Hurtigruten; Thursday, 31 January, 2013

I’d set the GPS on my phone to wake me just before we reached the Arctic circle, but as it was still dark it was difficult to see the actual monument, however the ship sounded its horn at pretty much the same time as my GPS said we were crossing the circle, so that was confirmation enough. Then it was back inside for breakfast before the first stop of the day at Ørnes.

Overnight the boat had lost yet more time, so the already short stop in Ørnes became an even shorter stop, making up a fair amount of the lost time, the handily non de-iced gangway attached to the ship deterring anyone from wanting to go ashore.

From Ørnes it was a steady sail up the coast to the city of Bodø, punctuated by the visit of King Neptune to baptise all those who were crossing the Arctic Circle for the first time, and then out of spite baptise all of us who had snuck across the arctic circle before without having a ladle full of icy water poured down their necks.

Originally we had planned to just have a look around the city during the three hour stop, but on reading up about the place in the guidebook it was clear that during the winter months there wasn’t going to be much to see. At the same time the organised tour to Saltstraumen was short of numbers to enable it to go ahead, so we booked onto that, along with a couple of other people enabling the tour to go ahead. In the end it proved to be well worth it, partly as we got to see all there was in Bodø from a nice warm coach, but also as the views of the maelstrom at Saltstraumen were spectacular.

By the time we returned to the ship it was clear that the next leg was going to be busy as the café area was almost full with people making the four hour crossing over to the Lofoten islands. Given the previous couple of experiences, as it included a large stretch of open water, it was also likely to be a little rough.

In the end, the journey across the sea to the Lofoten islands was pretty calm, with a clear sky and lots of twinkling stars it did look like we might have been in luck for the Northern Lights, but just before we docked at Stamsund what looked, initially, like mist, turned out to be a very heavy and prolonged snow shower which lasted all the way through the short stop at Stamsund and the 90 minute sail across to Svolvær.

We arrived in Svolvær with the snow falling heavily, and already a large accumulation on the ground. This makes it all the more strange that a large group of us took the opportunity to go to somewhere even colder in the shape of the Magic Ice gallery of Ice sculptures.

We had about 45 minutes in Svolvær to have a look at the gallery and a little wander around town before it was time to get back on board and continue the journey through the night further north.