July 15th – E6 en route to Steinkjer (circa 64⁰N 11⁰30E)!

Needless to say after yesterday’s storm the day dawned sunny and calm. We had a bit of a lie in assisted by Granpa reading stories in bed to teh children and then C & J packed up. Their flight was 12.30 from Bodo and we walked there with them.

While at the airport we enquired about car hire and got the best deal from Hertz. We always knew that replenishing the calor gas in Norway was going to be difficult because they have different fittings from the UK ones. However both Svolvaer and Harstad had places reasonably close that would refill our containers. We started this year with all 4 containers full and had hoped this might last us but after the first container was finished we have got through 2 containers  each in about 2 days so we are now on the 4^th container. We think the fault lies with our port connection which may be leaking. Fortunately all gas containers are stored on deck so this is not dangerous and can probably be circumvented for the rest of the trip by using only the starboard connection. However refilling the containers before Hermione and co arrive is clearly vital. We had fully expected that there would be a depot to refill in Bodo but no such luck. We could have sailed over to Svolvaer but by midday we had yet another strong northerly and did not fancy 70 miles of motoring in a boat so decided to take a break from the boat and drive south by the inland E6 route to Steinkjer  and see a bit of the country we have not yet seen. There is one other depot about 40 km north of Steinkjer but it is not open on Saturdays!

We took our sleeping bags and set forth about 5.30p.m. in a very smart virtually brand new Nissan Juke – it is black and a bit like a mini-tank but very comfortable with all mod cons including Satnav and fully reclining front seats.  Inevitably we had some amusing moments in a new car with all the instructions in Norwegian! For instance within minutes of driving it away we needed to reverse out of our parking spot – there are 6 forward gears but the technique for getting into reverse was not immediately obvious and the words used in the instruction manual were not in my dictionary!

We drove until midnight with occasional stops and parked in a lovely little off road spot by a fast flowing stream and slept in the car to the noise of tumbling water.