Day 47 – to Alta marina

Hearing rain on the roof certainly has an effect on the dog’s enthusiasm to get out of bed if not mine. Usually he licks my nose about an hour before our normal stirring time, gets a ‘settle down’ and dozes for the hour. This rainy morning hunger eventually got the better of him, but a good quarter of an hour later than usual…got a ‘settle down’.. until I realised it was more of a steady fall than a shower, and we surfaced.

It had been a good stopover place as it was free, but as a pay-for campsite the fast road being so close would have prevented me from giving it much praise. We took a walk up to the waterfall as we had done last evening, before filling up water and getting off.

It was just an hour’s drive down Norway’s main arterial road, the E6, to the town of Alta. It has a population of just more than 20,000 though is significant as it is serves such a huge area of the Troms og Finnmark county. It was almost completely destroyed at the end of World War II and totally rebuilt just years later.

It’s one of the in-places in the country at the moment, with a rapidly growing population, and lots of building going on. There are some particularly attractive residences with walls of glass facing to the fjord.

One of my main tasks here was to fill up with LPG, which I use for cooking. I am by no means empty, but the fill up stations are few up here. Fortunately there’s a good website that directs you to them. However.. as of yesterday, this pump had a problem, and was waiting for a part, from Germany. The staff were incredibly helpful though. The woman showed me how it delivered a quarter of a litre at a time. I require about 30 litres, but this demonstration, repeated four times, gave me a start.. Then her boss showed me another work around the missing part, that delivered the gas, but at such a slow rate it endangered the health of the pump. This demonstration gave me another few litres. Well, it’s already been a longer story than I intended, so to sum up, I have a 30% full tank, certainly enough to get me to the next convenient seller.

I looked at a couple of places to stopover, it was still lunchtime, and the rain just getting lighter. I turned down a forest option in favour of the marina, with the best views I’ve had at a stop so far, across the fjord. As the rain lessened we took a walk around the place, and onto a slippery hill of rock that gave a great view of all around. We’re about 4 kilometres out of town. Alta sprawls. That 20,000 doesn’t include the various suburbs, though that word isn’t really applicable to these communities built around the water.