By David Gourley
Cathy and I have had
two memorable holidays in Norway, each taking us right up to the North Cape. This is generally regarded as the northernmost point in mainland
European albeit it is on an island, Mageroya (the comparatively unknown Cape
Nordkinn, a few miles to the east, is the actual northernmost point in the
mainland). On both occasions we enjoyed the spectacular scenery in
what in our view is one of the nicest of countries.
On the first occasion we travelled from
Oslo to Helsinki taking as it were the scenic route via the North Cape.
Mostly this journey was by coach but there was a short stretch on the
Hurtigruten, the renowned shipping service which operates along the coast of
Norway. This has the vital function of transporting goods and people
between coastal communities, many of them quite remote. Nowadays it also
caters for tourists and our second trip took us the entire length of its route,
from Bergen to Kirkenes and back. On the return journey one calls by day
at the places stopped at during the night on the way up.
Bergen is one of Europe's loveliest
cities. The visitor does have to be prepared for the probability of rain:
on average there is in any given year rainfall on 231 days. We were lucky
as we had a full day of sunshine, enabling us to enjoy to the full the
magnificent view from the top of the Floibanen funicular railway. Right
at the other end of the voyage, Kirkenes is close to the Russian border.
The region was thus of strategic importance during the Cold War, as it was one
of just two areas where a NATO state bordered the Soviet Union (the other being
at the opposite end of Europe where Turkey adjoins Armenia and Georgia).
A shore excursion took us to the Storskog border crossing. Although
Norway is not in the EU, it has signed up to the Schengen Agreement so one can
move freely across the borders with Sweden and Finland. But woe betide
anyone who tries to saunter across the border into Russia!
Having made it to the North Cape we
hankered to go still further north, to Svalbard, often referred to as
Spitsbergen, which is actually the largest island in this archipelago.
But the tours there seemed rather pricey. Then we discovered a
comparatively inexpensive cruise aboard the Marco Polo. This vessel gets
mixed reviews. Our review would for the most part be favourable. It
is really a matter of expectation: if one is looking forward to five-star
luxury one is going to be disappointed. It looks though like 2013 was the
last year in which it offered a cruise to Spitsbergen.
The cruise started from Leith, the port
for Edinburgh, and we had to arrange our own travel up there. Rail travel
in Britain can be very expensive but one can get very good bargains. By
booking well in advance on the internet, and getting single tickets either way,
we got first class tickets for less than standard class would normally be.
And one is well looked after if travelling first class with East Coast Trains
as food and drink are complimentary. So on the way up we had a good
breakfast and later on a late morning snack with, in my case, a glass of
Argentinean red (at weekends the offering is downsized so only snacks and
non-alcoholic beverages are complimentary). Sadly however this
complimentary service for first-class passengers is a result of the
discontinuation of that once loved feature of rail travel, the restaurant
car. If one is travelling in standard class one either takes one's
chances on the buffet, or brings one's own.
We took advantage of the four-night
add-on in Scotland, comprising two nights each in Edinburgh and Pitlochry,
Perthshire, that our tour company was offering prior to the cruise. We
were attracted by the fact that, in Pitlochry, we would be staying in the
Atholl Palace Hotel, where we had last stayed nearly thirty years
previously. On our full day in Edinburgh we had, in the morning, a walking
tour along the Royal Mile with an excellent blue badge guide. We were
just over a year away from the Scottish referendum on independence but our
guide eschewed this topic, other than to mention that 2014 was going to be a
busy year for Scotland what with various events due to take place. Thus
was the possibility of her country becoming independent equated with the
hosting by Gleneagles of the Ryder Cup! She also pointed out the Canon's
Gait, the pub from which Nigel Farage had recently been forced to flee by hostile
demonstrators.
As an Englishman I was with David Bowie
on the question of independence, wanting Scotland to ‘stay with us’. But
I would readily concede that, had Scotland become independent, it would have
had as its capital a world-class city, fully able to hold its own with other
European capitals. Certainly it is one of Europe's loveliest
cities. The afternoon was our own. We had stayed in Edinburgh
a few years previously and on that occasion had visited what might be described
as four set piece attractions: the Castle; Holyrood Palace; the Scottish
Parliament; and the Royal Yacht Britannia, which is berthed in Leith.
Now, following a good lunch at the Scottish National Gallery, we visited some
lesser known attractions.
We started with the Museum on the
Mound. This is housed in the impressive former headquarters of the Bank
of Scotland and thus recalls the days before Fred the Shred, when banking in
Scotland, as in the rest of the UK, was a respected profession. It is
devoted to money and finance. The exhibits include £1m worth of
individual pound notes. No point in anyone trying to steal these as they
are suitably endorsed! We then visited two contrasting National Trust for
Scotland properties - members of the south of the border equivalent have
reciprocal visiting rights. Firstly, in the Royal Mile, Gladstone's
Land. Nothing to do with the Victorian Prime Minister, albeit he was for
a while a local MP, conducting his celebrated Midlothian Campaign. This
Gladstone was a seventeenth century merchant, his 'Land' being his house.
In the elegant New Town we visited the Georgian House.
We transferred to and from Pitlochry by
rail. I am a great advocate of travel by rail rather than road.
Even so, a side of me regretted that, rather than have our cases loaded for us
into a coach, we were having to lug them on and off trains, an easier task in
Edinburgh, the terminal, than in Pitlochry, a brief stop on the way to and from
Inverness. At Pitlochry it was raining, not what we wanted when we were
straight away heading to the Queen's View. Would there be a view?
Luck in fact was with us for it stopped raining and the view over Loch Tummel
was magnificent. It is widely supposed that the Queen in question is
Victoria but it is more likely that it was named from Isabella, the wife of
Robert the Bruce.
The Atholl Palace lies high above the
attractive resort of Pitlochry. The view from our room was
splendid. The hotel had, in no unpleasant way, a bit of a dated
feel. We had a second tour, which was to the Edradour Distillery.
This is a David among Goliaths for its survival as one of the smallest
distilleries in Scotland, producing in one week just twelve barrels of whisky,
is somewhat against the odds.
Preserved steam railways abound in
England and in Wales but there are hardly any in Scotland. Our included
tour the next day was to one of these, the Strathspey Railway, which takes one
through beautiful Cairngorms scenery on its journey from Aviemore to Broomhill
via intriguingly named Boat of Garten. The rail company makes much of the
fact that Broomhill was 'Glenbogle' Station in the BBC series Monarch of the
Glen, something that was rather lost on us as we have never watched this
programme. Aviemore is a surprisingly dull place. Its main centre
brought to mind somewhere in a new town. Yet this is Britain's foremost
ski resort and on the continent such places as Kitzbühel in Austria where we
once had a week's holiday, can be charming.
We joined our vessel the next
day. We had a good first impression of the Marco Polo: a friendly and
remarkably quick boarding process which compared favourably with that of the
Hurtigruten, which in this respect was more bureaucratic. We also liked
the fact that the Marco Polo has a 'no children' policy. We do in fact
like to see children taking part in, and hopefully benefitting from, travel if
they are reasonably well behaved. But sometimes they aren't. On our
Hurtigruten vessel, our sailing from Bergen was marred by children messing
around. We complained to their parents who were annoyed - with us.
And, yes, we can tell the difference between high spirits and bad behaviour.
As said, my review of the Marco Polo
would generally be favourable. Not five-star luxury but pleasant,
spacious and always kept meticulously clean. For the most part staff were
friendly and helpful though poker faces seemed to be the order of the day for
the East European waiting staff. However in the evening our Ukrainian
waiter revealed his sense of humour. Meals were good, with the ability to
choose between a buffet and more formal waiter service; as a rule we went for
the former at lunchtime and the latter in the evening. There was a varied
programme of entertainment. Making hessian bags is not really our thing
but we enjoyed some of the shows, one of which comprised Russian music, maybe
in deference to the captain. He informed us that he was from that country
and had been born in the Crimea. Doesn't that belong to, er, Ukraine?
There were four stops in mainland
Norway as we travelled north to Spitsbergen. The first two, Molde and
Andalsnes, were quite close, being at either end of the Romsdalsfjord.
There was the option of travelling between the two by coach and it was reported
to us that the scenery was marvellous. But we enjoyed sailing along the
Fjord. We had shore excursions in both places. Scheduling on this
tour was tight and, except in the Svalbard capital, Longyearbyen, going on an
excursion meant having no time to look round the towns where we stopped, though
one was driven through them. Molde rather blurred into the great number
of stops, over thirty, on our Hurtigruten cruise though I remembered its
distinctive Rica Hotel, shaped like a huge sail. It is known as the Town
of Roses. Our excursion was to the Atlantic Road, a striking series of
bridges spanning a number of small islands.
Andalsnes, or NATO Harbour to use its
nickname, is a very small place so I don't think we missed out on much by
having no time to look round. We would though have liked the chance to
look inside the old railway carriage which has been converted into a chapel.
We would thus have upped our tally of places of worship in unusual buildings:
the church in a rock in Helsinki, the church in a cave in Budapest and, a bit
closer to home, the church in a windmill near Reigate. Our tour took us
first to Trollveggen, Europe's tallest vertical, overhanging mountain face and
then up the scenic Trollstiggen, a road which winds its way up almost vertical
mountainside and has eleven hairpin bends. Viewing platforms at the top
afforded fantastic views. Two doughty members of our crew jogged right
the way up the road and then down again.
There was a full day of sailing before
we reached our next port of call, Tromso. There was little to
see. In contrast to the Hurtigruten, which hugs the coastline and thus
affords continuous enjoyment of the coastal scenery, the Marco Polo is set on
getting from A to B as quickly as possible. We crossed the Arctic
Circle. Thankfully the Marco Polo does not replicate the ceremony held on
the Hurtigruten in which 'King Neptune' puts ice cold water down passengers'
backs. We declined to take part in this. If that makes us a
miserable pair, so be it.
We had been to Tromsö
on our two earlier visits to Norway and did not feel in need of an organized
tour. On our Hurtigruten trip, we had two visits, the
second being to an atmospheric midnight service in the Ice Cathedral, the
city's most distinctive landmark though it is not a cathedral nor is it made of
ice. Tromsö is a pleasant city though it does not strike one as meriting
the soubriquet Paris of the North. The name is maybe earned because its
citizens apparently love to party, especially during the long dark winter
nights. A statue of Amundsen reminds the British visitor that the
Norwegians got to the South Pole first!
Of the available options, we went for a
visit to Polaria, a museum offering an ‘Arctic experience’ which is located in
a strikingly designed building that replicates ice floes pressed up against the
land. Our view, shared by others on TripAdvisor, was that this was good
as far it went, but one had expected it to go a bit further. Of
particular interest to us, given where we were heading, was the film depicting
Svalbard as seen through the eyes of a little auk flying across it.
Our final stop in mainland Norway was
in Honningsvag, the small town which is the base for visits to the North
Cape. Having been to the Cape twice, we decided against going
again. I hasten to add we had enjoyed our visits and it is certainly a
place worth visiting. There are various attractions but no
tackiness. These include a small Thai museum. The reason for this
is that in 1907 King Chulalongkom of Siam, as the country was then known - the
young prince in The King and I - paid a visit. There are also the
rather moving Children of the World sculptures, seven semi-circles based on
designs by children from seven countries. They are intended as a symbol
of friendship between the countries of the world. They date back to the
Cold War era so two of the sculptures are from the USA and the Soviet Union;
the others span the continents: Tanzania, Brazil, Italy, Japan and, as might be
expected, Thailand.
I feared that our few hours in
Honningsvag might be a bit boring, but not so. We went to the local
museum. This turned out to be a moving experience. Honningsvag is
located in the province of Finnmark where, towards the end of World War II,
retreating German forces adopted a ‘scorched earth’ policy, thus razing towns
and villages to the ground. In Honningsvag the German commander evidently
had something of a conscience for he spared the church, which we visited later
on. It might well be asked why, if he had a conscience, he didn't spare
the whole town, but he would no doubt have been signing his own death warrant
had he done so. The Germans adopted similar tactics in the north of
Finland and, in the town of Kuusamo near the Russian border, we were told that
the German officer in question came back to the town after the war to help
rebuild the church.
But the story is an inspiring one for,
after the war, the townsfolk returned and they are pictured rebuilding their
town and looking as if they are relishing the task. Honningsvag is once
more a thriving and attractive town. Finnmark was liberated by the Red
Army who, here at least, really were liberators as they withdrew, Stalin having
accepted that Norway was not going to fall within the Soviet sphere of
influence. Elsewhere in the country the German forces surrendered to the
Western Allies.
We now set sail for Spitsbergen, soon seeing
the North Cape as we had not seen it before i.e. from the sea. There was
a full day of sailing with just one sighting of land, tiny Bear Island.
We docked in Longyearbyen, which is named after an American, John Munro
Longyear, whose Arctic Coal Company started coal mining operations in the
island in 1906. I was somehow expecting Longyearbyen to be a ramshackle
sort of place, a bit like Kotzebue in Alaska, our first foray across the Arctic
Circle. On the contrary it is a neat, well laid out town which even
boasts a four-star hotel of international standard, the Radisson Blu
Polar. We went in there to get postcards and some stamps thinking that,
as this was a Sunday, the downtown shops would be closed. But they
weren't: there were two cruise ships in town and the opportunity to make a bit
of money was not going to be lost.
In the geopolitical sense the
archipelago has unique status, resulting from the Svalbard Treaty that took
effect in 1925. This granted sovereignty to Norway, but all signatory
countries were granted rights to its resources. Of these only Russia,
formerly the Soviet Union, has taken advantage and there is thus a separate
Russian coal mining settlement at Barentsburg. The archipelago is
demilitarized so NATO cannot conduct exercises there.
Our excursion took us first to a husky
farm on the outskirts of the town. In his early days as Tory Party
leader, David Cameron came to Spitsbergen and hugged some huskies.
Immediately beyond are signs warning of polar bears. These do not venture
into the capital, but otherwise there is the risk of encountering them and
tragically they can and do kill human beings. We were all right in a tour
bus but otherwise the advice is to carry a powerful weapon, just in case one
finds oneself up close and personal with a bear. Coal mining continues to
be one of the mainstays of the local economy, though a number of the mines have
closed. Our tour took us through wonderfully wild scenery to Mine No.7,
which still operates.
Our vessel carried on overnight to
Magdalenafjord. There was no landing but according to our itinerary we
needed to be on deck between 5.00am and 8.00am in order to enjoy the
scenery. I was not very pleased at having such early start and was at
first inclined to leave it till later to get up, the assumption being that we'd
still be in the fjord. Fortunately I had second thoughts. When we
got on deck we found that we were halfway along the fjord and that the boat was
already turning round, the captain having judged that it was not safe to go any
further, given all the ice floes. So we left the fjord much sooner than
scheduled.
It would have been a great shame to
have missed out on the fjord. Firstly it is beautiful. Secondly it
was the northernmost point in our tour and is thus the northernmost place we
have been to. In all likelihood it will remain so as it rather unlikely,
especially with old age creeping up, that we are going to make it to the North
Pole!
There was one more shore visit in
Spitsbergen, this time to Ny Ålesund, which takes its name from the Norwegian
town of Ålesund, one of the ports of call on our Hurtigruten cruise and noted
for having been rebuilt in Art Nouveau style after the disastrous fire in
1904. Its Spitsbergen namesake houses a number of research
institutes. It is wise to stick to the main pathway, which loops round
the site, as otherwise the arctic terns, protective of their young, are liable
to swoop down and attack, as in the Alfred Hitchcock movie. We in fact
saw a young couple being so attacked but they had strayed away from the path
and appeared to be enjoying themselves daring the birds.
We now left Spitsbergen for the long
journey back to Leith. There were two stops en route. The first was
in Thorshavn, the capital of the Faroes. These are part of the Kingdom of
Denmark but enjoy substantial autonomy, so much so that they were allowed to
take themselves out of the EU. To forestall a Nazi takeover, the British
occupied the islands after the German conquest of Denmark in 1940.
We had booked a shore excursion, taking
us through Streymor, the main island, to the neighbouring island of Vagar,
which lies to its west. This meant that we did not, as we would have
liked, have time to look round Thorshavn and in particular visit Tinganes which
is located on a small peninsula jutting out into the harbour. This is the
oldest part of the city, very picturesque with its stone-and-timber
buildings. The original Parliament met here, making this one of the
oldest parliamentary meeting locations in the world, dating back to the ninth
century.
The scenery in the Faroes is superb and
the infrastructure impressive: a tunnel took us across to Vagar. The
unemployment figures are one of the lowest in Europe, even so there is
dependence, or over-dependence as some would see it, on the fishing industry.
Our guide told us that as a result Faroese sometimes get our fishing ports,
Grimsby and Aberdeen, muddled up in their minds - not something a British
person is likely to do! We stopped in the village of Sorvagur and went
inside its church. Our end point was Gasadolur. This is no more
than a hamlet. Nevertheless a tunnel has recently been built through the
nearby mountain to connect it to the rest of the road network. Before
that the dutiful postman used to walk over the mountain in order to deliver the
mail.
One of the houses in Gasadolur is built
over a rock. Our guide explained that the owner wanted to remove the rock
before building the house, but the neighbours insisted that it remain as they
believe that elves live there. In Iceland too, which we visited in the
1990s, there is a widespread belief that elves really do exist. But we
have never seen any.
Our final stop brought us back to
Scotland and to the Orkney Islands. This too constitutes a ‘furthest
north’ for us, this time within the UK. Previously I'd not got beyond
Thurso, a few miles from John O'Groats. Again we had a shore excursion so
again there was no chance to look round the capital, Kirkwall, though we saw
some of it as we drove through, including its impressive cathedral, St
Magnus.
Our excursion here was confined
to the main island, known simply as Mainland. It took us through glorious
scenery to the west coast, in the vicinity of which is the Heart of Neolithic
Orkney World Heritage Site, where we visited the Standing Stones of Stenness
and the Ring of Brodgar. From the Yesnaby Cliffs we could just about see
the Old Man of Hoy, beloved of rock climbers and abseilers.
Certainly we would love to return to
Orkney and carry on to the still unvisited Shetlands. There is a strong sense
of independence here, but this doesn't necessarily translate into support for
an independent Scotland. On the contrary, rule from London is widely
regarded as the better option, or at least the lesser evil, than rule from Edinburgh.
So it was no great surprise that, in the referendum, Orkney recorded the
highest ‘no’ vote percentage, with Shetland not far behind. Orkney and
Shetland was also one of just three Scottish constituencies which didn't elect
an SNP MP in the recent general election. Maybe, if Scotland really did
become independent, the islanders would prefer to rejoin Norway. After
all, in the case of the Shetlands, the nearest railway station is in Bergen!•
First published in VISA 122 and 123 (August-October 2015)
