...onwards...

Birtavarre scenery...

We all had good sleeps despite the rain.  We have all learnt to sleep well in our motor home now - in fact we have had some great sleeps here - how come - not sure, no work stresses, tired after driving a big van, happy bellies full of food and beer every evening, whisky chaser?  Maybe a combination of it all.  Certainly something works for us - we sleep well here. In fact Tom slept so well that he didn’t wake up until 9am!  AND he slept in the van in the afternoon yesterday - all the late nights catching up on him maybe?  We were surprised that it wasn’t raining when we woke up as the forecast was rain for the next  24 hours.  In fact the scenery was magnificent - huge mountains with stripes of cloud across them.  It may have been dull it was still very very pretty.  Kåfjord is definitely my favourite place for scenery so far.

We didn’t have much planned - just to keep driving south.  We did a little shop in the village - but it was mega pricey and not much selection, so we got some bits and pieces with the view to stopping somewhere bigger to get the rest.   Then onwards, southwards. The scenery changed, we got more trees and no reindeer - boo.  There were plenty of signs warning us of moose on the road, but nothing, absolutely nothing.  We got to Bardufoss in time for lunch and found a pretty park to have lunch in.  We were planning to go swimming here but their swimming pool is closed on Mondays - so we had lunch, went to a supermarket for the rest of our provisions and then had a play in the park.  Bardufoss was quite important during the war as there is a military base here and as we were in the park a massive transport plane with 4 propellers (a bit like a Hercules) took off - I missed it but the boys were impressed.

... and some more

I then drove the rest of the way for the day.  We ended up in a campsite we found in the Norway magazine.  It has electric hook up, laundry (much needed) and showers but no grey water drainage or chemical toilet disposal - never mind, also a trampoline for the boy.  We are up in the mountains, with a river by the side of us and seem to be the only people here.  Norwegian campsites seem to be full of little cabins and then have some electrical hook ups for motor homes and caravans.  Don’t think many actually camp here.

Oh, it is much warmer here - a huge 14 degrees as we were driving here, feels really warm.  

We spent the afternoon / evening doing chores - namely the laundry - unfortunately they only had domestic machines, so we couldn’t get everything we wanted washed, but the worse of it.  Took 3 hours in the dryer to dry it all.  We all had showers too - we went at the same time which was a mistake because we were taking water off each other and it was timed - we could only have 5 minutes.  This meant that I still had soap on me when it finished but never mind we were certainly fresher smelling and feeling better for it.  At 5.30 a sudden stream of motor homes joined us - from Sweden, Germany and Norway.

Bardufoss decoration

We then decided to cook our evening meal in the cabin, so took everything across and spread out and played games whilst it cooked.  All very good once we got the cooker to work.  Unfortunately it rained for the rest of the day so we stayed in the cabin until Tom’s bedtime (which seems to be 9pm at the moment!)