Country: Norway
Distance travelled:
Weather: Clear and sunny

As I wanted to wash my hair this morning, it was a repeat performance of the Andenes action with my turning the heater and boiler up to high then getting back into bed for an hour. Since the fresh water tank was full to the brim and we’d succumbed and emptied the grey tank into a drain at our rest stop, I washed it twice. Such decadence but we are getting better at sourcing water so I wasn’t worried.

We were just getting ready to pull back onto the road when I spotted a red squirrel near the out-of-order amenities. I headed back to the van where Mark handed out a camera fitted with the telephoto lens and extender and a slice of bread. Carefully easing myself closer and closer, it became apparent that the first squirrel, for more had appeared, was a mother still nursing and the four or five others playing around were her young. I tried to throw a few pieces of bread toward them and was hopeful they might come close enough to investigate my gift when another car pulled into the rest stop. They were gone in a trice with a few flicks of fluffy tails.

Heading into Alta, we passed the Alta Museum where the prehistoric rock art was. Our more pressing aim was to top up our LPG as we were fairly sure Alta would be the last place it was available before the drought of Finland. We are using much more now we are above the Arctic Circle since the boiler has the distressing tendency to dump all our fresh water when it gets below eight degrees to protect itself from the water freezing in the pipes. However it means we are turning the boiler on at every stop in case the temperature drops and we lose all our water before we notice.

We also stopped for diesel since the distances between towns are getting greater to ensure there will be no repeat of the Swedish incident. Once we had bought fuel, we felt comfortable in filling up the fresh water again while at the service station. This is generally expected and doesn’t even seem to require a purchase but old habits die hard.

Back through Alta to the museum and I left Mark in the van since he had little interest in caveman graffiti. I went in alone and even treated myself to the audio guide. I’m glad I did since it added a complexity to something which otherwise may have been quite incomprehensible.

From Wikipedia:
The Rock art of Alta (Helleristningene i Alta) are located in and around the municipality of Alta in the county of Finnmark in northern Norway. Since the first carvings were discovered in 1972, more than 6000 carvings have been found on several sites around Alta. The largest locality, at Jiepmaluokta about 4 kilometres outside of Alta, contains many thousand individual carvings and has been turned into an open-air museum. The site, along with the sites Storsteinen, Kåfjord, Amtmannsnes and Transfarelv, were placed on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites on 3 December 1985. It is Norway’s only prehistoric World Heritage Site.

The carvings were divided into four separate groups by Knut Helskog. Using shoreline dating, the earliest carvings were dated to around 4200 BC; the most recent carvings were dated to around 500 BC. In 2010 researcher Jan Magne Gjerde pushed the dates for the oldest phases back with 1000 years. The wide variety of imagery shows a culture of hunter-gatherers that was able to control herds of reindeer, was adept at boat building and fishing and practiced shamanistic rituals involving bear worship and other venerated animals.

I’ve read online that it is possible to walk around after hours and I could see that it certainly would have been easy to stroll on in once the reception had closed. And the carpark is listed in Autoroute as a carpark tolerating overnight parking. So all in all, the place could be a good free evening.

After a very late lunch at 5pm we headed back through Alta for the third time and on northward to Nordkapp. The road ran through some truly desolate landscape which we assume is generally covered in many meters of snow for most of the year. An infrequent settlement or isolated house punctuated the otherwise barren landscape, mostly bare rock with the occasional patch of scrubby trees. Occasionally a few reindeer grazed by the roadside. We reached the Sennalandet pass which reaches approximately 500m above sea level and then headed down again toward Porsangerfjorden turning onto the last stretch of road to Nordcap at Leipovuono.

Now the road, some 128km, became a winding, narrow, cliff-edged challenge. It skirted the edge of the Porsangerfjorden for quite a distance with the occasional break to climb the mountainous hillside only to plunge down again to the waters edge. In the middle of this we were beeped by some madman wanting to overtake at high speed, obviously a local used to the road. After about the first 100km we reached the North Cape Tunnel, no longer tolled thankfully. It is one of the longest subsea tunnels in Norway at 6.875km long and reaches a depth of 212m below sea level. As we approached, we noticed a fog warning sign, not something I would expect in a tunnel, and there were doors at either end. Apparently these close in winter to stop any water inside from freezing but open automatically when a car approaches. We missed seeing this since they are left open in summer.

The last stretch of road ran over barren windswept scree-covered mountains with the occasional snowdrift still clinging to the rocks. We paused at a particularly picturesque rest stop for a photo of Tufjorden, cruised past the car park for the 18km return hike to Knivskjellodden, the slightly-more-northern promontory with a shudder and were soon pulling up at the gates to Nordcap. The 490kr (about $85 AUD) entry fee was the final straw to our already broken and battered weeks’ budget.

Coughing up the cash, we headed in and pulled up in the third row from the front behind a huge number of motorhomes. They filled the carpark, interspersed with cars and the occasional caravan and I estimated at least 100 motorhomes. A later sticky-beak at number plates showed that while many were Norwegian or Swedish, there were vans from all over Europe. Many German and French, of course, but other places like Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, Switzerland, Spain and the Check Republic were represented. We, however, appeared to be the only UK vehicle I could see.

It was 10pm by now so we rugged up and walked over to the visitor centre and the Globe, the monument everyone photographs. Inside the visitor centre is the obligatory souvenir shop, several cafés and restaurants and a post office. To our surprise, underground there was also a sound and light show (a journey through the seasons), a chapel, a Thai museum (visiting Thai king in 1907), some information boards regarding a particular 2nd world war battle which took place in the waters further north, some informative dioramas about other important historical visitors and a cinema. All of these were free. The panorama film in particular was very enjoyable although we were among the last to arrive and had to sit in the very front row which made it hard to see the entire 125 degree screen.

By the time we had checked out all the attractions it was midnight and, stepping back outside, we were startled by the number of people now clustered around the monument. I took a selfie, uploading it to Facebook via the free wifi and we headed back to the van in the rapidly cooling evening. As we rounded the visitor centre it was suddenly obvious where all these people had come from, there was more than 25 tour buses lined up in the carpark. As we walked away, we could see them filling and whisking their passengers away, midnight sun photos taken, another box ticked.

Back in the van, Mark whipped up a couple of ham and cheese toasties and we decided to go to bed since our view was mostly of the back ends of other motorhomes. I was just relaxing in the warmth of bed when I remembered I hadn’t taken a photo of our parking spot. I clambered out, rugged up with trackpants, jacket and Marks’ shoes and at 1am was outside taking a photo. I was back in our warm bed by 1.05am.