a 12-day boat trip up the Norwegian coast for six of us, along with the flights to get us to our starting point in Bergen, I have been telling myself that we are really going in order to see darkness and mountains and stars and to feel very cold. I know the chances of that are high and we’ve all been texting each other about thermal underwear for weeks.
 
The four of us who should be at the bus stop in Oxford, are, even though we’ve discovered that taxis are not allowed to go anywhere near the airport-bus stop now that it’s been relocated to the new shopping centre. The two who are starting from London are up and I have remembered the scarf for one and the thermal top for the other.
 
I’ve been monitoring the Gatwick forecast for fog and ice for days and all is fine but traffic jams en route send me to Googlemaps, which reassure me that we still have plenty of time to get to the airport. We meet, we all have our passports, all our baggage conforms to size and weight requirements, we all get through security, the flight is on time.
 
As we descend over Oslo, the snow catches my breath and flicks a switch. I am no longer planning, I am on holiday!
 
Ha - no I'm not! After we’ve all gone through security for our domestic flight to Bergen, we’re told that our checked-through hold luggage is actually on the international baggage carousel and we have to go back to collect it, check it in again and go through security again. For the third time in three hours.

In Bergen, having reoriented ourselves after it’s pointed out to me as we are about to head uphill that I must have misread the map to the harbour, we spot our ship, check in and find our cabins. 

We are doing a 12-day sea-voyage into the Arctic Circle, round the north of Norway to Kirkenes, then back again. We are on a ship run by Hurtigruten (Norwegian for ‘fast route’ – etymology fans can compare ‘hurtig’ with ‘hurtling’) who have been delivering mail and goods to remote communities up the Norwegian coast since 1893. Since 1936 the ships have done this route every day and they are also a kind of bus service for locals. But there are plenty of us also here for the fun of it.

I am shattered and I leave the others to go to a briefing while I set about trying to catch up on the 3½ hours' sleep I got last night.


Black and white in colour 149


PS – Please welcome a friend of mine, Northnexposure, who I told about Blip recently when we were discussing his trip to the Arctic three years ago.