Days 25 & 26, Hanoya Island to Brensholmen, Island of Kvaløya (210 kms)

My wild camp spot on Hanoya Island, on a substrate of sphagnum moss, proved so comfortable and quiet that I overslept, and it was gone eight when I clambered out of my tent to note it was at last drying up a bit -- though that was not to last.

We rode with a following wind up the west coast of the island before crossing another bridge to Andoya Island -- spotting foraging beside it on the mudflats my first reindeer. At least I think that's what it was. Please study my poor quality mobile phone pic and if it was a "elg" (European moose) please feel free to put me right:

Reindeer or elg? Hanoya Island.

Andoya, the norhernmost island in Nordland County, seemed run down. As we cycled through, for roughly 90 kms, I formed the impression for the first time in Norway that the people here had sort of given up. We passed farm after farm where the land had been quite recently abandoned. Fields that had clearly grown hay or had been used for grazing within the last 10 years were wild with weeds. Farm machinery and tractors starting to rust. Houses empty. Some were second homes, certainly -- from the look of it not the acquisitions of the wealthy or Airbnb properties, but former family homes, probably for generations, now opened up for just a few weeks in the summer by children and grandchildren of the last full-time occupants, living elsewhere. I know it must be very hard farming at this latitude, but it is possible -- some farms are still growing hay, making "haylage" for cattle, raising pigs and chickens, and growing potatoes, at least for domestic consumption. Something must have made it not just tough but financially unviable.

So I found Andoya a bit, y'know, rubbish. And just as I was thinking this while having lunch at a picnic table by a beach an elderly local man on an electric bike stopped for a chat. After telling me about a recent motorbike trip his wife and he undertook to Scotland, he urged me to take the longer west coast route to Andenes on the northern tip, where I was hoping to catch the last ferry that night (reader: I missed it). He told me I would then be able to visit Andoya's most unusual tourist attraction. He said, and please excuse me quoting him directly, "It is a very, very special toilet. It cost 30 million Norwegian krone to build. It is designed so you can sit it in and have a dump -- please excuse my English, it is not very good -- while with a view of the fjord and the mountains in front of you. You can see out, but nobody can see you." I have no doubt that this loo with a view represents a level of sophistication that would leave Thomas Crapper, the Victorian plumber who invented the ballcock and the U-bend, flush with pride. But was it worth a 12 km detour? What if I got there and didn't, er, "need"? Should I pretend, in order to experience the marvel? But that, surely, would be unfair on people behind me -- I felt sure there would be a queue -- whose need was genuine. In the end I avoided the moral dilemma and headed straight for the last ferry. Having arrived too late, I camped for the night on the end of a public lawn, which rolled down to the water's edge behind a group of buildings including the doctor's surgery, the health centre, and possibly some sort of nursing home. I asked an elderly lady walking round with an air of authority -- I maintain she must have been the Matron or something -- if this would be OK and she replied, "I should think so", and therefore I did. Maybe I'm getting too brazen with my wild camping. I've got to the stage now that if it's late enough, I stick my tent up almost anywhere. I got my comeuppance at 1, 3 and then 5 in the morning however, when the nursing home robot mower sprang into life. Roused by the noise and instantly recalling the fate of Andreas's trainer, which I recount in a previous post, I leapt out of my sleeping bag, snatched my footwear inside my tent, and observed the device. I noted with satisfaction that it carefully avoided my tent, but seemed determined to trim a small area of grass behind it, where Claud was resting. The mower approached the venerable bike, stopped, backed away, tried again, then raced off back towards the nursing home in what I can only describe as a huff.

The morning ferry was a one hour, 40 minute run to the Island of Senja, about 85 kms end to end, which I took a day to cover, marvelling in it's unspoilt beauty. It was as mesmerising as the last island was dull, as wonderful as the Lofotens with almost no tourist development. It's only downside from my point of view was one huge long 8% hill -- just about the biggest left on my trip to Nordkapp, I hope -- and its tunnels, of which I counted at least six. One was the 1265 metre Steinfjordentunnelen -- very narrow, badly lit, and somewhat disconcerting. The other slight downside was that the only shop I passed on the whole island was closed, it being Sunday, compelling me to eat aboard the 8pm ferry -- a pricey business -- that I caught to my next island, Kvaloya.

Stunning Senja

I am now, I hope, just a day's ride away from the final city of my journey, Tromso, Norway's most northerly city, known in the 1900s as "the Paris of the north", where I hope to take time, either by staying two nights or staying one ad leaving late, for a proper look around. I have long been dying to visit it.