Where the river Namsen flows in to the Namsenfjorden lies the town of Namsos, our home for a few days. Most foreign yachts or motorboats who visit Norway, making it past Stadt are aiming for the Lofoten islands or even further to the distant Svalbard or Bear Island. With most foreign yachts making a B line towards these places there are few that stray far from the main leads, so despite Namsos being a bigger town than the likes of Rørvik, placed 22miles down the fjord the majority of yachts skip it by.
We too heading north could have gone the shorter route via the open sea leading to Rørvik, in 2014 though we had been just a mile or so from Namsos as we travelled south and with time short didn't have the opportunity to stop, so took the possibility this time.
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| Along the shore in Namsos |
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| From the viewpoint on the hill |
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| Namsos at night |
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| The new viewpoint |
Namsos along with many of the towns and cities in Norway has suffered over the years. The town being destroyed twice by fires which spread from end to end leaving very little left standing. During World War Two the town was again destroyed by bombing, each time Namsos has proved a resilient, strong community and has been fully rebuilt.
It was very touching for us to be made so welcome in the town, there is a lot of work happening there, with new houses, roads and shops we see a very successful future for the area. Something we particularly liked was the new building on the edge of the hill with glass windows offering amazing panoramic views over the town,river and fjord below. Whilst we were very lucky to be able to visit this as tourists it was particularly nice to see that this was much more than a tourist attraction, but something for the locals, a real community asset. The place remained open day and night and instead of suffering graffiti or littering, people seemed to go to it with true town pride.
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| Picking up the fuel, handy trolley! |
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| The only remaining saw mill, there used to be many here, with wood floated down the river |
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| Appearance in a local paper |
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| Walking the old traintracks |
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| Wooden buildings |
To say we received such a warm welcome because visiting yachts might be more rare, would be, we think, wrong. The welcome we received was full of town pride, people who were very happy to share and show off their home with us and that's very special.
We spent the 9th of July in Namsos, it was 2 years to the day that we first left Papay with Quickstep with Daniel E, heading for our first Papay Arctic Adventure. As the evening came it was sadly time for us to move on to our next stop. We have accepted that we would miss too much if we were to race north to see the midnight sun this year and so that will wait for next, but we do have a slight deadline with Daniels mother and sister having booked out to Northern Norway at the end of summer and so we will continue to head north. We left Namsos Batforening in the late evening to the sound of a Norwegian (and Namsos) rock bands open air concert. We had decided to find an anchorage some where on the way to Rørvik which has a substantial tidal race, at 4knots we will need to preplan our timing. So with currents of over 2knots at some points, caused by he narrow passages and gaps, we made our way to a secluded bay for the night and possibly next couple of days depending on weather.
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| At anchor, canoes in the calm |
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| Reflections in the water |
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| Quickstep, testing the new anchor |
We have been doing some tidying and reorganising aboard today while swinging gently with our new anchor set, a slightly different day to walking around Skeld, Sheltand 2 years ago. With jobs done we paddled round the bay in our canoes and are now going to head off and try our luck at some fishing. The sun has come out and its too warm in the wheelhouse, time to go!
