The Voyage Home

When I woke on the 15th day of the trip at the Ramsvik’s house the first order of business was to make Welsh cakes from the remainder of the ingredients that we had purchased on the road-trip the week before. Welsh cakes seemed to have gone over well with all of the Ramsvik’s so far, and they are very much more popular when I’m abroad than when I’m at home. This I suspect is due to everyone from Wales who can cook to a moderate degree having their own view on what the ‘ideal’ Welsh cake is like. The variations include how darkly they are browned (some misguided people even believe in slightly blackened Welsh cakes), how dense the final cake should be, what fruit (if any) to include, sugared or not and so on. My take on Welsh cakes is slightly unconventional, in part because my recipe has been refined for travel, but mostly because I believe raisins (a traditional Welsh cake staple) are a blight on one of our great national dishes. As a consequence of our perpetual national debate on the topic I am quite used to ignoring suggestions about modifying my Welsh cakes, but on this occasion I did attempt to be accommodating to our most generous hosts. The Ramsviks had attempted a somewhat peculiar mating of Welsh and Norwegian culture by consuming Welsh cakes with cheese; a mating that was not aided by the usual sugaring of the outside of the cake. As a consequence I decided to skip the sugar on this occasion as a sign of the esteem in which I held my hosts.

It should be noted that the cheese did work quite well and that collaboration between Norway and Wales has given rise to some wonderful things in the past. For example Roald Dahl the novelist, poet, (ace) fighter pilot, screen and short story writer was born in Cardiff to Norwegian parents. Consequently it is my intention to experiment further with this concept of cheesy Welsh cakes in future.

It was also around this time that I was struck by certain parallels between our trip and old tales of travel and adventure. In particular I was thinking of the odyssey; not so much the frequently used reference to the long, arduous and eventful journey (though there had been no shortage of events) but the elements about the camaraderie of travel and traditions of hospitality in ancient times. In the odyssey Ulysses frequently finds himself the beneficiary of the hospitality of generous hosts in foreign lands; it was believed that to turn away a traveller would anger the gods.

There was also the custom of exchanging gifts, in ancient civilisations it was customary to bestow gifts of cloaks, weapons or treasures upon visitors. Before we left the island Tore had given us each a brass eagle as a souvenir. We attempted to return the gesture by leaving a 50pence piece from the special Olympic series (in addition to the Welsh cakes), having noted Tore’s fondness for sport and his habit of collecting stamps, coins and so on.

We had considered making a trip to the aviation museum before leaving, but with the weather still poor outside, and flight time approaching we decided it wasn’t worth trying to shoe horn it in. Instead we headed back into town to the milkshake shop.

As we stood in at the milkshake bar, we saw a group of ‘blues’ walk by. It is, Nina had informed us, traditional for students finishing ‘high school’ to take to wearing an unofficial ‘uniform’ of coloured overalls for the month following the conclusion of school. The colour indicates an affiliation which (I think) correlates in some way to courses of study (and associated rivalries) followed. It also serves a practical function in that overalls are quite handy attire for post-school mischief, boisterousness and merrymaking.

Once our milkshakes were ready we headed back out into the wind and rain; the locals probably thought us positively balmy to be drinking a cold drink in this weather, but we were still on holiday so being sensible wasn’t at the top of our priorities list. Milkshakes in hand we walked back to Nina’s house to collect our bags, which we had left just inside the door and then deposited the keys in a pre-arranged super-secret location (dropping things in a hiding place seemed very apt for a town that was so significant in the cold war).

As we walked to the airport more the winds intensified once again and hail came down. Fortunately Bodø airport is closer to Nina’s house than the local train station is to either Chris or my own. When we located it on the map the evening before, I had been quite taken aback by the proximity of the airport to the “city” centre. I had decided on this final morning walk in the Arctic to wear my beanie hat, which had languished unused in my rucksack for my entire stay in Norway (it would have seen some use on Landegode, had I not left it on the main land).

Duck outside Bodø airport.

Curiously the entry hall of Bodø‘s airport has a full size model of a Supermarine Spitfire suspended from its ceiling. It is poised at an angle, as if frozen in the middle of a strafing run against the check in desks. Given the spectacular failure of the allied forces to defend this town during WWII a Spitfire struck me as an odd choice. That said, it is known as one of the most elegant airframe designs of all time and it certainly looked pretty up on the ceiling.

After fetching our boarding passes and checking in our bags (a completely automated process, without a human in sight) we made our way up to security. Chris completely forgot to remove anything from his pockets before passing through the metal detectors, making them light-up like a Christmas tree. I almost made it, except after my first go I had to take my boots off and pass them through the X-Ray machine. Even at this small domestic airport I wasn’t spared the ignominy of sidling away from the security checks in my socks.

I observed that one of the aircrew passing through was sporting an interesting hairstyle. Chris surprised me by identifying it as a “French twist”, I asked if he had added hair-criticism to the wine-criticism that he studied at school. It seems that Abigail has been broadening his horizons.

As we sat down in the fairly cramped interior of the Norwegian air shuttle flight to Olso, the sun came out. It seemed odd that it should choose this moment after so many hours of continuous rain and hail. As the tug pushed the plane back from the terminal we saw soldiers in camouflage patrolling the perimeter; a reminder that this runway is shared with the F-16 fighters, and occasionally U2 recognisance planes stationed at the adjacent airbase. The jet engines whined and the plane began to gather speed the windsock (and the gentle leanings of the trees) showed a perfect head wind. The plane ascended rapidly, the brief spell of sunshine affording us a good view of Landegode and the smaller island’s that lie off Bodø’s flat peninsula (or “half-island” as I had frequently heard the locals translate it).

The flight to Oslo was rather uncomfortable due to rather poor legroom; the interior of this plane being noticeably less plush than the one that brought us to Oslo. There was a long approach to Oslo affording us a good look of the surrounding countryside for many minutes before we touched down.

When we landed at Oslo airport we were surprised to find that it was extremely warm (we soon found out it was some 22 degrees Celsius). After a short walk down some mobile steps and across the tarmac, we found ourselves in the terminal building, which was walled substantially in glass, creating a very noticeable greenhouse effect.

Oslo airport is quite large, its departure lounge consisting of a long promenade of shops and food stalls. As we sat eating a pizza, we noted that there were lots of uniformed (though not armed) soldiers around. Norway still has national service, so we assumed most of the people we were seeing were something to do with that.

When we eventually boarded the flight we once again had an emergency exit seat (as we had on the flight to Oslo). This spared us the legroom issue that had characterised the flight down from Bodø, and Chris very much approved. There is a trade off in that all handluggae and personal items have to be stowed in the overhead lockers. We were just getting our stuff ready to put in the lockers when an airhostess wandered over to tell us that we needed to do so; however she was now stood where we needed to be in order to access the locker. I’m not fond of air travel, nor of being told things I already know, so I suspect my response was rather tetchy.

When the flight did get underway the first programme to be shown on the screens was, a cartoon about a depressed rocking horse whose sadness is due to the boy who owns him having become addicted to computer games. I presumed it was making some commentary upon the impact of modern technology on imagination and culture, and that it was rendered in computer graphics for added irony. I soon realised that the shows were in fact the exact same ones that had been on the flight too Oslo. On the bright side I was able to direct Chris’s attention to some of the better sketches now that I knew they were coming. Mostly we spent the flight using the free in flight WiFi; a neat little flourish by the airline, which rather debunks the notion that devices with transceivers shouldn’t be used on planes. The WiFi only functions above 10,000 feet, but that is a very minor limitation. The latency was noticeably higher than most connection types, but still good enough for ‘instant messaging’. Chris used Google latitude to identify the approximate location of the ground station that was connecting us to the Net; it turned out to be somewhere in Sweden.

In contrast to Oslo London was around 11 Celsius, gray and raining. Chris’s brother was good enough to pick us up again. I extended my apologies for still not being Abbie. When we returned to Chris’s flat I got in touch with Nina. She and her parents were still stuck on Landegode, so it seems that leaving when we did was the right call. All in all an uneventful journey home.Read more