Snow-Shoeing - or yet another revelation

Dave at the top - trying to shelter from the wind

We went on a snowshoe expedition, this was with the same company who did the cross-country skiing, Tromso Outdoor, highly recommend them. We had the perfect weather for this walk, it was beautiful blue skies, not a cloud anywhere. Most of the other days had involved either snow or rain, or at least clouds, so we were super lucky.

We were back on Kvaloya, it really is a pretty island. There was a 400m peak we were going to climb. This was actually a really easy walk, mainly because the guide ahead of us was breaking all the trail. But snowshoes are great, you don't sink in so far, and they have these crampon-type spikes on the bottom, which means you are really stable on ice. I love them, we have to plan some snowshoeing expeditions here in the UK.

Just a beautiful day, in a beautiful location

Great mountain ranges all around

The climb was only 400m, so pretty easy. And the weather so nice, that this was a like a walk in the park. I'm glad we hadn't gone the day before, they ended up in the middle of a blizzard, that would not have been fun!

Whilst we were out we saw some dog sledders heading out for their activity as well. It was kind of cool watching them, they even crossed the road, that was the cutest thing. You can hear the dogs from a long way, they were all the way down in the valley and still clear as anything. We were wondering if that would be us in a few days, since we had booked in for a full days dog sledding. It looked super fun if it was going to be us. The key with visiting these polar night places, and what all the Norwegians say, is that you got to keep active. And that's what we found, so long as we were doing exercise every day we found we didn't really miss the sun. It's true that our eating patterns were a bit all over the shop, but I think that's because all the activities ran over lunchtime, since that's when the sun is "up".

Approaching the top

"Sunset" peaking over the ridge

I think these photos show most closely what the days were like in Tromso, as you can see it's definitely not pitch black, those skies are definitely blue. And with all the snow around, even after "sunset" it's light enough to come down off the mountain without head torches. There were quite a few people climbing the mountain at the same time as us, though they were doing it carrying skis. There is this thing called ski touring, which I have only just learned about, which seems to involve climbing these mountains and then skiing down them. I guess it's because they don't have the chair lifts that you get in Switzerland, but you have a lot of mountains. It looked pretty fun, but I don't think I will ever achieve that level of ski. There were even people doing it with a tiny dog. Apparently they would have to wait for the dog to catch up as they went down.

The road at the start

Ski-tourers on their way up

When I saw the dogs in Norway, just normal pet dogs, not work dogs, and what they would do, I feel the dogs in London are really coddled. Here they all go around with little jackets on through winter. There they would be out climbing snow covered mountains, or pulling their ski-clad owners along. It's impressive to see what dogs can put up with, and seem to enjoy.

The climb was beautiful, and easy, and even, dare I say it, warm. And then we hit the peak. It was this gale force wind, which was picking up the snow and driving it into your face like ice. We could hardly even rest. And Dave and I made a tactical error of waiting until we were at the top before putting on our additional layers for the walk back down. That really cooled things down, my hands were blocks of ice. Definitely a lesson learned there. Put the warm layers on just before you get to the summit. Especially if it's lovely and still where you are on the route up. And then some how most of the way down was in this same howling wind. I'm not sure how that worked given the total lack of even a breeze on the way up.

This was the whale-watching fjord, totally different with blue skies

Moon-rise over the mountains

Sunset at the peak

Whale Watching : I am never seeing this many whales again

Humpback going for a dive

Now that we were in tip-top condition after our ski expedition we went on a whale watching tour the next day. Now I've been on whale watching tours before, which have been universally disappointing. You may see some bit of a whale in the very far distance, and then a bunch of dolphins might swim around the boat, and that's it. So going into this tour I was probably the least enthusiastic, since I kind of thought it was going to be more of the same. Oh man, was I wrong.

We saw our first whale within the first 5 minutes. We saw so many whales that by the end of the day I was a bit bored with them all, it's like, oh another whale. The guide later said that she was a bit worried, since it took us a full 5 minutes to see our first whale. Apparently it's normally quicker than that. I think I saw more whales in that one day, then I am likely to see for the rest of my life. It was incredible.

Amazing lights in the morning

A whole family of orca

The other, slightly more amazing thing, is that the whales have only been visiting this fjord for the last 5 years. Five years ago you couldn't even go on a whale watching cruise, they didn't exist in Tromso. But 5 years ago the herrings turned up, and the whales followed. The herrings used to occur further south, but I guess global warming is pushing them further north.

It's amazing visiting Norway, since they have these signs all around them as to how the climate is changing, so on almost all fronts they are completely environmentally conscious. But then they still hunt whales. Because the whale hunt is tied in with their Viking ancestry, and nobody can touch that. The populace is totally behind the whale hunting. You feel like the Viking time was their golden age, they did ransack a lot of Europe, so fair enough if they want to hold on to that. But it feels like they might be entering a second golden age, what with their immense oil wealth, that they haven't squandered on middle-class tax breaks. I wonder if that will change their whale hunting stance.

Yet more humpback

The whales you will see from Kvaloya are humpbacks and orca, and they are so awesome. You get pretty close to them, of course the boat has to stay 100m away from the whales, but they are free to swim up to you. We had a humpback right next to the boat, we were saying to each other, what is that white thing under the water, turned out to be a whale! And the noise of them spouting the water, it was all around you. It really was another awesome tour. Seriously everything we did in Tromso was amazing.

A beautiful spot for a boat ride

Can actually see it's spot

This is were we actually met a Norwegian tour guide, there weren't many of them, he was captain of the boat. It sounded like this was a bit of a holiday for him, since he used to live on Svalbard. Now Svalbard sounds like this amazing place. It's basically as north as you can go, there's only the Arctic further north. They get the true polar night, pitch black the whole time, I don't know how you would survive it, and people live there all year. They have polar bears there. So even though you think it's pretty tough living in Tromso, there is always somewhere more hard core. In fact Tromso is a paradise compared to Svalbard. This captain was a real viking though, really tall, red hair, super tough hands. And yet so nice and friendly. Man I love Norwegians.

Cross-Country Skiing, Or A New Way of Life?

Dave with his skis

The day after our first northern lights tour we really needed a sleep in. So we had organised guided cross-country skiing in the afternoon. I have to say I didn't wake up feeling 100%, I'm not really used to 4am nights. We did manage a good sleep, but I did feel like I was about to get sick. I definitely wasn't super keen for skiing. But man am I glad I went!

I felt 100% after the trip and have discovered my winter activity. I have felt like we are wasting our winters a bit, given that we are not massive downhill skiing fans. And we haven't really done any mountaineering. So to discover cross-country skiing has blown winters wide open. We are already planning on going back to Norway, purely for a cross-country ski holiday. When we planned our Tromso trip, we had only one skiing session planned, just to see how it was. As soon as we finished our first class we booked in for another one, and hired skis ourselves to go out on the trails yet again. It was that amazing.

The trails in Tromso

Basically it's like running really slowly, and if there's one thing I can do, it's run really slowly. It's exactly the winter spot for us; solitary, meditative, surrounded by trees, no real fear of dying, and without too much skill involved. I can't believe it took us this long to discover it. Though I think Norway is the best place to discover cross-country skiing. They say Norwegians are born with skis on their feet. And skiing that first time I can see what they meant. It's like all of Tromso were on the trails, there were people with their tiny toddlers, people with dogs attached to them, people just chatting as they skied along. It's definitely a way of life for them, and they are all so good at it, there was perhaps one 3 year old that I was better than, but other than that, they were all totally at home on their skis.

Dave ready to carve it up

It's funny that we had this life-changing epiphany where we did. Since the trails we were on are basically commuting trails, between the city centre and the university. In summer I think they are a bike path, I think it would be similar to someone hiring a bike and cycling around Lake Burley-Griffin in Canberra, and deciding that cycling is the best thing ever, and that they have to come back and do more. It does mean that the skiing we do next time, which won't be on commuter trails, should be even more awesome than what we have just done.

The other awesome thing about this activity is that you can catch a bus from the city centre to the start of the trails. There is no need for expensive lift passes, and everyone is super friendly on the trails. I guess it's because everyone has endorphins pumping through them. And the trails are all lit up, so you can ski anytime. The lady at the ski hire place said she couldn't sleep one night, so at 3am she got up and went skiing for a while. This is why I want to live in Norway!

Northern Lights in Tromso

Lights over Grotfjord

We did two northern lights tours whilst we were in Tromso, well actually three if you include our night dog sledding adventure. But the actual night tours were all about seeing the lights, no distractions, with the dogs you barely had time to look at the sky! The company we went with, I'm not sure if I would recommend them, were all about guaranteeing northern lights viewing, which is good. But it does mean if most of Norway is under cloud then you are driving to Finland, which is a 2 hour drive away. The tour then ends up being 11 hours long, which is not really what I expected. We got to bed at 4:30am!

The frozen lake - not many lights

The thing is we had great light shows within the first 2 hours of the tour, then the next 9 hours are spent driving around, getting colder and colder. Other companies will give you the option of cancelling or rescheduling your tour, if there is very little chance of seeing the northern lights, which I think is a better option than who we went with.

We did learn a lot from this first, arduous, tour though, so we were definitely prepared next time round. The trick is, at the first stop, change your boots, get on their arctic suit, and get some heat packs. The second time round we were also luckier though, in that it was a crystal clear night, so we only had to drive enough to get away from the Tromso lights.

This spot was amazing, and the lights were incredible

I'm not sure what skills you needed to be a northern lights guide, it's not quite what I expected. It seemed more that you had to be unfailingly upbeat, able to withstand immense cold, and good at night photography. When we drove to Finland it was -14 degrees, that was cooooold! And yet our guide seemed to only have 3 layers on. We were all in these incredible Arctic suits that could handle temperatures of -40.

We even got some purple

It kind of made me want to get into night photography, I do need a better lens though. The guide had a camera with a lowest aperture of 1.4, my lowest was 3.5. His pictures were amazing. It's also actually kind of hard to figure out if you are in focus, since it's pitch black, and your photos are not very bright. Thankfully I took a lot of photos, so at least some turned out ok. But that's definitely something for me to figure out, how to tell at night, whether the photo is perfectly in focus.

Can't get enough of this fjord

The lights themselves were amazing, mainly green, though when you see them with the naked eye they look almost colourless. The amazing photos you see are not what you will see with your eyes, they just aren't sensitive enough. We did manage to see some purples and reds though, so that was kind of cool. The lights were really going crazy on the second tour, dancing all over the skies, and coming down in sheets, it was really quite special.

The effect of clouds on the light visibility

The guides did know how to pick some pretty spots, so even if there were no lights, you were going to get some nice landscape photos. The first tour we stopped at this frozen lake. We weren't allowed to wander off though, as they weren't sure how thick the ice was in the middle. We saw some lights there, but you could see the effect of low cloud. As soon as there is low cloud you can't see anything.

Surrounded by mountains

The next tour was to the next island over from Tromso, Kvaloya, we ended up visiting this island 5 times whilst we were in Tromso. This spot was amazing though, right at the end of a fjord, with a little town right at the other end, surrounded by mountains.

Just a great spot

Polar Nights in Norway

Looking across to the mainland, and the Arctic Cathedral

We are just back from a week in Tromso, which is a town in northern Norway, about 350km north of the Arctic Circle. Which means the sun doesn't rise throughout winter. It's not a pitch-black day though, there are about 3 hours of twilight, and the rest of the time, because of all the snow, there is still a lot of light around. A night in Tromso feels a lot brighter than a night in London.

I think it was a pretty good time to visit, though perhaps even later in winter is better because you are probably guaranteed snow and no rain. You don't want to visit Tromso when it's still raining. It's definitely set up for snow, not ice. Our main purpose for the visit was to see the northern lights, and yet there is so much other stuff to do, it turned out that the northern lights tours were probably our least favourite out of all the activities we did.

Another status of Amundsen - 11am in Tromso

Tromso centre, the pile of snow is from the roads

Norway is definitely an awesome country, out of everywhere I have visited it's one of the only places I have thought I could actually live in. Even given the cold temperatures and lack of sunlight. The infrastructure is great, everyone seems really fit and intelligent, the scenery is stunning, and they are set up for outdoor pursuits. Plus they just seem harder than other nationalities.

Tromso was definitely a tourist town, every evening when we came out of our hotel there would always be a bunch of people standing around waiting for various tours, often we were also waiting. Everyone in Tromso also speaks English, and I mean perfect English. It's the tour guides who aren't Norwegian who don't speak such great English. It makes being a tourist there super easy, and enjoyable. One thing we noticed is that not many Norwegians were tour guides, especially not for the northern lights tours, they were always foreigners. I'm not sure why that is, perhaps the lights tours are the worst, you are basically working the night shift for months on end. 

There is also a surprising amount to see in Tromso itself, and it has some pretty great restaurants. We ate so well the whole time we were there, and yes there was a lot of fish. I even had prawns when I was there, I think the last time I had prawns I enjoyed was in Australia. In the UK we just get these prawns from Thailand, that taste of iodine. And, I recently learned, are prepared by slaves. So no more prawns for me whilst I'm in the UK.

The pretty Tromso harbour

Back to the stuff to do in Tromso, obviously it is expected that you are there to do various tours and activities. But we couldn't do something every minute of the day, so there were some free hours to see the local museums and art galleries. We went to the Polaria first, cool building, it looks like a bunch of ice blocks that have toppled over. There we learnt about the aurora, which was going to hold us in good stead over the next week. They also had 4 seals there, which was kind of cool, I was hoping for a polar bear, but I guess that is a bit harder to keep in captivity. There were a lot of fish and sea creatures at this museum, it was kind of cool to see all these types of creatures that you don't normally see. Normally aquariums go overboard with the tropical fish, but this was all cold-water stuff.

Clubbing baby seals

We also went to the Tromso museum, this was a bit out of the city centre, so we had to catch a bus to get there. And again Norway just does it better. When you got on the bus, the driver would actually wait for you to take a seat before driving off, are you listening London bus drivers! This museum was more of a natural history museum, so stuffed animals from the surrounding environment. They also had a bog person, I love bog people, but it seemed the body wasn't that well-preserved, so it was just their clothes. There was quite a lot on the Sami people, who are a race of people who live through northern Norway, Sweden and Finland, and have their own language and culture. Unfortunately this section was all in Norwegian, so we couldn't learn a lot about them.

A polar bear with trap, about to shoot itself with a gun inside the box

The final museum we visited was the Polar museum, different from the Polaria. This was more about Norwegian explorers and history in the Arctic. There were a loooot of stuffed animals. And a lot about all the seal clubbing, whaling and polar bear hunting they used to do in the Arctic. There was a lot about Amundsen, as you would expect. I never knew that he carried on adventuring after the South pole, and disappeared whilst trying to rescue some other expedition. 

York

Castle Howard - pretty grand

We re-visited York, about a year after we had first been there. It's a really cool city, in a great part of the country. I think I will have to visit this area a bit more. There's just so many places to go, and so many things to see!

We were here for another 10km race, really we treat these races as an excuse to travel somewhere we may not normally go. It was in Dalby forest and I would definitely go back for this race. It's by far the toughest 10km I've ever done. It was insane. It was about 500m long, which is already pretty tough, but it was all on either single-track, or up dry creek beds, or across churned up mud bogs. It was crazy, and never flat. You were either slogging it up a steep hill, or worried you were about to seriously twist your ankle coming down. It was really awesome!

Castle Howard across the lake

Roses in the walled garden

But as well as that excursion into the forest we also did a bit of sight-seeing further afield. Since we had a car this time, we could check out a bit of Yorkshire. There is a lot to see in this area, and we didn't even see either the moors or the dales.

We visited Castle Howard, definitely worth a visit if you are in this area. It's massive, both the house and the grounds. And they have certainly spent some money keeping it looking nice. They are an off-shoot from the Howards of Anne Boleyn's times, the Duke of Norfolk who was always causing trouble is a distant relation of the current Howards. Though they don't seem to make much of that family connection, perhaps they didn't like Wolf Hall.

Another view

Temple of the four winds in the distance

I wouldn't really call it a castle, perhaps more of a palace, it looks a bit like a shrunken version of Buckingham. What's even cooler is that it was designed by Vanbrugh, and we live on a road named after him in London. I always thought Wren was the English architect everyone loves, but this Vanbrugh guy is all over the place. Even better is that he had no formal training in it, so it's impressive that all these Earls got him to design stuff for him. Castle Howard was the first thing he built, and he didn't do too bad a job with it. It looks pretty impressive, and the gardens are really nice too.

The temple up close - love that honey coloured stone

I usually like the gardens in these places the most, so long as it's not raining when I visit. They love creating these vistas and they'll often build these things which you can't use, you can't go inside, just for the effect they create. So there was this temple of the four winds right on the boundary of the gardens, and walking up to it had this nice effect, with this bridge in the foreground. You couldn't actually cross the bridge though, or go in the temple. But they did look very pretty.

And then there always has to be a good flower garden. I am really starting to appreciate the flowers living here. They do a good flower. In Australia the flowers never seemed that impressive, or perhaps it was more the oppressive heat that detracted from the admiration. Or maybe it was that they seemed really hard to grow, here it seems you stick anything in the ground and it will flower. So of course there was a walled garden, again with gates you couldn't open, and little buildings that seemed to serve no purpose, but all very nice.

Useless gate in the walled garden

Distant view of the puffins

But it wasn't all impressive palaces around York. I think the place I enjoyed the most were the Bempton cliffs. It's this bird sanctuary consisting of 6kms of cliffs. But what's best is that they have puffins there, and it was breeding season! We didn't even realise we could see puffins when we were heading there. And it was a bit of a drive, just to maybe see some birds. It could certainly be better sign posted. So there were moments when we are thinking, should we really bother. But I am so glad we did. 

The cliffs at Bempton - the white dots are birds

We get there and the volunteers have set up telescopes focused on the puffins nesting on the cliffs. It was crazy how many birds were there, not just puffins, but gannets, which are massive, like 1.8m wingspan, kittiwakes, guillemots and razorbills, to name a few. Even if you aren't really into birds it's definitely worth a visit, though beware of the stench. That was the first time I had seen puffins, and they are much smaller than what I thought they would be. But you could really see their orange bill. The cliffs themselves are also pretty impressive. They are something like 100m high, and stretch along the coast for around 10km. I imagine it's a bit like what the white cliffs of Dover look like.

The final stop on our York tour was Kirkham Priory. Another monastery set in a really pretty location, those monks really had an eye for beauty.


Next time back I'll have to investigate these dales and moors. There must be some good hard walks somewhere.

View from the priory

Bournemouth

The English at play

We have been a bit remiss in visiting the English coastline, in fact I'm not sure we have been to even one famous English beachside town. We have been to a few in Wales, which has a fantastic coastline. But I think places like Bournemouth and Bristol are probably more famous than Tenby. We finally got on a tiny little train down to Bournemouth. It was only 4 carriages so I was glad not to be travelling Friday night, that could have been messy.

It was quite hot, England was having a summer to speak of for once. I thought I might have even gone for a swim. But I hadn't checked the water temperatures before I left London, the average in July is something like 15 degrees. For comparison I grew up in the tropics where the summer sea temperature was 31 degrees, and it would drop to a chilly 25 in winter. That's when people didn't swim as much. Lets just say I was not prepared for 15 degrees, next time I am definitely taking my wetsuit. Or maybe I'll go to the Canary Islands, where even in December the water is still 20 degrees.

Cool stained glass at Russell-Cotes Museum

The English are definitely different from the Aussies in how they approach the beach. For them it seems more like a carnival, so they have permanent rides set up, a roller coaster and that sort of thing, as well as this long pier with cafes, that you have to pay to walk along. There is also a busy road running right up against the beach, so you can literally park and from the boot of your car throw your stuff onto the sand. I wasn't expecting that. It didn't feel very natural for me, it felt a bit as if maybe the sand was imported. I don't think it was, it's just the sense of unreality I had there meant I wouldn't have been surprised if it was. So we didn't spend a lot of time on the beach, we went for a run along it, which was nice. And had some great sea food.

Apart from the proximity to cars, and the weird roller coasters, the beach was pretty nice. It's certainly massive. It's something like 10km long I think. Most people seem to cluster together around the roller coasters. But if you walked a bit further down you would definitely have a nice patch of beach all to yourself.

We also visited the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum. It's this old house on the cliffs above the beach that the owners donated to the city. It's a really cool building and it's just full of stuff. This is definitely worth a visit, if only to warm up after a dip in the freezing water.