We spent a little too much time in Hamarøy and there was a lot of road between us and Narvik, where we were hoping to stay. Andy was driving and rose to the challenge; achieving impressive speeds and Top Gear style drifting across the road during bends (complete with screeching tyres) down a particularly steep mountain along Highway 81.
We soon rejoined the E6 (also known as the Arctic Highway) and continued north. At Bognes, the E6 is interrupted by the Tysfjorden fjord and so we had to get a ferry across to Skardberget to continue. Although we had to wait 30mins for the ferry (which did not help with the timings!), it was a lovely 20mins ferry trip across which gave ample opportunities for a coffee and a stretch of the legs.
We continued onto Narvik where we found accommodation at the Breidablikk Gjestehus, a small guesthouse in the centre of town. Narvik is an interesting town. It is dominated by the ice-free port which distributed iron-ore transported by train from Sweden. This made it strategically important during WW2 and this was the scene of the worse of the fighting between the Allies and the Germans.
It was actually here that the Allies launched their first amphibious invasion of the war and, more importantly, that the Germans suffered their first defeat of the war. The Germans were in full retreat and it was only the Allies’ decision to strategically withdrawal from the continent following France’s defeat that let the Germans recover and fully occupy Norway...a decision that was not very popular with the Norwegians. Norway was very important to the Germans for its ice-free fjords and its heavy water which they tried to turn into an atomic bomb, and one of Hitler’s greatest fears was to lose Norway.
In other important news: Andy has just about mastered not steering too far to the right whilst driving.
Midnight sun update: still light!
Curtain update: thin.
Weather update: sunny and hardly a cloud! 20 degrees.
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