16 September 2002 - Finally, we've seen a reindeer!
Saturday morning saw us out and about almost before it was afternoon.

It also saw the realisation of just how far away from our ferry we were. 1078 miles to be precise. "Where's the problem?" you may well ask. Well, it's simple - if we miss our ferry at 7am on tuesday morning, we're buggered. That means we have to be in Bergen on Monday night. That's almost 1100 miles through the mountains, in the rain, at 35mph. We'll leave early on Sunday then...

After breakfast (alright brunch) we went for a wander through Tromso to do a bit of shopping and sight-seeing. Dan bought a Norwegian Fish cookery book (followed five minutes later by a Norwegian to English dictionary - where he's going to find Whale, Seal or Arctic Shark in Sainsbury's I have no idea) whilst Al started charming the natives in the camera shop with his newly learnt Norwegian. And Dan bought some CD's.

"Goddag! SchnakkadooEngelshk?" says Fingers
"Eh?"
"Snakka-Dooooo-Engelshk?"
"Eh?"
"Speak English?"
"Yes, of course! How can I help you..."

Back to the hotel (whilst Al managed to persuade the nice people at reception that even though the laundry was closed, they ought to take his laundry to the hotel next door and get them to wash it, bless 'em) and we decided to take a trip up across the islands of the Troms region and up to the point where the Arctic Ocean becomes the Barents Sea. Accompanied by some of the strangest Norwegian music ever heard - the CD's that Dan had bought earlier consisted of a purely of a white noise and stange beeps - not the most inspiring music!

An hour later and we'd made it back into the town centre. Signage isn't big in this part of the world so, having got lost in the suburbs, we had decided to follow an airport bus, as the airport was on the way. The thing with airport buses is that they go into town FROM the airport as well as from the town TO the airport. It was a 50/50 gamble that didn't pay off.

Having received some fantastic technical support from Mr. Mark James and Mr Peter MacDiarmid, Al was determined to shoot some IR piccies of mountains and Nordic stuff, so a different route was selected to take us over the fjords to Hansnes. Having remembered (just in time) the IR film in the minibar, we set off over the bridge to the next island and headed North once more. By now the roads were rapidly becoming little more than tracks through some of the most stunning scenery we had seen.

A few photo stops later and as the skies began to clear we became aware of the weird loss of depth perception. The air up here is so pure that you can see hundreds of miles without any distortion or blurring of the distant objects - the result is that the brain has no real way of telling how far away anything is and all perception of distance becomes rather sketchy as the scenery becomes 2 dimensional. The Fata Morgana, as the effect is known, can also create mirages of mountains and inverted landscapes hundreds of miles out to sea.

"A Swedish explorer had all but completed a written description in his notebook of a craggy headland with two unusually symmetrical valley glaciers, the whole of it part of a large island, when he discovered what he was looking at was a walrus." (Arctic Dreams)

A small, but hopefully educational (and maybe even interesting), digression there.

We followed the road quite literally to its end and sat in one of the most remote points of the planet staring out at the Barents Sea, hoping to spot a Polar Bear or something, whilst the digital camera was prepared for a bit of film making. We had driven for about 20 miles on a gravel track that wrapped itself around the twisty curves of the fjords and the edge of the island. And it was Dans turn to drive back. And Dan drives Dan's car as only an owner would dare.

The 20 minute 'Sega Rally' video that followed will be streamed from the site on our return. You'll have to watch it, as words cannot convey the fear from the passengers seat as Danni 'Makkinen' Chick went a bit 'V-Rally' on the way back. Things to watch out for include the lorry and the tank-slapper on exit from one of the very narrow bridges. The hand-brake moment is quite entertaining as well.

The weather never quite cleared up enough for the ill-fated IR to come into play (look, after all this effort it would be a shame to come back with anything other than epic pictures, right?) but Al managed to get through 2 films of standard B&W capturing some awesome views. It was on the way back to Tromso that a quick inspection of the camera revealed 40 shots had been taken on a 36 exposure film. Suspicious at such clever elastic-trickery it was only as the sun went down over the mountains and we pulled into Tromso centre that Al found a small hitch in the days photo-shoot.

40 pictures, shot on one frame of film. An easy mistake to make, given that he's only owned the camera for about 10 years. Froomed, well and truly.

Stop laughing.

Back in town we decided not to ruin the night by eating too late again, but to eat early and then chill for a while before going out at about 10:30. Having located a suitable restaurant, Fingers tucked into his raw fillet of reindeer starter followed by a whale steak, whilst Dan opted for the scallops starter followed by a rare reindeer steak. One for the green lobby there - it's alright we'll manage some seal before we leave! After dinner, a quick chat with the Beatties - who have provided loyal and humorous, if not mildly derisive, support throughout the trip - made the evening even better as we got ready for the forthcoming drinking binge (nice one chaps!).

And then Dan became ill.

Not content with the usual "I'll get a cold gradually over a few days" approach, he went from normal (you know what I mean) to something positively 17th century in its bubonicness, all in the space of about 1 hour. Fans of the Fast Show can perhaps imagine planning a night out with Bob Flemming.

Convinced that the 'drink through it' approach would work, we hit Tromso. Alone.

On Friday night, the town had been packed. There were people everywhere, the bars were full and the atmosphere had been fantastic. Somehow, Saturday had become somewhat low-key. The bars were still open until 4:30, they were just empty. This will probably not come as a great surprise to most of you, given past performance of the Dynamic Duo. We later discovered that the tactic on Saturdays is to come out late and head straight for the clubs, starting at about 12:30. That didn't help the fact that we were sharing the streets of Tromso with the older generation of Norwegians, who seem to have a vastly lower tolerance to the falling-down water, not to mention a slightly rowdier nature. Luckily they all tend to fall asleep in gutters before they get nasty - there's no nasty nutterdom in Tromso.

After a few G&T's in our new local, Dan wasn't feeling any better - quite the opposite in fact. It's quite hard to make new friends if you're sitting on a table with Captain Snot of the Dribble Team and no amount of persuasion was going to get Dan out on a large one, through no fault of his own. It looked pretty touch and go as to whether or not he was going to survive the night for a while. Both a little gutted, we headed back to the hotel bar at about 1am for a couple of whiskies before bed. Realistically, given that we were meant to be up early in the morning if we had any chance of actually making the ferry, it was probably a good thing that we weren't out clubbing until dawn. Realistically, given the cost of the booze (3 G&T's each costing us £60) it was probably a good thing we weren't clubbing until dawn... Returning to the hotel, we still managed to do £60 worth of fine whisky in the hotel bar before retiring for the evening!!!

Tromso is a fantastic place and worth every penny (the hotels are actually really good value). We're planning a lads weekend here next year, during the Polar night (but we'll definitely be flying here next time).

We hope we make the ferry.....

More soon...

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