Bye byes, boats, birds and bathers.

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Sunday
We all slept in this morning! After breakfast we packed our things back into Dream Catcher, it's sad to be leaving, but we still have a lot of travelling to do. Nadya made sure that we have plenty of places to visit on our itinerary for our next stop, the Lofoten Islands. Les gave Anton a guided tour of the Land Rover before we left to catch the 1.00 pm ferry from Bodo to Moskenes. The crossing is almost 4 hours. Whilst waiting to board I made a packed lunch and a flask of coffee to take onboard. I have to admit that once we had eaten our, we pretty much slept for most of the crossing, we did notice the ferry rocking quite a bit as we passed through Moskstraumen, the worlds strongest sea current. As we approached Lofoten the jagged mountains loomed over the small houses at Moskenes. We hadn't got far to drive to the most southern village called A, which is pronounced Arr, and is also the last letter of the Norwegian alphabet. There is a large car park just outside the village where a few campers are parked, so we joined them. We had a short walk across to a bay, when we returned we noticed that one of Logan's paws was bleeding again, Les cleaned it up and we decided that we will have to make sure he rests for a couple of days. The evening was spent blogging, I had 4 days to catch up on followed by a couple of episodes of Dinner Ladies. Monday.We had a late start again this morning! But once we were up and about, we explored A, it's a preserved fishing village with red rorbuer, (small huts on stilts mostly converted to tourist accommodation, cod drying racks, smelling strongly of fish and picture postcard views. On the fish drying racks are thousands of cod heads, they are sold to the Nigerians who make a soup/stew with them, some of the heads are as big as a humans and have rows of wonky teeth. After our morning coffee we drove to Moskenes to find the tourist information, we asked a local chap, but he said it was closed until the beginning of June. We continued on the E10, pretty much the only road through the islands, to Reine, gosh what a view across the village, backed by the sheer rock face of Reinebringen. We walked through the pretty village, here the fish drying racks are full of fish, we then drove Dream Catcher down to the camper service area for water and waste disposal. A few miles further on and we stopped at Sakrisoy for a wander around. A Norwegian lady complemented us on our vehicle, we chatted for a few minutes about travelling, she told us to stay in Norway and avoid Sweden as the views here are far superior to tree covered Sweden. Our last stop of the day is just outside Sund, we found a lovely parking place with a view across the fjord, perfect to spend the evening. However there is a storm brewing, I think we're in for a rough night. Tuesday.The storm is still blowing and it's raining this morning, there has been very heavy horizontal rain in the night, we're not used to wet weather any more, we've had a month of fine weather!We set off to explore a bit more of the islands, our first stop was at Ramberg, we went to the Tourist Information and asked them to book the ferry to Vaeroy a small island 1 hour south, which is renowned for sea bird colonies, for Wednesday, returning Friday. A group of young campers stopped to talk about Dream Catcher and take some photos. Just outside Ramberg there are lovely golden beaches, we stopped at one to give Logan a quick run, it's so cold and wet today after 10 minutes we're all cold and wet. A little further on we see a sign to the glass blowing gallery, that sounds as if it will be warm and dry, and of course it was, we spent around half an hour watching a chap blow glass vases and drying off. I could have watched him for hours, it is such a skilled craft.We had lunch and then made a quick stop at Leknes, one of the islands towns, to buy a tick remover, poor Logan in the 'wars' again. The lady in the pharmacy said it was unusual to get ticks here, Les said that we think it came from Bodo, but even that is unusual. The instructions were in Norwegian of course, so he asked if she could translate them for him, another person in the shop teased her, saying that she needed to go back to school to improve her English.It doesn't look as if the weather is going to improve so we headed to Haukland Beach, a recommend destination by Nadya, the sand is soft and white and very inviting with the clear turquiose water beyond it, but not today the wind is so strong you would get pebble dashed by the blowing sand. I did some baking, Matilda slice and bilberry muffins ( you can by frozen bilberries here) yum yum! Having the oven on soon had us warmed up again, meanwhile Les put the photos of our time with Nadya onto a memory stick to post tomorrow and dealt with the ticks, horrible things!Around 5.30 it had stopped raining so we went for a walk following a track around a high sheer cliff, it's very bracing! We can here the sheep, their bells clanking but amongst the rocks they are difficult to spot, at one place there is a picnic table under a massive overhanging boulder, complete with hanging fire pit, woodpile and candles on the table, if faces west and would be a lovely place to watch the midnight sun, but not tonight it's far too cold. An hour and a half later we arrived back at the beach, we cooked tea and did a bit of washing, time really does fly! It's 9.30 before we know it, just a couple of episodes of Dinner Ladies before we turn in. Wednesday.The weather is better this morning. After breakfast we drove into Leknes to buy some food, post the letter and buy an extra blanket for the bed, Les is only just warm enough at night and going north it will only get colder. The shopping takes all of the morning, we found a 'pocket' (layby) to have lunch and flying above us were two white tailed sea eagles, we watched them for a while until they flew over the mountain. We are travelling back south today to catch the ferry to Vaeroy for two days of walking and bird watching. It's a small island south of Moskenes with only 10km of roads. We are hoping most to see puffins. The afternoon turned out to be lovely and sunny but the wind is cold. It is only just Spring here, the daffodils are out. We made a slight detour to have a look at Nusfjord. This village really was as picturesque as the books say it is. The locals make the most of this by charging 30 krone to actually enter the village, fortunately for us it is out of season, so we don't have to pay. Nearly every windowsill has two or three gulls nesting on it. Anyone would think that there is a shortage of cliffs round here. The tourist season doesn't really begin until next week, just how we like it, nice and quiet. This is reflected in the ferry queue, the boat goes to Vaeroy and then on to Bodo, there are only a few vehicles going to Vaeroy, a Norwegian Telecom van 5 cars and us! We arrived an hour and fifteen minutes later and drove off along the only road the island has. We're soon on the west coast and find a lovely parking spot close to a small beach, it must be a popular area as there are fire pits dotted around the grassy mounds, but not today we're the only people here. A while later a young French couple in a transit type van parked up back along the road. The girl went for a walk whilst the chap flew a drone, we were surprised that it flew so well as its very windy.Dream Catcher is parked in a great place for seeing the midnight sun, so we stayed up and went out to take photographs, it was beautiful! Thursday A whole days walk today, lunch and rucksacks packed we set out for a 3 hour walk to Mostad, a deserted fishing village only accessible by sea or on foot. The route followed the coast climbing up over the coves on a narrow path, no more than a sheep track really, then dropping down to a scramble across rocks and boulders close to the sea, then climbing back up and down several times, occasionally we crossed areas where there had been landslides. It was difficult at times climbing over the rocks with long drops down to the sea below. Occasionally we stopped to watch the birds, we spotted a Ring Ouzel, wheatear, a variety of gulls, Greater Black Backed, the largest of the gulls, Lesser Black Backed, Herring and Common, we also watched with amusement as several Oyster Catchers mobbed the Ravens to keep them away from their nests.Eventually the path split taking us over to the eastern side of the island, the path was soft and green, a welcome change for our feet after all the rocks. At the top of the hill the bay below was stunning, as we rounded a corner we could see Mostad ahead. The last residents left in 1974, but the history of the village goes back to Viking days, the locals farmed and in the summer caught puffins for their meat and eggs, they even had a special breed of dog to help them. We were hoping to see a lot of birds nesting especially puffins on the rocky cliffs but, there were only a few gulls, we could hear them but, but we couldn't spot them. We ate lunch sat by the little quay in the warm sunshine, watching a gull fishing and the Oyster Catchers foraging around in the dry seaweed.It was then time to head back home, the same way we had come. As we left the village we met the French couple, we chatted for a while, they're on a years journey, hoping to get to Mongolia. From the village they are planning to take another path to the top of the highest peak, another hour up and an hour back down. Along the way back we also met a Norwegian couple and exchanged a few comments about the walk. Even Logan is feeling tired as we get nearer to home, he's walking just in front of us, not his usual running ahead and running back. Back at Dream catcher we felt exhausted, it's been a long time since we walked for 8 hours, Logan was asleep in about 2 minutes! After we had showered Les noticed the Norwegian couple we had met were on the beach in front of us, skinny dipping! Brrr! The sea is so cold.A little while later a young man who was backpacking wandered over to take a look at Dream Catcher, I waved and smiled, reassured that we were 'normal folks' he set his tent up close by.No midnight sun for us tonight were too tired!

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