NARVIK

 

Friday 2^nd July 2010

Narvik is a coastal town largely built up around the shipping of Swedish iron ore. This gives a sound economic base to the community as the wharf and railway generate jobs for locals. Fishing was an important industry but has declined. Tourism is being encouraged to fill the gap as it were.

Being on a long deep fjord, Narvik has spread in a couple of directions. The main city is on a sort of peninsula or point that juts out where a secondary fjord branches off the main one. Settlement has developed along the main fjord shores. Across the secondary fjord is a suburban area which in turn also spreads along the main fjord shoreline.

One way to get a grip on this is to take the cable car or really gondola cable ride up to a look out point on the mountain backing the city. I should point out that there is very little flat land and much of the settlement rises up the hillsides.

The gondola ride was a distance from the guesthouse, so I wandered along the main street checking a few shops including a sports store with a sale on. They had Rockport sandals which I liked and some light sports shoes. Later in the day I returned, found the one pair of Rockport was too large and the Teva shoes were too small. So I ended up with a pair of Salomon very light slip on sports shoes. These will be great for the plane as they are easy to take off and put on and tighten.

I called at the railway station which also houses the Tourist office and checked out the trains to Sweden and return. I plan to do that trip on Saturday.

Although the cable system was up the hill, the walk from the Tourist Centre was not unduly difficult or time consuming. It looked further on the town map than it turned out to be.

The ride up on the gondola cost 100 kr with do senior discounts. Each car carried four people easily and could perhaps take six. There is a rack on the outside for your skis as this is used for the higher ski field in winter. Incidentally I discovered that the downhill runs on the ski field all have lights because so much skiing is done in the darkness during winter. I had never thought of that.

Three cars travel together up or down the cable. They move quite fast and go up to 600 metres. Here there is of course, a restaurant and some large decks and picnic tables set out. The view is great. You can see way down the fjord and to blue hazy snow capped mountains in the faint distance. This could be getting close to the Lofoten Islands. From the top you can look down on Narvik and sort out its layout. Some of the fjord water was discoloured with a red tint coming from iron ore dust.

At this point we had moved above the tree line and were into alpine pasture area I suppose. No more likely it was just mountain stunted grass and mosses. The summit did not seem that far away although I bet it was if you set out to climb it. There was a tall telecommunications tower right up on the summit. A ski lift went off in that direction but they do not run it in summer.

Spent quite a bit of time up here enjoying the view and getting my money's worth.

It was mid afternoon when I came down and visited the sports shop to buy shoes. I had done the main thing that I had planned to do and the other, the train ride is tomorrow. All I had to still do was visit the supermarket and get the weekend supplies in.

And except for a few unsatisfactory Skype attempts, (bad audio from my end), that was the day.