HONNINGSVAG AND THE NORTH CAPE
Today we arrived at Honningsvag.
We have been here before, but on previous visits we’ve always arrived in the dark and left in the dark. This time around, however, it was most definitely daytime for the whole of our visit, and the weather has remained clear, warm and sunny, against everyone’s expectations (and nobody is complaining…).
We had an early start to the day, with the alarm set for 7am, giving us enough time to eat breakfast before heading to the Playhouse Theatre for 8.30am, in order to join an excursion to The North Cape – the most northerly point on mainland Norway.
The coach journey was nothing short of spectacular. Out of our two previous trips to North Cape, one of them was abandoned because of the heavy snow and the coaches turned around and took us back to the port. The other was just as cold and wild, but at least we made it. Today, we were able to appreciate the landscape in full; a landscape populated by wild reindeer and punctuated by lakes and plunging fjords.
One of the things we noticed was the large numbers of motorhomes and campervans in the area, many camping wild by lakes and in rural car parks, but when we got to The Cape, there was a huge dedicated parking lot for them.
We enjoyed a good hour wandering around, taking photographs, and simply staring into the abyss of the Arctic sea, knowing that somewhere beyond the horizon,1,306 miles away, is The North Pole, with no land in between other than the Svalbard Archipelago.
The journey back to the port was equally as dramatic; in fact, we were back in time for lunch at about 11.30am
After lunch, we went for a walk around the harbour. Honningsvag is only a small place, so it didn’t take us very long. It was pleasant enough, although the peace and quiet was somewhat spoiled by the sound of a helicopter moving what looked like rocks around on the hillside.
By the time we got back to the ship we were both so tired that we ended up having an afternoon nap until it was time for the ship to leave. When it did, we headed upstairs with our cameras to watch as the ship sailed past the North Cape and onwards towards the next leg of our journey… Iceland.
