Today was just brilliant sun and clear blue skies. Looking out from my window across the harbour made me think of all those south of France tourist spots you see in pictures. Later on wandering around the small town centre the tables full of dinners beside the harbour just confirmed my impression. I could see why people came here.
But first I was invited to join in breakfast with the owner's family. A nice idea as I had no kitchen facilities otherwise. They had a German youth there who had just arrived to work there for a while. He had been spending a year at a Folk High School mainly studying photography. The oldest daughter had also had a year there taking martial arts. Folk High Schools were set up a century of so ago to give people the chance for education in 'non traditional' areas. Although I knew the term I did not really know much about them. Consequently, it was a good opportunity to find out more about them. Incidentally, the local salmon that I was able to try for breakfast was great.
I was able to leave my bags at the taxi office in town as I had a few hours to fill in between check out and the bus departure. Fortunately, the bus stop was across the road from the taxi office.
In the square there was the small market. Stalls included a couple of flowering plant sellers, a fish stall with dried fish, some clothing sellers and not much else. I looked around the stalls a couple of times and then the tourist office. The shops were nicely set out but most things were beyond my budget range. I did spend time having a chat with the man running a little coffee shop and small bakery goods down the town's one arcade. Got some ideas about living in the town.
The bus arrived on time and had already been going for five hours, so Svolvaer is about half way on its route. We loaded a dozen or so on board and were off. My senior fare was around 150 kr from memory. Along the way we picked up and dropped off but not to any great extent. It was an express bus, the Lofoten-Xpress was its name.
The next almost five hours where a continuation of winding around beautiful fjord coves, going up high and looking down on fjords or climbing passes. We went through about 10 road tunnels with the longest being over 6 km. One went down and up and I wondered if we had gone down under a fjord. At one stage we went over a bridge which I had sailed under the previous day. Pity there wasn't a boat going under as we passed over. That would have been rather spectacular. We must have passed over six or seven high arched bridges. They looked impressive as were the views from their highest points.
I saw towns in the distance along fjords which the bus never went into. Ferry boats busily going across fjords. Twice we pulled into ferryboat wharves and I assumed we were going to go on one, but no it was just to pick up any passengers waiting for the bus. We pulled into a parking area at the top of a pass where several roads met and had a chance to get out for five minutes. It was really a smokers stop, but most of the passengers took advantage of the chance to stretch.
Besides travelling round innumerable fjords, we also travelled through wide impressive glacial valleys with sweeping forest covered sides. The forest covered the valley floors and then up the scree slopes, usually ending at the steep rock faces. These were often major valleys with tributaries joining in. Some had small lakes. As we travelled along I compared the view with the Canadian Rockies and thought that it was every bit as good. Perhaps even better? There is no doubt that this trip could be made every bit a major tourist attraction as the Rockies roads are.
Finally after being delayed 20 minutes by road works I caught sight of Narvik in the blue haze distance. The road works were major and we had to go past them to a bus stop at a ferry terminal and adjoining settlement and then return the way we had come, back through the road works. Each time we had to wait for the guide van to lead our direction along the road.
Narvik is spread along several arms of a long fjord. It is a port which has developed to export iron ore from a mine in Sweden. So it has a railway, but only into Sweden and then down to Stockholm. Coming in we past a memorial to the Battle of Narvik. There was a period early in World War Two when a long major battle took place to try and get rid of the invading Germans. Warships and merchant ships were sunk in the deep fjord waters and the the town was heavily fired on from sea and air. Latter when the Germans retreated they blew up most buildings and railways which were still standing. Something they regretted when they regained control later on. They had to rebuild the railway system to get iron ore out.
The bus stop was in a hollow beside a shopping centre. I could see from my map that the guesthouse was across the road on the other side. So I used the escalators in the centre to come up three levels and out on the street. Yes across the road was the sign for the guesthouse, down off the road. Fortunately there was a driveway down and not steps. It turns out to be an old railway station or railway building and translated, the guesthouse name means Track One. Actually there are several tracks with the building being between two of them. I was to find that the long ore trains from Sweden move a lot at night time. And my room is close to the track. Surprisingly, I sleep very well in the end.
I know that I have not done the bus trip well. I should have been more descriptive and so on but you will just have to look at my photos sometime.
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