The tiny metropolis of the Træna Islands

After our hairpin bend experience, we were geared up for learning more about the excursions Hurtigruten has arranged throughout our trip, so went to a talk on the planned excursions for the northbound route. After that, we braved the elements on deck 9 where it was blowing a hooley, but relatively warm still. We went for a talk spoken in 4 languages about Ormen Lange. This is a natural gas field consisting of 24 subsea wellheads in four seabed templates on the ocean floor. It’s 75 miles northwest of Kristiansund and is 1300 metres deep. Ormen Lange creates 84 million cubic metres of natural gas a day. After processing, the gas is exported by the world's second-longest subsea gas pipeline - approximately 750 miles from Nyhamna to Easington in the UK. This installation is not a thing of beauty or a joy forever, but to give the Norwegians their due, it’s a fairly low-level construction which is reasonably well hidden behind a peninsular.

After taking in all this knowledgeable information we headed inside and as we did, I saw a bloke with a cake. A single Danish pastry remained on a plate after the hordes had clearly wiped the rest clean. It’s a sign. Half each with a brew. This isn’t something I’d normally go for, but I can not fault any of the food so far and this pastry did not disappoint.

We went to dinner with a certain amount of trepidation. Today was the first day we could book the time we wanted to eat. We joined a queue (obvs), but thankfully it wasn’t a large one. Evidently not many folk wanted to eat at 8pm. I’m not the most sociable of people (really Gabs!?) and so the thought of dining with a stranger didn’t fill me with any joy at all. I enquired of the maitre d' if we’d be sharing. He was suitably vague and didn’t commit…I think, because he didn’t know. However, not being shy about these things, I made it pretty clear I’d prefer to be dining just him and me. He got it and actually said, “Leave it with me”.

We were in a new area of the restaurant, on a table of 4. However, just us two. Johan was our delightful, fun waiter for yesterday evening. After a while, another waiter came along and said that if we agreed to take this table for the duration of the trip, at the same time, it could be ours. Bonzer. That’ll do me.

We had a gorgeous meal, yet again, with awesome wines and excellent service. Neither of us is particularly a deserty type of person, so we had told Johan that it’d be unlikely we’d have dessert. He cautiously put a question mark against the desserts for us. He evidently knew us better than we knew ourselves because a little something was needed, so I asked for a “blob” of ice cream. We got our “blob” of ice cream in return for learning a new Swedish word. I won’t regale it here as a) I’m not confident of the spelling and b) I’m not confident if it’s a word to share in a polite society! We decided that yes, it would be really easy to head for the bar for a nightcap, but instead, we’d headed for our room and saved our livers (a little). It being perfectly light at 10pm meant that we couldn’t go to bed…not straight away anyway.

This morning we woke to considerably cooler weather. We knew this would be the case and if I’m honest, I had actually wondered about even bothering with packing my shorts, as my view was that they would be barely used. Well, I managed a couple of days in them. So today we have 13 degrees and rain, but thankfully we still have good visibility. What is so delightful about this trip is how close we are to the coastline, so even with poor weather, we can still see the ruggedness of the mountains along the side of us. We slid past the stunning Seven Sisters mountain range, but due to the size, Nick only managed to get four of them. Apparently, he reckoned the other three had gone shopping. So we ended up having a very relaxed morning, cruising so slowly, it almost felt as though we weren’t moving. However, as morning turned to afternoon, the low clouds started to lift along with the rain.

But do you know? Just as we rocked up to the Islands of Træna, it all started again. Hey ho, we needed to stretch our legs and investigate what the little village of Husøya had to offer. The population of Husøya was virtually doubled by our arrival. One of its claims to fame is that it is the oldest fishing village in Norway. There was a lot of industrious work going on though, with a new visitor centre being built, an addition to a salmon factory and building work at the harbour to create seating areas. Everything felt model village size.

The church, museum and tourist information centre were all so quaint, they had to be photographed. We had noticeably increased our clothing, adding anoraks to our fleeces and gloves. This is going to be the case even more as we go North - we have additional layers still to add!