Monday – Honningsvaarg
Today, were were escorting non-guided transit coaches to the North Cape; the most northerly point in Norway (rather like Lands End in Cornwall, or John O’Groats in Scotland). We were asked to make some brief announcements over the coach microphone pertaining to times (last coach back at 11am), and not to leave stuff on the coach because they wouldn’t necessarily be travelling back on the same bus – that sort of thing.
Unfortunately; we never made it to the North Cape.
Passengers sat in silence as we drove along barren, windy roads barely visible through the ongoing blizzard. The wind constantly buffeted the coach, and at one point the skyline blew open in the wind. Our driver was great; he told passengers not to worry about the skylight – we need fresh air anyway.
As we drove along, conditions didn’t improve at all, in fact, they seemed to be deteriorating rather rapidly. At one point, we pulled over into a layby and the driver got out to attach chains to the tyres. As he was doing this, the next coach pulled up, followed shortly by a third; a brief conflab between the drivers confirmed that we would be going no further – both the other coaches were turning back. I explained the situation to the passengers, who took it well (in stunned silence, in fact). By all accounts, a fourth coach had never left the pointside, much to the anger of one of two of the passengers on it. They hadn’t seen what we’d seen, though; I was amazed that we’d travelled as far as we had; we were short of about 10km of The North Cape, but the driver told me that that final stretch is the most exposed, and dangerous in these conditions. What they often do is to travel three coaches in a convoy, with a snow plough in front and a controlling vehicle bringing up the rear; unfortunately, this was’t going to happen today. Even if we had, by some miracle, been able to get to the North Cape, I’m certain we wouldn’t have been able to see anything – and then there would be the uncertainty of being able to get back safely. As far as the passengers on the first three coaches were concerned; they had seen the conditions at first hand; those in the fourth coach hadn’t…
Our coach driver sang to us on the way back, bless him, and tried to do a little bit of guiding, offering us snippets of information to keep people’s spirits up. Sadly; it was the excursion that simply wasn’t to be.
We left Honningsvarg with the snow still blowing a blizzard. This afternoon, I was asked to provide a couple of impromptu art classes, which I was happy to oblige, of course (gave ’em the ‘Blues Afloat’ session). We’re now heading for Alta, where we are due to stay overnight, and some folks are booked onto an ‘In search of the Northern Lights’ tour; not sure how that’s going to work, though, if the conditions remain the same as they are (we’re not booked to escort on that one, although we put down for it).
