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Most important event of the day – Happy Birthday Niki 🙂 (and Switzerland)

To celebrate (a little in advance), we spent the day in Svovaer, largest town in the Lofotens at around 5000 people, all of whom were out enjoying the sunshine. What a dramatic drive to get here. The road has narrowed enough for me to brake at the sight of oncoming vans and trucks, although the kids will point out that I do this naturally in any case. Have a flick through Niki’s view of the drive below:

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There’s no doubt that Svolvaer’s background is in the fishing industry as the smells leaks into the van on approach. Nevertheless, a lovely town with lots to see and do. As usual in towns, our GPS threw its wobbly and we ended up down a one way, with no exit … except for the footpath. Apologies to Norwegian cyclists, it wasn’t really our fault. The looks on traffic coming towards us who now thought they were in the wrong lane did provide a little smile, albeit nervous, on our part:

I’ve added a slideshow below of our time in Svolvaer, including our fastboat trip through the Trollfjord, and some shots of closeups with Fish Eagles – magnificent. The end of the trip saw us having our first, and LAST beers in Norway at 196 Norwegian Kroner, or €20.50, or NZD 35.30, or ZAR 319. Yup, that’s 2 beers, not a case!

We made up for it by sleeping overnight at a school car park, presuming that school is out for summer. We did see kids on bikes with backpacks as we were leaving …

Currently we are at Kabelvag, a whole 6km trip from Svolvaer, and seated at a pretty campsite that has provided us with water, showers, electricity, wifi – in fact, the whole 21stC. We are making use of this to have a great fry-up of fried eggs, bacon, sausage, tomatoes … Living like kings we are. Then we’ll use our Cosori pressure cooker to tenderise our pork & sweet potato curry for tonight – it’s all experimental.

We are going to get the bikes down and cycle down to Henningsvaer, about 20km away, and apparently, just stunning. I’m also putting together our July budget for posting – Heaven help us!

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