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Published: March 15th 2018
Alta, the apex of our trip. After this port we turn around and head back South so it was now or never. I’ll cut straight to the chase…we saw them!! The Aurora Borealis, commonly known as the Northern Lights. For those of you who don’t know or who think they know but aren’t too sure, here is the science bit: The Northern Lights, or to give them their scientific name, aurora borealis form when charged particles emitted from the sun during a solar flare penetrate the earth's magnetic shield and collide with atoms and molecules in our atmosphere. These collisions result in countless little bursts of light, called photons, which make up the aurora. Collisions with oxygen produce red and green auroras, nitrogen produces the pink and purple colours whilst helium produces an orange hew. With so much helium floating around in these parts it’s a wonder the locals don’t all walk around talking like Joe Pasquale!!
We have been eating in the main dining room so far on this cruise but due to the high possibility of seeing the Lights tonight, Roisin and I decided to eat in the buffet. This gave us a little more flexibility should the
Lights come out to play. We had just finished eating. The time was 19:45. We sat at our table nursing our hot drinks when suddenly diners just stood up and headed for the open deck. It started at the dining tables nearest the doors to the aft deck and resonated through the buffet like a Mexican Wave. We, of course, became part of this, following the crowd to see what all the commotion was. Looking up, there was a faint grey wisp that was spreading across the star lit sky. We had been advised that the Northern Lights don’t just switch on. It is a gradual illumination. We continued to look up. Several minutes passed, the wisp appeared to be wavering but remained grey. It was very underwhelming and for good reason. I followed the path of the focus of everyone’s attention…right to the ship’s funnel. This was the start of no aurora borealis. It was the smoke emanating from the funnel!! This, however, didn’t perturb thirty or so happy snappers that kept on trying to capture that perfect image. It was cold. -15°C. Too cold to stand on deck watching smoke trails!!
It was barely thirty minutes since
the false alarm. Roisin and I were in our cabin when the officer of the watch piped
THE message in to all cabins: ‘This is the bridge. The Northern Lights have been spotted off the starboard side’. This was it. The real thing. No training exercise. Roisin and I got suited and booted remembering it was -15 out there. I grabbed my camera from the coffee table. The settings had been pre-loaded to save time. Opening the wardrobe, I swiped up my tripod. Roisin held the cabin door open. Within seven seconds from hearing the message we were both on our way to the aft on deck 8. I checked my watch then ensured the camera was on manual focus, ISO of 800, aperture of 3.5 with a 15 second exposure time. Check. The Captain had lived up to his promise. He had switched off as many lights on the open decks as possible without impinging on Health and Safety. This was to ensure light pollution was kept to a minimum. Looking up I spotted a grey wisp appearing from over deck twelve and across the aft decks. I thought, ‘A grey wisp? No, not again’
but then the wisp turned in to a plume, then a streak. This streak became wider and was turning a ghostly shade of green. It remained very faint but I directed my camera from the tripod up to the direction of the ‘anomaly’ and, using the app on my phone as a remote shutter release, I waited. The results were far beyond what I expected. This was defo the real thing. The broad streak was far more vivid than seeing with the naked eye. For the next thirty minutes I kept moving position. The ‘Lights’ were still faint in the sky so nothing showed up in the cameras viewfinder. For this reason, I had to just point the camera in the general direction and shoot. I tried to take a selfie of Roisin and I but as the camera was on manual focus and the aft deck was pitch black, it was difficult to focus so the results turned out a little blurry. On the whole, I was pretty pleased with the results for a first time. My only regret was that it was so cold that I couldn’t experiment more with the settings and even leave the ship but
to change the settings it meant taking my gloves off and a few seconds in this kind of weather makes the fingers turn blue. I couldn’t let my blue fingers clash with the green of the aurora!!! Blue with green? Eugh!! So 1980s!!! I was so excited with the results as I rushed back indoors I almost bumped in to a cabin steward (literally ‘bumped in to’ not casually ‘bumped in to’ as you’d bump in to someone you haven’t seem for some time) I showed him the results of my recent perseverance and was brought back straight down to earth by the cabin steward, who seemed totally unimpressed by all this commotion, saying: ‘Hmm! That’s nice. What is it!!’
This evening we missed attending ‘The Pursuit’ (P & O’s take on the UK quiz show ‘the Chase’) and a movie quiz. Damn you, Northern Lights with your eerie yet mesmerising glow!!
There were four excursions leaving tonight titled ‘In search of the Northern Lights’. They paid £142 per person to be driven fifteen minutes away to stand in the middle of a field. They didn’t have to search very
far. You just had to look up!! Those who invested in this excursion just ended up taking the same hundreds of photos that everyone else who had remained on board did! The only difference being, they are now £142 poorer than the rest of us!
Now that the excitement of seeing the Northern lights was over, I can rewind to our arrival in Alta. Alta has no claim to fame. Unlike Tromsø, Alta has no Northerly anything that hasn’t been taken by someone else!! The city can’t even claim to be the most Northerly town that begins with the letter ‘A’ as this has already been claimed by the Russian City that lies on the White Sea, Archangel!! (although if there was a claim to be the most northerly town that appears first in a dictionary, surely Alta would be in with a shout!!)
Alta lies in the Norse county of Finnmark. This sounds like some sort of coalition between Finland and Denmark but lies in the extreme north of Norway in what is known as the Aurora Borealis zone. Because of the dry climate with frequent clear skies, Alta Municipality was chosen as a location for the
study of this strange light phenomenon. For this reason, Alta is sometimes referred to as the city of the northern lights. After tonight’s experience, I fully concur!
Day two in Alta. On leaving our cabin there was an icy blast streaming throughout the public areas. It was like being in the Arctic (no, wait…we are in the Arctic) Surely this wasn’t right, and it wasn’t. It wasn’t long before the Captain made an announcement: ‘Today is -25°C (Yes, but what is the temperature outside??!!) This is playing havoc with the ships generators and heating system. This has drastically affected the galleys. The lights are out in the galley so they’ll effectively be working in the dark. Whilst lunch will still be served in the Conservatory and Main Dining Rooms, it will be a reduced menu and there will not be any hot drinks available as the boilers have packed in. The problem is that some pipes have burst and the water has crept in to the switch board room that serves the galley There is also a problem with the air conditioning units. My engineers are working flat out to fix the problem
and they estimate that it will take five hours to rectify. In the mean time I would appreciate it if you didn’t take it out on the reception staff as it is out of their control. Like burst pipes at home this can happen on a ship as well, the only difference is that we have a team on hand to deal with the problem and not wait weeks for a plumber or electrician to come out to your house!’
The situation got worse before it got better. More burst pipes and Chaplin’s cinema was flooded. As there was nowhere for the water to go it seeped down in to Lords Tavern below. This is where many activities take place. The knock-on effect was that certain activities had to be cancelled whilst others were relocated. There were some moans and grumbles and the mercenary few who saw an opportunity to try to get something out of P & O for this ‘inconvenience’ but the majority of us accepted that this is just an unfortunate accident and applauded those whose worked so hard to fix the ship.
We weren’t bothered about going in to Alta today. Today was
Look likes the Oriana will need an Icebreaker!!
By 'Icebreaker' I don't mean an exercise to get to know one another!!Sunday and I understand the centre is like a ghost town on Sundays (at least the churches will be open!!) The only thing I would have liked to see was the Alta rock paintings on the outskirts of town. Latest report was that as the rock paintings were outdoors, they were currently buried in about three feet of snow!! That said, we still decided to brave the temperature and venture outside for a walk. The exit was on deck 4. As we approached the deck, the temperature, which was already minus ‘something stupid’, dropped even further. This was due to the gale force wind that was howling through the deck from outside. It was a struggle to head towards the gangway as the winds tried their best to force us back. Despite the Arctic coats and layers of clothes underneath, this was still a very uncomfortable experience. I felt sorry for the security team who had to stand there checking passengers and crew on and off the ship. Finally we made it on to the gangway and, what the?...it was like we had passed through a stargate and entered a different dimension. The wind had suddenly dropped to less than
a gentle breeze. Despite being still very cold, it was also extremely pleasant. The sun was shining and the snow stretched as far as the eye could see. We walked for about a mile and a half in the direction of a small community known as Elvebakken. A light aircraft touched down on the runway of a small airfield that ran adjacent to the port as we trudged along a road (well, we think it was a road as it was covered in a few feet of snow!!) that followed the line of a small copse full of Norwegian pines. Spotting a vast area of fresh ‘virgin’ snow, you can’t beat a good snow angel otherwise known as an Arctic Roll in these parts!! The temptation was too great. Anything a Viking crew member could do, I could do just as well although I did have a lot more snow to play in!!
As it was warmer ashore, in the afternoon, I decided to take the free shuttle bus in to the centre of Alta. The shuttle stopped in the Bjørn Wirksolas Val outside the tourist information office. It was Sunday, remember. The place was indeed deserted. The roads
were empty. Alta on a Sunday afternoon certainly resembled a frozen wasteland. I was told all the shops, in Alta were closed on a Sunday. What shops?? The rock carvings of Alta, even if covered in snow were still three miles out of town and the buses only run every hour. I then had a brain sweat!! There is one place that would be open on a Sunday afternoon…
…Alta church is better known as Nordlyskatederal (Cathedral of the Northern Lights) and has a very unusual design. The church is a swirling pyramid structure built out of concrete and wood clad in rippling titanium sheets. The central feature is a spiral column with a belfry. Outside the church were a couple of dozen ice sculptures; swans, hearts, maidens, skylines. There didn’t seem to be any kind of a theme to this ice ‘street’ art. It’s probably the nearest one gets to graffiti around these parts!
We ventured ashore in the evening hoping to see if the wonderous sights witnessed yesterday would reappear again tonight. There was a little activity but nothing on the scale of last night. Also, too much lighting made any observations very faint. Those lights
which did appear faded as fast. One evening was all it took. It had made the whole trip worthwhile. My photos may not make National Geographic but the results are far beyond my wildest expectations.
The ship limped out of port in the early hours of the morning. We had reached Alta, the apex of our trip and we now turned and headed south. In two days we would arrive in our final port of call Stavanger.
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Claire B
non-member comment
Brilliant photos!
Love the pics! Sounds absolutely amazing and Very cold!!!!