Hutigrute Cruise

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3 June 2010

An interesting day!

We started by looking around the Hurtigrutemuseet which displays the history of the boats which run daily along the Norwegian coast from Bergen northwards to Kirkenes adjacent to the Russian border and then back again, the round trip takes 12 days. The service began in 1893 and through a succession of companies and ships has continued uninterrupted except during the war years.

We had made a provisional booking, subject to it being possible to load the van on the ship, to travel on the Hutigrute on its 3.5 hour run from Stokmarknes to Svolvaer in the Lofoten Islands. Our boat, the Nordnorge duly arrived and after some debate about the height and length of the van and the practicability of being able to offload at our destination it was agreed that it could ride on the vehicle lift down to the car deck. There followed an excellent short cruise along the 23k Raftsunet channel between the islands with a diversion along the steep sided and atmospheric Trollfjorden, the width of which was less than twice that of the ship.

The van was offloaded safely at Svolvaer and we drove 15 k along the coast to spend the night at another superb fiord side location surrounded by steep sided mountains which we can only partly see due to the low cloud.

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