As far north as you can get….

Tom and giant friend

Breakfast - one happy and one sad boy...

We all had a good sleep last night, the wind died down and with vehicles on each side of us, we were well buffered from any weather.  We woke up to a blue sky too -yay.  It didn’t take us long to get ready and moving this morning as we were rough camping - we had no chores to do and breakfast was pastries so that didn’t take too long either.  The problem we had was that Nordkapp doesn’t open until 11am, so we couldn’t be too early.  We decided to head into Honningsvåg for a walk round.  It was much bigger than we were expecting but nothing there opened until 10am!  We did find the public loos which was good - and get this - they are heated, and when I say heated - they were very cosy indeed - in fact I would have happily stayed in them for the morning they were so warm (and clean).  

We looked around the town, mainly a fishing port / cruise port / service boat port - plenty of industry and quite a few tourist shops as the cruises stop here for the Nordkapp excursion.  There was also a huge troll who looked like he had recently been spruced up and a statue of a dog, Bamse who served during the second world war - sounded like he had a very eventful life and when he died many people came to his funeral.  He spent some time on board British ships and as a result Prince Andrew has been to acknowledge him.

At the top of the world

We looked in some souvenir shops, Matt got himself a holiday hoodie at a reasonable price.  We were expecting the prices up here to be way above those in Oslo, but we were wrong - they were pretty much the same, and some even slightly cheaper.  There were reports we read of being ‘ripped off’ in the shops, but maybe they were written by people not yet used to Norwegian prices?!  Oh, Tom got his last souvenir - a soft toy puffin - which he has named Cody.

At 10.30 we headed up to Nordkapp.  We arrived dead on 11am.  It was clear blue skies all the way to the top, but when we arrived the actual cape was doused in cloud.  Oh well, we were here to see it regardless so we went out.  It wasn’t too bad, a bit foggy but we could see out to sea.  We took a couple of photos, but then the mist rolled in and we couldn’t see anything at all!  Oh well, not a problem there were plenty of things to do inside the visitor centre, so we decided to look around and see if the fog would clear.  

There is a panoramic cinema experience showing you the changing seasons of the Nordkapp region which is every hour.  As we had a good 20 mins to spare, we searched around other areas, there was a cave of lights, where there were large soft pebbles for you to perch on, and a light and sound show to watch (changing of the seasons, northern lights, etc) all very chilled.  We watched that and learnt about the history of the area.  It was discovered by…yep the British!  A chap called Richard Chancellor on the Edward Bonaventure in 1559 - how on earth they survived the voyage I will never know.  

Once the fog cleared...

Above Honningsvåg

There was also a story about the King of Siam visiting in 1897 and 1907 - he was carried by 4 men up the cliffs (obviously he was too regal to actually use his own feet!) and a rock carving took place to commemorate the occasion.  There was a room with lots of photos he and his party took of his month’s long visit to Norway - all very good and amazing to think that someone from so far would visit the place?!  There was also a diorama of Norwegian King Oscar visiting the place.  What stood out was that the men were all dressed up in good rugged outdoors clothes, boots etc, whilst the women were wearing court dresses with huge skirts.  I dread to find out what shoes they were wearing - how on earth were they supposed to climb up cliffs like that?  I’m surprised the wind didn’t get up their skirts and take them off their feet and back down the cliffs.  How did anyone think that was a good idea?  

Some perspective

We watched the panoramic film which was very lovely and then went to see if the fog had cleared.  It hadn’t - in fact it was raining, so we decided to head back to the motor home and have lunch.  This we did and then we did some shopping - once again the prices were very reasonable (for Norway), wrote and posted some postcards and went to watch the film again.  When we came out there was some blue sky…within 10 minutes the mist had completely cleared and it was a beautiful clear blue sky.  Yay.  

We took more photos of the globe on the cape, the children’s statue and art and of the landscape in general, enjoying the difference in the light. We were all very happy.  However, we could see a ‘tsunami’ of cloud heading to the cape and figured it would be a good idea to get ahead of it and head back down south again.  We could have stayed there overnight (it was £65 for the 3 of us to visit - for which we got a 24 hour ticket) but we had seen it at its best and it is too light to see the northern lights so there wasn’t a reason for us to stay.  Also it would have been a very cold night if we had stayed there and the mist hung for the whole night.

Tom with his certification 

It was 5pm before we left, so we headed south back towards Honningsvåg.  On the way we picked up two hitchhikers, who turned out to be Spanish.  Had a great chat as we took them back to Honningsvåg.  The women actually lives in Bristol - but is having trouble staying (she works in a nursery) as she hasn’t been resident in the country for 5 years and that means with Brexit looming she doesn’t know if she will be able to stay or not.  Once again we had to apologise for the Brexit mess.  She’s currently working in a hotel in Honningsvåg for the summer holidays whilst she works out what to do - she has accommodation and a car in Bristol, but she might not go back.  You do get to meet all sorts when you travel like this - we met 3 Germans who had walked 200 km to Nordkapp and some Italians who had driven there from Turin in a Fiat Panda!

Matt drove us back South and we found ourselves a spot near the sea for the night.  The weather is remarkably different today, hardly any wind at all - made the driving so much easier.  Still got the tunnel with roadworks to squeeze through.