The Escape

To call this day ‘the escape’ is not to suggest that it had become in any way unpleasant, but scant time remained before out homeward flight so we really had to be going. There was also the matter of food; all five of us had been planning to leave by now. With the possibility of those remaining having to stay for some days yet, having two fewer people to feed was of practical benefit. Our extended time on the island had displaced some of our plans, but in our estimation we would have to return to Norway at some point to see the Northern lights, so we had no regrets about this.

The plan was simple, Chris and I would take the demanding, but just about passable trail along the coast back to the commercial harbour at the other end of the island. If the waves subsided then Nina, Arneborg and Tore would take the boat and meet us there. There were two complicating factors; because of being stuck on the island and not knowing when we would get back to town we had cancelled all of our hotel reservations. Second our large rucksacks, containing the bulk of our belongings were still at our Host’s house in Bodø. In a frankly astounding display of generosity, we were told not to worry about that; they would simply give us the keys to their house, tell us how to deactivate the alarm, and allow us (two people they first met a week ago) to stay in their home for the night.

Before we left to make the hike over the harbour Norwegian tradition required us to make entries in the Hyttebok; a log of all the comings and goings to a particular sea cottage.

To supplement his writing, Chris decided to document our island adventure using a Tolkenesque pencil drawn map of the valley.

Nina’s entry was in Norwegian, which is even harder to read than to speak, so I dread to think what she wrote about us. Following suit from Chris, she made some sketches of our adventures, but I wish to make it clear that contrary to the depiction, I did not wear my boots in the house. The marauding seagulls on the other hand were quite real. It is our belief that since the end of the cold war the fighter jets at the nearby NATO base are principally occupied with preventing seagulls from eating the tourists.

I attempted a very simple opening paragraph in Norwegian, followed by a more descriptive segment in English. (as of the time of writing I have no idea whether or not I got the Norwegian right). I spent a great deal of time deliberating over what to write, between this and the artistic contributions by my travelling companions completing the Hyttebok took the entire morning.

The way along the shore was, by almost all accounts, fairly arduous so we were sure to eat a good deal of tomato soup before we set off.

Around 14:00 Nina guided us to the beginning of the path, she spent some time to give us some further briefing on the route. Nina gave some very useful information about ways in which the trail was marked: tags on trees, paint markings, scotchlight stickers and so on. Unfortunately, the route is almost entirely composed of rocks (from pebble right up to house size); the results of the regular freeze and thaw prying them from the mountain sides over thousands of years. These rocks are covered in varying amounts of moss, and occasionally broken up by trees. This makes issuing directions problematic as there aren’t really any differentiating features that can be described. Interestingly the many details of shape, size, texture and shifting topography that cannot be articulated allow those who know the route well to travel it even in the blackness of a Norwegian winter night, or when the island is covered in snow. For us wayward adventurers though, Nina’s valiant attempts at instruction to seek rocks on rocks, rocks by rocks and rocks that don’t look like rocks were in vain. That said, direction as such wasn’t the problem; orientating one’s self was simply a matter of keeping the sea on the right and peaks on the left. The issue was that the best trail to walk was a very narrow route around, between, over and occasionally beneath the many obstacles that stood in our way. Being just a few meters out of position at an obstacle would mean missing the easy route and potentially getting stuck in the middle of a set of large boulders.

At the conclusion of our instruction Nina hugged Chris and I farewell and we set off. We started out in good spirits, with much (bad) singing as we moved swiftly, but carefully along over the rocks. Many of the stones shifted as we stepped on them and the gaps were frequently hidden beneath moss. Soon we came upon a tree marked with a plastic tag, indicating that we were following the proper route. Before very much longer though, we found ourselves playing the opening rounds of the Track or otter-trail game, which would be the most frequent determination that we had to make during this journey.

The great piles of rock stacked upon at the foot of the mountain were high enough that we could see all the way back to the lighthouse at the northern end of the island.

We made reasonable progress across the first relatively open stretch of rock and through a small wooded area, though no after the first few we hadn’t encountered any more markers. Even so, we pressed forward. We understood those who are well practiced can complete the journey in about two hours and although we had allowed four we wanted to try for a ‘good’ time.

As we headed into our first encounter with larger rock obstacles some fairly serious rain arrived. This had us digging out our rain gear; some debate was had over whether over trousers should come into play at this juncture, but we decided too warm and dry was better than potentially soaked for another three hours of walking along the coast. In absence of any obvious sign of which way represented ‘the trail’ we started clambering over and around the moderately sized rocks.

There had been considerable rain over the last week, and the more open areas were sodden. As we made our way across another stretch of open rocks I placed my foot on some moss that looked like it was covering a large flat rock. Initially it seemed to resist, but as I committed more of my weight to the forward leg I realised I was sinking; the ‘rock’ turning out to be a pool of cold water. My foot went in just far enough that a little water managed to seep over the top of my relatively tall boots. Struggling was likely to get me very wet indeed, so I stayed very still until Chris came to my aid and pulled me back onto a real rock. It would be fair to say that I felt a bit silly; Nina had warned us that the moss often covers gaps but it hadn’t occurred to me that these gaps might be full of water. There was however nothing to be done about it and no time to dwell upon my folly; Chris took the lead and we pushed on, I hoped a quick pace might dry my foot as we went.

Still not having found our way back onto “the trail” when we ran into more serious bands of large rocks we were forced to become ‘creative’ in finding ways between or over them.

The video (being monocular) in nature, spectacularly fails to give a sense of the depth of the gaps between the rocks; there were at many locations quite a few meters to fall, onto smaller rocks. Naturally we would have liked to bounce around between the rocks like ninjas. What stopped us was mostly the knowledge that if we got it wrong, help was very, very far away. The gaps between the larger boulders we large enough to fall down and generally opened into wider spaces beneath, so retrieving someone could have been very tricky indeed. On balance gingerly was the order of the day (I would like to stress that our heavy boots and general lack of coordination were in no way contributing to the lack of ninja jumps, which we absolutely could have done if the mood had taken us).

We were clambering around and over rocks of steadily increasing size for over an hour. As we weren’t on a marked trail, time was consumed principally in picking the route that seemed least likely to result in nasty falls (though in most cases none of the options made this seem particularly unlikely). Eventually we came to a narrow wooded area before an arrangement of tall rocks, running from the mountainside down to the shore. We had a go at clambering over them, but many of the rocks were over three meters in height, and the proximity of the woods had allowed unusually thick and slippery moss to carpet them, so this quickly became too treacherous. We resorted to tacking up and down the slope (ie perpendicular to the direction we were headed), in hopes of catching sight of a marker for the “proper” route. This we eventually found in the form of a red dot painted on a rock.

In truth the “proper” route didn’t look massively more appealing than any of the other attempts we had made, but we at least had confidence that we wouldn’t run into a dead end.

The fantastically twisting route climbed over heaps of boulders, and before very long took to diving beneath some of the largest of the rocks. We understood that the large cool space beneath one of the very large rocks was known as ‘the church’ due to the similarity between the resonance of the cavern and that one encounters in a church.

Even on the ‘proper’ route, lots of hopping large gaps between rocks was required, but at least we didn’t have to think so hard about which way to go. By this point Chris was venting an almost perpetual monologue full of quotations of some of the more eccentric advice we had received on how to navigate. The joke of ‘rock on a rock’ became staple, along with “What did they mean by ‘big’ rock!? Big compared to what!?”

The notion of 6 year olds making this journey (which we were told had happened) also seemed quite ridiculous to us by this point. We speculated that the child may have been carried. Other theories concerned the advantages of being of Viking descent and speculation that perhaps the 6 year old in question was a 6 year old Troll.

In truth the route was quite ingenious and I was having a great time, though by this time my legs (which are optimised or cycling) were complaining fairly fiercely, and I was becoming a little wearied. I knew also that Chris would look back on this very fondly, he always does (even the infamous crash-injury video from our very first trip together).

After we passed the second of the island’s large peaks we had an area of open patches and grassy areas. Without the shelter of the large rocks we were exposed to the full force of the weather; we found ourselves leaning into the wind to make progress. It was fairly clear that in this weather Nina and her parents would be coming. Not long after we cleared the rocks, the wind was joined by hail.

There was little trace of a path on the open stretch; it had probably been obliterated by shifting sands and debris. Fortunately we had studied the map carefully before leaving, so it came down to orienteering; keeping the correct peaks to our backs. After some more hard walking in the strong wind, this took us directly to the harbour... the wrong side of the harbour to be precise. We stood on a small beach opposite the piers; they were only about 200 meters away, but there was no way around the edge of the harbour to them. To our right was the harbour mouth, to our left a cliff side. So once again the devil was in the navigational detail. By this point though, we were tired and had only half an hour before the passenger ferry (the last of the day) would be leaving, so we failed to see the funny side.

We considered swimming across, but at this time of year in arctic waters we would have about 4 minutes of effective (if uncomfortable swimming), followed by a further minute of grappling for consciousness, after which a period of drowning was likely to occur, followed by not very much of anything... plus it would have wreaked havoc with our electronic gear. Edging along the cliff was also tabled as an option, but as the cliff was in the full force of the wind retreating in-land a little way and hurrying-up a lot seemed to be the best option.

After scrambling over more loose rocks and sodden ground we found our way around to the islands solitary road; a short strip of tarmac running between the harbour and the opposite shore across the narrow width of the island. This flatter, southern part of the island is where almost all of the other homes (that is those owned by people not named Ramsvik) are concentrated and we joined a loose procession of people headed for the ferry dock, arriving with just 15 minutes remaining out of the little more than 4 hours we had allowed for the journey. Our earlier thoughts of beating the ‘2 hour’ good-time mark now seemed wildly aspirational. I thought our performance quite poor, until I learned later that the last people to attempt the treacherous costal route without a guide had taken some 8 hours to complete the trip.

We telephoned Nina to let her know that we had made it (just) to the ferry and Chris shared his now well rehearsed monologue about how insane the route was. As we stood on the quayside, we received a few of those special kinds of curious glance that one only encounters as a stranger in locations that are off the tourist trail. Soon though the ferry was drawing up, and lowering its gangplank. We hung to the back of the boarding crowd, likely due to some subconscious feeling that the assembled people were not queuing in a proper manner. There was no orderly line, as would be expected back home. When we boarded, we stowed our bags in the luggage area, made our way through the heavy hatchways into the passenger saloon and then slumped heavily into the airline chairs. They almost certainly felt far more comfortable to us than they are in reality.

Like the vessel that brought us to the island, this was a moderately sized catemeran, but this one lacked any front windows (though there were portholes on either side). As the boat left the shelter of the harbour I had difficulty deciding whether this was good or bad. The seas were quite heavy and had we been able to see the boat crashing into the great waves (as the sound made us quite certain that we were) a sight which would have undoubtedly be awesome. That is awesome in its traditional, or perhaps these days archaic usage as inspiring awe; an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, extremely powerful, or the like. And I think the fear element could have been significant in this instance.

The ride was quite something as the boat rolled and pitched on the waves. One moment the porthole would be full of foamy sea, the next full of sky betraying the extend of the roll. The pitching on the other hand was felt, more than seen. A momentary feeling of weightlessness, followed by butterflies in the stomach, and then the almighty crash of the hulls ploughing into the waves. It was quite a lot like riding a rollercoaster and I giggled with glee as we were tossed about. Chris also seemed to have found his sea legs, despite previous problems with boats which are better left undiscussed. Across the aisle to my right was quite an ill looking local who didn’t seem to be taking things in quite such good humour.

The boat battered through the waves at 25knots and we watched the boat’s GPS location progress steadily towards the main land on an ocean chart, displayed on a monitor above our seats. Soon we were entering the harbour at Bodø and I must say I was quite relieved, not that the trip was over but that the ferry had actually taken us to Bodø (which was not named on the chart).

When we landed the town was almost deserted, we headed for dinner in the same cafe we had lunched in before our departure to the island. We must have looked a state in our full outdoor gear, but with people coming and going to remote islands all the time, we expected this sort of thing went on a lot.

As we left the powerful Arctic wind whistled through the masts of the ships in the marina, and frequently raised to a true howl, something I’ve seldom experienced. As I led the way back to Nina’s the high wind was joined by showers of small hail, which gave a feeling at least that we were having some proper Norwegian weather (something King Neptune might approve of). When we reached the house we were able to disarm the alarm without incident. This was good, because we hadn’t been looking forward to trying to explain to the police what two scruffy looking foreign gentlemen were doing unaccompanied at the Ramsvik’s house. That said, the town (sorry, that would be “city”) is small enough that a culture of ‘twitching net curtains’ could thrive here, so we suspected talk of “strange comings and goings at the Ramsvik’s” would be happening anyway. Before our departure I had been encouraging Nina to walk through the town centre with one of us on each arm, just to see what the local gossip mill would come up with; alas, Nina was not game.

As we settled into getting our clothes dried, journal updated and other work done rain battered noisily against the windows. Chores done, I settled into a comfortable chair and allowed myself to dwell on the ache in my legs. It had been a good day... but blimey it had been tiring, not Col-de-Tormalet tiring, but enough.Read more