Back to Tromso

I didn't have the greatest of sleeps last night, but the boys did OK.  We had a lazy morning getting ready, no need to rush as we didn't have far to go and it was raining outside.  In fact, when we woke up, we couldn't seen any mountains at all it was so foggy!

I decided to start the driving today, so we headed in the rain back to the main road.  We were going to drive up a new road to Tromsø today, but there was no point, we couldn't see anything and it was a toll road and a slower road!  We got to Tromsø in good time and as it was still raining, we thought we would search out the local swimming pool as we had such a good time in Alta.

Husky on a go-kart

Well...what can I say.  Another AMAZING pool.  Get this - it was brand new, only opened on 24th August!  It had a 50m pool with professional diving blocks, huge clock and diving boards at 1m, 3m, 5m, 7.5m and 10m - some concrete and some spring boards.  It also had a current pool with donuts to laze on as you whizzed round, some water canyons, a wave pool and a stream that took you to a lovely hot outdoor pool.  Also included was a climbing wall above the wave pool. a HUGE jacuzzi, another swimming pool, another hot bath and a sauna, steam room, cold plunge pool and hot grotto pool.  Upstairs there were two slides, one of which you could time yourself on.  

Wowzers!  It was going to be a good afternoon.  It was a good afternoon.  We splashed, jumped, slided, relaxed etc.  As the local kids are at school, we pretty much had the place to ourselves.  It was fabulous.  We had put enough money in the parking machine to give us almost 3 hours in the pool.  We thought that would be enough, but in fact we were quite sad to have to leave.  

The pool was part of a huge new sports complex.  In with the swimming pool was the largest collection of climbing walls I have ever seen - full of wirey fit people leaping up.  Next door was a huge new sports hall - would love to have seen what was in there. 

Now, we had to come up with a plan of what to do for camping tonight.  We had scoured books, magazines and apps trying to find some parking places within a reasonable radius of Tromsø but we hadn't come up with anything concrete.  There is one camping site in Tromsø but it had got very bad reviews from all that had used it.  There were roads we could have tried out to find a parking space, but the fog was so dense we weren't sure we would find them.  Eventually I found a campsite 30km away which had good reviews, so we decided to head that way (we needed one last laundry visit anyway), however, if we found a good rough camp on the way we would rough camp.  

Sunset over the fjord

We drove out of Tromsø - we got caught in a huge traffic jam by the airport, ended accidentally going down a bus / taxi dedicated lane but we did get out - only just.  We then drove up towards the campsite - there were no parking spaces anywhere so we ended up in the campsite.  It is the most expensive one we have stayed in - but we didn't really care.  The weather was better here - visibility had got remarkably better and it had stopped raining - all good in our books.  We got booked in and then got our clothes in the washing machine asap.  Then we managed a game of frisbee before making tea and then finishing Harry Potter.

Need to decide what to do tomorrow... only one more night left in Bert after tonight, shame, we will miss him!