Tomma to Skarstad: battle with the E6

With a storm approaching, I left Tomma Beach by the first ferry on Monday morning. It would have been good to stay a couple more days, but the beach on the west coast was very exposed; I’ve been in such places before, and it doesn’t make for a restful experience.

The 8 am ferry arriving at the Island of Tomma

Then, it was on to do battle with the E6 for the large part of the day. It’s no faster than 70 kilometres per hour (40 miles per hour), so seemingly small distances take a while to get to. I hoped that there was a good place for a stopover just before the ferry at Bognes, now well north of the Arctic Circle, but it was not to be. With the ferry taken into count, it had been 10 hours since leaving Tomma, and I’d covered only about 300 miles.

The place I was headed for was a beach reachable by a rough road for about 15 minutes. Any of the available places were full, they were too close to the E6, and by now, 6 pm, had filled with overnighters on their mad rush to get through Lofoten and the Vesteralen Islands, up to North Cape, and back to Central Europe again inside two weeks. I had turned down another couple of better options earlier, so now had little option to take the large and busy ferry, which is part of the E6, across to Skarberget, and from there, it was fifty minutes around Efjorden to Skarstad where I took a reasonably priced campsite. Skarstad is 16 kilometres off the E6, half an hour, and completely empty of vans and motorhomes. It seems that overnighters will travel fifteen minutes off route, but not thirty..

Here, at Skarstad, I hunkered down as the storm came in, a rain event with a decent westerly wind. When I first got my T5 van, about 8 years ago, these long periods of rain, or storms, were a challenge. I recall 4 days of rain in Grazalema in southern Spain, and a week in the Pyrenees on the same trip. No wonder that I upgraded to the Crafter soon after, and I’ve sat out plenty of storms since; all are memorable, but that encountered in the Faroes last October, a wind event chiefly, sticks in the mind.

I had some work planned, as I haven’t done any since leaving more than ten days ago, and of course, some reading, as this month with New Ing duties, a visit to my brother, and this journey, I am well behind on where I am usually. The potential spanner in the works was Rua, for whom this was his first storm. The rain lasted about 48 hours, from the early evening on Monday just after we got in from an evening walk, until this morning, Wednesday.

Our first attempt on the mountain (hill) in the distance, I didn’t expect we would get very far.. about half way, before we cut down to the coast, too wet and wild..

Mid-morning on Tuesday, with waterproofs, we headed out on the trail to the mountain (when I say mountain, of course I mean hill, 528 metres), but got washed out half way up and cut through to the coast and made it a circle. Unbeknown to us at that stage, a Finnish couple with their dog had just arrived at the campsite and were following us, and got similarly washed out. We discussed the general wetness of the endeavour later on; their waterproofs had not done very well.

“Heaven on Earth” evokes a feeling of transformation from one place to another, where one stands on the threshold of something new; the changing of your own state of mind.. by German sculptor Inga Mahn in 1993. Mahn’s project was on “site-specific sculpture” – with focus on the physical significance of the place, led to a new understanding of sculpture art, as he meant that you cannot fully understant the work of art without being in its context.

The rest of the day I worked and read, and Rua slept then chewed on various attractions (mainly legal ones, such as his Yak Cheese bar and stuffed bones).

and this morning, our second and successful attempt..

..to get up Skarstadfjellet, at 528 metres

This morning after the rain had largely passed we continued on the trail we had abandoned at roughly the same time yesterday, and managed to get to the summit. The sign had said 3.2 kilometres, but it was further than that; further really than I want to take Rua at his age, but in the weather he had not had much exercise in the last day or so. The vet had said to me not to pay too much attention to the amount he walks, as it’s more important he gets enough exercise.

a lot of adventure for a pup today, we saw our first reindeer of the course. Rua just stood and stared, as did the reindeer..

There’s a view here in Skarstad this late afternoon, and a reminder of what a magnificent place this is. Across the sea channel, only about thirty kilometres or so, are the jagged and spectacular peaks of the Lofoten wall, as its ridge of mountains are known. It’s arguably better to see them from some distance away. But there’s more, a 360 degree panorama of rock and mountain, quite impressive.

I’ve done a few jobs this afternoon that have needed attending to for a week or so, just around the van and to some equipment, and also written a piece on the forthcoming Booker Longlist announcement for our Guardian group which I have posted here also.

We will leave tomorrow and head for the islands west of Tromsø where I expect we will be for a couple of weeks.