Our ship, The Finnmarken set sail as planned at 3pm. Sadly, by this time the sun had completely set and we could only see lights and the faint outline of the snow-dusted mountains that surrounded the harbour. Toby managed to take some photos in the dusk. The light is very blue up here; it's wonderful.
Smoothly, we chugged through the harbour and along the rugged coastline, but once we got out into the open sea, the wind picked up and the swell of the waves rocked our boat to and fro and to and fro and to and fro. Not being the most seaworthy sailor, Lou had to concentrate quite a lot on not being queasy. Toby on the other hand, was out on deck loving the waves!
At about 7pm, we docked at Stamsund and over the tannoy, disembarking passengers for Svolvær also needed to disembark at Stamsund as the wind was too high for the ship to dock at Svolvær. We would have to continue our journey by coach! 10 of us packed ourselves onto a coach bound for Svolvær, which took us on a wiggly route round the coast of the Lofoten islands. The wind and rain battered the coach and it was Toby's turn to feel queasy as we wound our way through the dark. The coach driver kindly dropped us off right at Anker Brygge instead of making us walk in the driving rain to our little cabin. Despite the whole complex being closed, we were met by a really friendly guy, who didn't actually work there anymore (he used to, but was just home for Christmas). We picked our cabin and walked into the most awesome little house right by the water's edge with a view to die for overlooking the mountains.
We quickly ventured out into the rain and found a 7/11 which sold sweets and not much else. Luckily we found a small, but very expensive, tin of spaghetti and sausages and took that back for some sustenance. The cabin was already stocked with (proper) coffee so Lou was happy.
Whilst we were out, we heard the boom of a ship's horn and after turning the corner, what did we see?
Yes, that's right, THE HURTIGRUTEN MS FINNMARKEN - our ship!
Obviously, they'd decided to chance it after all and had turned up half an hour after we had. Toby was furious!
We took our (very expensive) tin of spaghetti back to the cabin and cooked up the traditional delicacy on our little hob and then tucked ourselves in for the night. Yet although we thought we were alone on our little harbour, we were wrong and a loud group of 'yoofs' had a bangin' party right next to our heads. Toby was out for the count and snored along to the chants of "We love you Liverpool"...
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