LEKNES, LOFOTEN ISLANDS, NORWAY

Today, we dropped anchor off the Lofoten Islands, in Norway.

It brought back memories of running aground in the Marco Polo and the shenanigans that followed. Today, from 8am, tender boats were ferrying passengers ashore, although by time we were ready to go ashore (about 10.45am), armed with fleeces, waterproofs, bananas and Maps.Me, there was only the two of us on the tender.

Aida Luna, a much larger, German cruise ship, was also at anchor, so we were sharing the tender pier with them, which was causing a bit of gridlock.

Once ashore, instead of turning right towards Leknes, we turned left towards Gravdal, where we’d spotted a few interesting-looking hills. Maps.Me helped us to successfully find our way to the start of the footpath, and subsequently guide us successfully, up through woods and across moorland, towards a modest peak known as Sunsheia.

Despite being only 945ft at its summit, it felt much higher, but it was a peak that gave us some spectacular views across the bay and distant Lofoten Islands.

We lingered at the top, eating out banana lunch and enjoying the mists rolling over the distant hills like an incoming tide, until we realised that the same was about to happen to the hill we were on. It was time to leg it…

Furtunately, as we made our way down the hill, we managed, for the most part, to keep ahead of the incoming clouds. We did manage to go astray somewhere along the way and found ourselves joining the road at a different point to earlier. Not that this was a problem, but I couldn’t figure out precisely where we’d strayed from the path. It had also started raining, requiring us to quickly don our waterproofs for the first time this trip.

When we got back to the tender pier, we were able to board our tender without any issues. The Aida Luna, on the other hand, being a much larger ship (with 2000 passengers), had significant queues and made us happy that we were on the Saga ship.