Slartibartfast Stories

And so it comes to a close in a blaze of summer sunshine. Ålesund and Hjørundfjord today. A very lovely final day with a pleasant wee wander around lovely Ålesund followed by a magnificent journey up and down the very dramatic Hjørundfjord. And in the evening a special five-course farewell dinner. As if the food and service over the previous fortnight had not already been special enough. A lovely meal with some newly made friends from Suffolk.   Over the course of this voyage we have travelled some 3,170 miles. Quite some sail. Tomorrow we arrive back in Bergen early, have our final breakfast on board and head off to the airport for the first leg of our hopefully uneventful journey home via Oslo and London and then by train home. I will end this blog here for now. If you've read this regularly, thanks for your interest. I intend to put up a few new and additional picture blogs from ...

Our first day of sunshine and warmth on the southern leg of our trip. We had a bike tour of Brønnøysund booked for today which was unfortunately cancelled. So we had a good wee walk about instead. There was as usual a lovely waterfront and old town but a rather bland modern centre. The views in the sunshine were very spectacular though.  Our sail south took us past Torghatten, an island crag with a hole in the centre. As well as the usual abundance of beautiful islets and skerries.  Tomorrow is our last full day on board before we head home. This has been a fabulously memorable trip with sea, mountains, fjords, islands, islets, skerries, bridges, glaciers, whales, sea birds, polar bears, crossing the Arctic circle, visiting Svalbard, being on the northernmost point of Europe...not to mention the food, the people, the friendliness...Norway - what's not to like. 😁👍🏻🚢

Back in Lofoten today and another wee excursion. A splendid day in Svolvær with a trip to Henningsvær and Ørsnes fisherman's museum. Henningsvær is a beautiful wee village at the far end of a Lotofen peninsula. Its primary industry until recently has been fishing but that has recently been overtaken by tourism. A key fish species is migratory Atlantic cod which they catch in large numbers in the winter and air-dry until June and then export all over the world. Svolvær is the major gateway to Lofoten and offers all sorts of land and sea based activities from mountain hikes to sea safaries. It also has a little sculpture park demonstrating the height and fractured nature of Norwegians...   We continue to sail south and will recross the Arctic circle in the other direction later tonight on route to Brønnøysund. We have another excursion, this time by bike, booked there.

After our fairly choppy 49 hour crossing of the Norwegian sea our first full port of call is Finnsnes, gateway to Senja.  We only have a few hours here of an evening. We did stop earleir in Tromsø but only to let a few passengers off who went on a coach excursion to Senja. We chose to stay on board and wend our way down through the lovely steep and narrow fjords towards Finnsnes We had a nice wander around the town which was mostly unremarkable but with some cracking terns around the lake. And some old cars and unusually placed tractors. And...we finally got our shot of midnight sun... And sadly we also had a medical emergency on board the ship which delayed our departure from Finnsnes. I hope whoever is onboard is ok. Tomorrow we are back in Lofoten.

Not much to report other than the southbound journey was a little more blowy than the northbound one.  The windspeeds varied from near gale  to strong gale (7-9) for most of the journey but the boat unsurprisingly handled the conditions well. It was however quite a rough crossing of the Norwegian Sea. A lot fewer people around for meals and generally lounging around. Sadly this included Soaz who did not managed to surface at all during this period and survived on bread and water rations. There was not too much to miss mind apart from the usual fine food. All that I saw on the trip was a clutch of russian trawlers and two more whales which I now believe to have been fin whales. However after two nights and two days at sea we have both arrived upright and safely in Tromsø at 12noon today. There is no time ashore in Tromsø this time we are only stopping to let off some passengers who are off on a bus tour. Later this afternoon we will have some time ashore in Finnsnes...

To further celebrate the ship's first trip to Svalbard, as we left Longyearbjen last night a small bottle of champagne was cracked open and shared with a lucky handful of guests. Ny-Ålesund has an all-year permanent population of 30 to 35, with the summer population reaching 114. Our arrival swamped the inhabitants with hordes of bloody tourists. It is the northernmost functional civilian settlement in the world. And it therefore follows that it has many other northernmost things too, such as the northernmost post office. As Ny-Ålesund is primarily a research settlement we were asked to turn off all our connected devices before we came with 20kms of the settlement in case they might interfere with any of their experiments. Like most of Svalbard the town has its origins in mining and that is evident from the look of the place. The surrounding area is magnificently bleak with snow capped mountains, barren roads, glaciers and mini icebergs. ...

In this part of the globe there is midnight sun from late Apr to late Aug and polar night from late Oct to mid Feb. Quite something to adapt to for the 2000 plus inhabitants. I realise that I have described a little of all of the places we have visited so far but said little about our means of transport, our ship. The MS Trollfjord is a lovely vessel to travel on with cuisine that is way beyond superb. It has just been refurbished and this is its first outing and indeed its maiden voyage to Svalbard. It has three restaurants one with buffet breakfast and lunches the other two with sit down menus to choose from. All of our meals have highlighted the local produce of the areas that we are currently travelling through. We have had locally sourced seaweed, salt, reindeer, oysters, prawns, salmon, arctic char, lamb, beef, pork, eggs, herbs, cheese, berries and fruit. Plus any amount of teas, coffees, beers, wines, spirits and soft drinks as might take your fancy. The main bar ha...

Today we had a good long stopover in Tromsø, the gateway to the Arctic. We also unexpectedly received certificates of Arctic Circle crossing signed personally by the ship's captain. Tromsø is the largest city in Northern Norway and amongst many things is home to the Tromsø Film Festival which all fellow wittitainment followers will know (hello to Jason). Our first destination was across the Tromsø Bridge to visit the very distinctive Arctic Cathedral. We then had a good long tour of the Polar Museum and learned much about Amundsen, Nansen, Wanny Woldstad and cross-dressing in the Arctic. Roald Amundsen of course is rightly famous but he also had a ferociously competive friendship with the equally adventurous Fritjhof Nansen over many years. Wanny Woldstad was a women from Tromsø who was the first female hunter to overwinter on Svalbard. She was also Tromsø's first female taxi driver. The museum also had a temporary  ex...