Nordkapp and back in two weeks

I'll apologise before I start - I'm not very good at writing things like this and I lose my chain of thought quite quickly so it might jump about a bit and chances are I'll keep coming back and adding bits as I think of them - pics will come in dribs and drabs as there's over 1000 to go through too.

This was always going to be a mad rush as we only had two weeks (well 16 days as we left on a friday night and cam back on a sunday) and we hoped to get as far up as Nordkapp in that time.  According to the odo in the 90 we did 5930 miles in those 2 weeks and the 90 didn't do too badly considering it's already high milage of around 260,000.  Mechanically we had a few issues but nothing that stopped forward motion - the newly fitted wheel bearigns (by the garage - not me) needed tightening up shortly into the trip, then we had the fuel tank crack along the seam 2/3 of the way up so we just ran at 2/3 capacity for the rest of the trip.  The other thing was the down pipe on the exhaust developed a line of pinholes but this was quickly fixed by jubilee clipping an empty cider can over the hole with a layer of exhust putty underneath.  I think a prop UJ is on it's way but it held out til we got home anyway.

We did the ferry a little different to what most people seemed to recommend in that we didn't go Harwich to Esbjerg - we went Hull to Rotterdam and then drove through The Netherlands and Germany, caught the Puttgarden to Rodby ferry into denmark and then blasted up he Eastern side of Sweden, hopped into Finland and then into Norway up to Nordkapp.

We managed to get to Nordkapp in 4 days - I'll have to check the milage again but it was roughly 2000 miles from the ferry - we had a 500, a 700 another 500 and then the roads got worse so it was more like 300 the last day. 

This the gave us around 10/11 days to work our way across and down and back to the ferry, taking in the Lofoten islands and jumping backwards and forwards from Norway to Sweden on the way back down, making sure we were back around oslo by thursday night, giving us time to get back to rotterdam by sat night.

It wasn't all rushing about, we had a day whale watching in Andenes (saw two sperm whales) a day at the Polar Zoo to the East of Narvik (where Sharon got licked by 2 young Grizzly bears, hand fed an Elk/Moose,  and we got to go in wit the young wolves for an hour - where they took a likingto my sleeves and we nearly lost the lense cap of the camera to one).

We had a couple of days on the lofotens and got the ferry back onto the mainland before making our way across a bit more and heading south too, towards Trondheim, taking in more of Sweden on the way down.

Camping was a mixture of wild camping and campsites (roughly 2:1 wild vs site) and then we did have three nights in Hytta/Stuga when the weather was really bad and it was a late finish.  These were small cabins with basic furnishings, an electric hob and a few pots and pans - essentially a wooden tent I suppose.  These were usually not that much more than the cost of the campsite if you had a tent - typically if a site was £15 to camp then the hut was around £30 - which when the rain was coming in sideways was money well spent in my opinion!  Wild camping wasn't an issue anywhere but is better suited to vehicles you can sleep in/on or for those who can walk into where they want to camp - to find a site for a vehicle and ground tent can take a bit more finding though that said if we hadn't had such a tight schedule we'd have had less problems as we could have stopped when we spotted something ideal, rather than reaching where we needed to and then looking for somewhere.

After trondheim we ended up at the Troll's Ladder - a fantastic driving experience with 11 hairpin bends as t makes it's way up the vertical looking cliff face - I would strongly recommend this to any one as the views are fantastic and it leads onto some more amazing roads.

Carried on along the road after here and caught a small ferry and then ended up at the Bjerksfall glacier (I need to double check the spelling), which isn't as spectacular as the guide books made out but worth a look if you had chance.

All in all it was a fantastic two weeks, but ideally, to do a similar trip I'd have liked to have spent at least 4 weeks but ideally longer.

Food was expensive generally in the north, whether Norway or Sweden, but we were fairly well stocked up when we went so didn't actually have to buy too much.  Diesel in Sweden was similar money to here, Norway was rounghly 20p/l more - Petrol generally was 20p/l more than diesel in both countries. 

Comments (1)

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written by Tom, October 07, 2010

Looks like you a similary good time to me and girlfriend who were in Norway in July (this year: 2010). We done a very similar trip only the other way round; we started in Oslo, then to Bergen and up the coast taking in Trondhiem, Lofoten and then to Nordkapp. We finish by coming back down through Stockholm and Copenhagen. I totally agree with you on the rushing part. We done our trip in 3 weeks but wish we had given ourselves 4, that's why we have decided to go back again next year! Happy travels!