An Artic night :-)

Ten minutes to six, that’ll be the ‘Shipping Forecast’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipping_Forecast   on Radio Four back home and me two hours off ‘feeding time’ at table 9 Actually they took it off FM some years ago (apart from the weekends) and moved the time to 17:55. However after years of listening to it avidly as a ‘wage slave’ far from the sea, my ‘body clock’ is still ‘hardwired’ to it, even now it often goes off around this time and at 13:55, though I cannot remember the last time it was broadcast at that time.

Anyway, it’s ‘black as the fire back’ outside the brass portholes of MS Lofoten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Lofoten, the sun went down hours ago and we’re a couple of hours away from the Lofoten Islands. Methinks by the time I’ve had another feast of a meal I’ll no be fit for the visit ashore at Svolvear. It’s been a rather busy day.

 

I arose shortly after 7:00 puzzled by how light it was, discovering why when I’d showered and headed up to the dining room. Fresh snow had coated the landscape and ship and midway between the muesli and herring we crossed the Arctic Circle

 

It was rather a spectacular start to the day

 

Our first ‘port of call’ being Ornes  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98rnes to embark and disembark passengers and cargo.

 

  

Crab seemed to make up the bulk of the cargo loaded here, a good few tons of it, with fish farm chandlery being offloaded to supply what I guess will be the region’s largest employer.

Good to see the Norwegian fish farmers occasionally loose things too

Next stop was Bodo  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bod%C3%B8 , where, with a few hours ashore we managed the local air museum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Aviation_Museum which turns out to be the National one and well worth a visit, even the ‘girls’ were impressed.

 

There were ‘hunners’ of real planes there, like the Ju52 and Mosquito pictured, I never even took pictures of the PBY Catalina, Spitfire, Focke Wulf 190, V1 flying bomb etc. etc. We was just too engrossed, I kid you not

 

That’ll be ‘Ma Boy’ on the port bridge wing

Leaving Bodo we spotted this ‘fine old lady’ the MV Gamle Salten https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:311299/mmsi:258178000/imo:5308067/vessel:GAMLE_SALTEN who at only 54m long looks like a real and proper ship.

Here is a cracking picture of her taken by Tore Risberg, taken at Bodo with her just ahead of our MS Lofoten

Well, that’s it for today, we departed at 15:00 and not much later it got dark.

  

Yesterday we where in Trondheim and went kayaking down the Nid which was great but sad case that I am, I would have really liked to have gone to see Dora That will be ‘Dora 1’ and the uncompleted ‘Dora 2’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dora_I home of the 13th U Boat flotilla https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_U-boat_Flotilla Sad I know, but I just love concrete

  

Still, you can hardly miss them with there 3.5m thick reinforced concrete rooves and 3m thick walls they were just too solid to destroy after the war now they appear to have offices and a bowing alley built over them.