Papay Arctic Adventure: July 2017

We had promised to update this page as we settled in to our new lives in Norway, you might have thought we were never going to get round to doing this but we have a good excuse…it has been fairly non stop for the past, well months!

We had been in debate whether or not too do a house removal from Orkney to our new home, it is just so far that financially it was not worth it, we didn’t have anything particularly valuable left in Orkney nor did we have much of the furniture we would be requiring such as beds etc, so added all together we knew that to replace the few bits would work out cheaper.

We were fairly settled on that decision but just days later that overpowering sentimental hearts of ours got the best of us, and while we may have had nothing particularly valuable we had some important items in the UK in particular Daniels fathers artwork which we could never replace and so within days of moving in we were dashing off back to the UK. We had looked for the cheapest possible route to Orkney which saw us spending several nights in various airports and two nights near Malaga in Spain, from Snow in Tromsø to 30 degrees in the shade it was a fairly rapid culture shock for us!

Eventually we arrived back in Papay where there are only two car ferries per week, we had our Landrover and Trailer booked on the following ferry with great intentions of a speedy turn around. We realised however that best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry and the mammoth task of packing on the trailer everything we hoped to move with us required some very long days of sorting… So much later than planned we began the long journey through the UK and Europe, arriving at the Norwegian border in the snow dressed in shorts and t-shirt having driven from 28deg Holland almost nonstop (52hours) through Denmark and Sweden. Customs were understandably keen to have a look in the trailer which required some dismantling but looked equally as amused by our summery attire in what felt like mid-winter weather.

A few days to unpack and we were saying goodbye to our house again to drive all the way back to the UK, change cars and then turn around for the final leg of the journey. From Suffolk via France, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and back to Norway all in a 31 year old car! We again found ourselves in some ridiculously warm weather with a heat wave in northern France, the warmest weather in 41 years. We spent two nights in France, which saved us from the worst of the heatwave in the non air conditioned car!

Through Europe is a very scenic drive but admittedly having done it three times in just a couple of weeks we were looking forward to spending some time out of the car… Over 16000km removal driving, that’s about 3000 lengths of Papay….far more than our typical yearly mileage!

Shortly after returning to our new home we were reminded of the complications of moving so far from our previous home when Amanda’s Grandad passed away and Amanda painfully was not in a position to return to be with her family. Grandad, Jim, will be missed.

While we love our new home there are sacrifices and disadvantages in moving here. Verging on going in to a bit of a fug we decided to look at our new home and the reasons we had decided to move here, the lifestyle we had hoped to have. Something we had loved about Norway during Papay Arctic Adventure was the nature and countryside, both the views and the access. So having explored some of the off road tracks on our bikes we decided to go camping, taking our tent and bbq and forging through the forest and up the hills behind the house. While it might not have seemed worth it to some folk this was the silly things we had spoke about when making the decision to move to Norway and it was exactly the breath of fresh air we needed.

Watching the midnight sun from the hills overlooking the neighbouring islands on a stunning night was perfect, well, besides the clouds of midges and horseflies…but a small(ish!!) sacrifice.

We had put an advert locally looking to do some small jobs while we work on our Norwegian so we marched down early morning with our tent to get ready to go out to our first work in a long time.

So all in all things are beginning to settle in to place, but we have far from lost the adventurous spark that brought us here, for now though we adventure in another way, whether it involves mosquito swatting in the tent on the edge of the hill watching the sun or rumbling down muddy tracks on the bikes, fishing in the fjord with rain dripping off our chins or planning the best route up the mountain, one thing is for sure, the adventure goes on.