As I am still well inside the arctic circle, you might be wondering what the midnight sun looks like when its raining - well like this ...
It was taken about half past midnight last night - all the mobile homers went to bed a long time ago.
It rained all night and was still raining in the morning & I didn't feel particularly motivated to do anything, but after a couple of coffees I decided out on the bike was better than being stuck in a shed and so set off to ride along the islands to a place called A - the furthest you could go by road.
Wet riding but nice scenery was to be the order of the day.
As you travel down the islands there are a number of quite impressive bridges and tunnels that join individual islands together or shortcut a mountain that is inconveniently in the way. There must be some busy civil engineers in Norway.
There were occasional lapses in the rain (thats generally when I stopped and took a picture), but each time it stopped you could see that there was plenty more ahead.
The individual little communities built around a small harbour are what characterise these islands and are a photographers dream.
Difficult to see on this photo, but there were a bunch of surfers out in those waves. Must be nuts, I don't know what the water temperature was but the air was 4 degrees still - and its raining, they’ll get wet!
I would periodically see these structures, evidently for drying something, so I went down a lane for a closer look to see what. These ones were full of fishes heads, others I saw later had different anatomical parts on them.
I made the mistake of walking under to get a closer look, but of course as the rain ran through it picked up the fish juice and deposited some on my helmet, for the rest of the day thats all I could smell - doh!
More nice views ...
And again ...
And then I reached Hamoy - one of those picture postcard villages, beautiful.
At this tail end of the islands there are a string of small communities on interlinked small islands.
The end was in sight - and also in rain cloud, so I continued on to the end of the road at A, turned around and headed back.
Just as I was about to leave the rain stopped and so I was able to stop for a picture in front of the sign for A.
That turned out to be a painful picture to take.
You cant see from the photo but the front wheel is in a pothole and there is a sharp 4 or 5 inch step up onto the tarmac. It would not have been a problem, I would have just rolled the bike back a few feet, but whilst I was taking another shot across the road a car pulled up and parked inches from my back wheel, so I could only go forwards with all the angles against me. Unfortunately I didn't give it quite enough power and so the bike climbed half way up the curb but then fell back. I managed to stop it falling over but in the process strained my left wrist a little , clutch changes were painful for the rest of the day and I expect it will be stiff in the morning.
Schoolboy error, always park so you can exit easily!
Retracing my ride back (there is basically only one road) I looked out for areas that I thought looked nice on the way down but hadn't been able to take a picture due to heavy rain. Like this one ..
And this small harbour at Reine ....
... which also boasts one of the most picturesque settings for a mini filling station.
A view back to Reine as leaving ...
As I approached the tunnel that connects to Hamoy, the rain started heavily again.
A bridge I missed on the way down.
When I pulled back up to the cabin a rainbow was forming over the site - never seen one this low before.
Tomorrow its an early ferry off the islands and then head south to pick up the Atlantic road.
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