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| 90 miles of wandering around |
Back to blusky today and an earlyish start heading south. Our plan was to go as far as the road permitted then later take the ferry across to Bodo. However there is only one a day, it's a 4hr crossing and expensive, so we amended that to return about halfway back up Lofoten and take a shorter crossing. Well that was the plan!
It may just have been the beautiful sunshine but it seemed the scenery got better and better the further south we went and it became obvious that this part was definitely the place that tourists aimed for with dozens of motorhomes/campers, quite a few coaches and a lot of hire cars too. Narrower and very "bendy" roads also slowed everything down quite a bit and almost every parking place was full. Tunnels and bridges linked the various islands making up Lofoten but strangely we never felt that traffic was building up. Eventually we came to the end of the road at the strangely named village of A with a turning circle, plus a big car/coach/camper parking area and luckily we caught a spot just being vacated by another moho. We took Jamie for a walk right to the end of the peninsular.
Time to start heading back north and stopped at a Tourist Information centre at Remberg we had spotted earlier for some Lofoten souvenirs, there being few places selling such stuff then a quick visit to a supermarket, which looked tiny on the outside but was huge inside, for some bits we were short of. A chat with a Swedish couple then hallo to a UK couple (first we've spoken to since the UK) then a short drive to stop at the rest area we'd used yesterday for lunch. That's when Plan B unravelled, having realised that there was only one more sailing today for the ferry we'd looked at and we'd be pushing to catch it. On top of that we wanted to stop at the Viking Museum so decided we'd forget crossing to the mainland today, take our time and find an overnight stop on the way north.
Plenty of room to park at the Borg Viking Museum, unlike when we'd passed by yesterday (?) so opened all the vents and left Jamie while we explored. Briefly this was the site of perhaps the largest Viking Chieftains seat, name unknown, built around 500AD, abandoned around 900AD and only discovered by a farmer who ploughed a little deeper than normal in 1981. Since then the longhouse has been replicated alongside the site of the original and is fitted out much as it would have been, with costumed characters and craftspeople demonstrating the old methods. There is also a Viking ship in the fjord below with "trips around the bay" but it was a very long walk and anyway we don't do boats so missed that bit out. All in all it was interesting but we felt at £25 was a tad expensive for what was there. Of course a visiut to the obligatory museum shop resulted in more purchases - we won't go into the size of the bill! - before returning to Jamie and an ice cream.
A quick check on P4N and we headed for a nice looking spot just off the beaten track about 10 minutes north, but managed to miss the turn and it took us miles to get turned round. It turned out to be the parking area for a Community hall which the locals offer as overnight parking for a small donation although there are no services but a nice view over a lake. Empty on our arrival but we were later joined by half a dozen more vans. Today is the longest day so we're thinking of staying up to see the actual midnight sun! Thinking!
And now plan B unravelled when we checked timetables and the ferry we'd thought about using only had 2 sailings tomorrow, one too early and the other late afternoon. The final alternative was the one we used last visit, somewhat further up the road but with bi-hourly sailings so we've decided that's where we'll go.
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