Bodø

The rain having become heavier we drove onto our final Lofoten Island of Moskenesøya. We'd seen plenty of wooden racks for drying fish, but on this island we saw hunreds of large, light brown fish heads hung up on these racks like garlic or onion strings.

The road was a collection of small bridges over sea channels and tunnels under near vertical rock faces. The lanes were narrow and it was sometimes difficult to judge whether we and the oncoming vehicle had enough room to pass without one of us pulling in at a wider section. Traffic lights controlled a few of the longer bridges, alternating the direction of traffic flow.

After filling up and emptying at a van service station we headed to the Moskenes ferry port and parked up in the queue for the next crossing to Bodø, on the mainland, almost 100km away. We'd arrived as the 11:30am ferry was boarding but we only just squeezed on the car deck of the 1:30pm boat, so were glad we hadn't spent the time sightseeing instead of queuing. To occupy ourselves during the wait, we lunched before Vicky donned her rubber gloves and began to hand wash the undies in the sink. It struck us that this was one of the many differences between being on holiday and living in a van!

The ferry was keen to leave and was still closing its cargo doors as we pulled away from port. We climbed up to the passenger area and went outside onto the rainy back deck to watch the contrast gradually fade on these beautiful islands, whose increasingly grey silhouettes looked like spikes on a dragon's spine. After a peak over the front deck we found a couple of seats and settled into our knitting and e-books for the journey that would last nearly 4 hours.

As we neared the mainland the ferry was required to navigate through an archipelago of small islands before docking at Bodø, a large town with grey concrete buildings that brought us out of the fairytale world of brightly painted wooden cabins and back to 'civilisation'.

We drove until we escaped the urban sprawl and stopped at Godøystraumen layby, part of Norway's tourist route. A small wooden footbridge led accross a deep, narrow channel that funneled the sea out of, or in to a fjord depending on the state of the tide. The rock formations were amazing, the layers having been turned on their ends and eroded so they looked like rugged humpback whales lying still in the shallows.Read more