Drive to the End of the Norwegian Alphabet

The Plan

The day before, Yves and I had a great plan to wake up at 7am and leave by 8am. Well we woke up at 8am…. Today we decided to give ourselves a break and lie in till 8am, meet Juraj and leave at 9am! We woke up at 6.30am, Murphy really gets a hoot out of these ironic moments…. But at least it meant we could pack up slowly and then check some internet at the main house while waiting for Juraj.

We didn’t have to wait long and soon we were on the road. Since it had taken quite a few hours to get as far as we had the day before we decided to drive half way… after all, the tourist map we had been given seemed to indicate it was the same distance if not further to end of the Lofoten Islands and the town of Å, pronounced “Ooohhr”, or close to that at least. That is also the very last letter of the Norwegian alphabet, which seemed rather handy when you are the last town in a long chain of islands.

Juraj planned to go all the way to the end of the alphabet, and we planned to drop him along the way when we found a place we fancied. It turned out that the tourist map was horribly wrong in it’s dimensions and after barely 2 hours we were well on our way, only a couple of towns from Å, so we just decided to head all the way.

Here are some pictures of the stunning scenery on the way:

Hitting a Jam

Go figure, once we had made the decision to go to the end, we hit a jam. Literally, roadworks had caused a traffic jam (Norwegian Island style), in the most inconvenient location with no way to turn around and at least a 30 minute wait.

It appeared that they were completing work on a tunnel designed to prevent landslides and avalanches, always a good thing when you are north of the Arctic circle. Did I mention that this was me driving, my first time driving a hybrid in a foreign country… I get all the fun. So we broke out the snacks and surveyed the road works.

Suddenly out of nowhere a Norwegian Barbie (sorry but it’s was the term the boys came up with), stalks over and says something intense to the guy holding the flag… next minute we are confused and driving through and incomplete tunnel that would randomly lurch to the left and outside the tunnel, making us drive along the cliff edge. A very high and scary looking cliff edge…remember again, I am driving. We had no idea where the road went to follow and I was just thankful that there had been one car ahead of us, that way I could follow him and if he suddenly drove over the cliff I would know to lean more right than left. The worker in the pickup playing chicken with the civilian cars, he had a real hoot as he just got ahead of me as I was entering the tunnel again through a small one car gap, did not help our confidence.

But, after a fairly insane 7 minutes or so we exited out the other end where another row of cars were waiting to enter the Norwegian Highway’s Merry Go Round!

Welcome to the End of the Norwegian Alphabet

With the traffic jam our well on the way time scale pretty much went out the window. We found one decent camp site a few towns before Å but we weren’t sure if it was the right place for us. So we headed for the end. Finally pulling in we were faced by a delightful town of red fisher buildings a lovely coastal area and even a youth hostel. But that was all, it appeared as if they had set up some decent accommodation for tourists then said “well that’s good enough”. We drove around trying to find other options for accommodation stopping at one point to ask, what appeared, to be a local, where the campsite was. There were signs but we couldn’t pinpoint the location. This wise old gentleman gave us an evaluating look, gave us a resigned expression and then pointed vaguely back the way we had come saying “It’s over there…” . I was pretty certain he mumbled “duh!” under his breath. Of course we were idiots who wouldn’t recognize the apparently vacant grassy lot with no signs as the campsite….

Heading back to the hostel we looked at our options there. I was kind of leaning towards at least one night of warmth, and hoped the guys would go for it to. The only other option, as the “campsite” was apparently closed for the season. Finally we opted for a dorm room price in a small cabin with a kitchen come living room and plenty of plugs and heaters. All wet gear was pulled out and put in a drying position and all electronic equipment plugged in.

this was our little cabin!

The boys decided to try get in a quick hike before dinner and I decided to explore Å and see what I could find, turned out to be beautiful scenery but nothing much else. There were no stores, no restaurants, no bars… it was as if all the locals had gone underground the minute August 31st past, even tourist information was shut for the winter. And all I wanted was a cup of coffee…

I did however find some kittens!