The journey south

We strolled down to the railway station in plenty of time, despite its being less than five minutes walk away in this compact city. It has a fairly conventional station building with a ticket hall and clock tower reminisant of the Victorian terminals at home, but much younger due to the original station having been destroyed (along with most of the city) by allied bombs during the Nazi occupation. Our five car train, with a burly diesel locomotive at the head was sat at one of the two modest platforms, set among the freight sidings.

The train set off precisely on time; the line winds first around the northern edge of town, before cutting south to pass through the narrow strip of suburban villages that line the Saltfjord. Brightly clothed hikers could be seen walking through the forest, to the east of Bodø, one of whom seemed to have fallen and gone turtle with their large pack. The sky was a heavy blanket of grey cloud, but occasional gaps threw spotlight-like beams of light onto one of the pointed, snowy peaks across the fjord causing to shine like a diamond in the otherwise softly lit landscape.

After Saltfjord, the railway tracks the north shore of the Skjerstad fjord before turning south. The railways weaves through the contours of the difficult landscape at a stately pace - no high-speed rail here. Steeply falling streams, lone wood-clad Norwegian houses and partly frozen lakes are scattered over the dramatic, forested landscape.Read more