Safe Return Doubtful

I spent the weekend at on the island of Arnøya. It was an island I didn’t get to two years ago, between Vannøya, where the sun shined for the few days I was there, though they encouraged a huge amount of flies, and Loppa, in southern Finnmark. Loppa will be one of the only places I will return to on this course. 

Getting to Arnøya from the E6 requires a bit of an effort; thirty kilometres to the sea tunnel to the island of Kågen, then the ferry from the north east coast of the island at Storstein to Lauksund. From Lauksund it was a forty minute drive across the island to the north cost. The journey is a spectacular one though, even in the mixed weather we are having at the moment. 

There were a few excellent places to stopover in Årvik, one signposted for the music festival that was last month. Now though, there were barely even any locals around. It seems there are quite a few second homes. I took a place at the end of the beach, on a rough road for a couple of hundred metres.

There are a lot of reindeer here, which Rua needs to get used to each time he steps out the van it seems. He barks at them for a minute or so, then it becomes obvious they are not a threat. I was there for three nights, and during that time I saw only three other campervans in the town, a Swiss, and a couple of Germans. I still haven’t seen any other English vehicles. 

On Saturday night quite late, while I was watching rugby, a very old, though well maintained small French caravan parked next to me, towed by an old Peugeot car. They were quiet enough having settled down, and I didn’t see who it was until the morning. It was a guy with his two sons, one about 15, the other about 11. The younger one came over to play with Rua a few times, but I didn’t even notice he had an older brother until just before I left this morning, as I think he had stayed in their tiny caravan throughout the weekend. I met and chatted with their father in the small shop; they were keen fishermen and were trying, like me to get off the trail taken by the majority. 

It was a quiet weekend for sport, but I managed some cricket and the first game of the All Blacks tour of South Africa, as well the South Africa test in Argentina. 

I also met a Finnish woman in her van. Like me, she has lived in her van for just over 3 years. Though she was quite a bit younger than me, we had plenty in common, our vans, and our admiration of these rarely visited islands on the northwest coast of the country. She worked as a nurse in Alta and lived in the van year round, even through the dark and icy winter, though she said she did take a holiday in southern Europe in January, as many residents in the Arctic do. 

Over the weekend the wind direction changed, from east to southwest, there were frequent showers, the forecast was very wrong, and the temperature hovered at about 12C. This morning however, a strong northwesterly wind got up, bringing the temperature down to about 8C, feeling a lot cooler. Consequently, I moved to the other side on Arnøya, where it is more sheltered, though hardly any warmer. Again, the forecast of sunny intervals has proved wrong, rather the rate of showers has increased, as has there strength. 

I have come across to the end of the road on the eastern side of the island, as there’s a hike here I want to do, and usually, at such places, where the road ends and there is a footpath, there is a good parking spot for overnightting. Such is the case here.