More from Arctic Norway

Here are a few more pictures from the last few days. Unfortunately the weather has been on and off rain, with very occasional sunshine. Another beautiful campsite and lovely warmshowers hosts last night and tonight makes up for the perpetual sogginess. Also, we caught a glimpse of a mink whale! It was in a fjord, feeding on the fish attracted by a strong tidal current. 

Sun came out just in time to cook dinner before catching a short ferry across to the more northerly isle of Hadlesøya. 

Spotted a nice headland and decided to camp there. The farmer spotted us, beckoned us over, hen said there's a great spot down by the sea there, and a composting toilet just here. Beautiful. 

This was the view from the campsite. We took a walk...

And found part of a whale skeleton! This is probably part of a flipper, there were also a bunch of vertebrae. 

No photos from the next day as it rained most of the day. We had a 100km plus day to arrive at our warmshowers host, an English couple who spend half the year here, and half in the Lake District. They are a retired couple who have bike-toured, climbed, backpacked and sea kayaked all around the world. It was the sea kayaking that brought them to Norway in the first place. They greeted us cheerfully even though we were a day early. After the eponymous warm showers, we had a big dinner of fish caught by John in the estuary just outside the house. We talked bikes and kayaking and much else. The house has lovely views over a fjord and lots of islands. This morning, after talking about potential hiking routes, Anne said, well all the nice hikes are on ridges, and the ridges are all in the clouds, would you like to take out our sea kayaks? 

YES PLEASE! 

We had been daydreaming about how much nicer it would be to explore these fjords by boat. Dream come true. So we packed a lunch and they set us up with all the gear, and we launched from the bottom of the garden. Beautiful. About 4 hours later conditions got worse and the rain set in so we headed home, after exploring lots of islands and coastline. 

We got out on this island to stretch our legs. This one had some sheep on it! Other than that we saw plenty of birds, including a pair of sea eagles. Yesterday Adie also saw a seal from the house.

Tomorrow we head south, then hope to do a couple of day hikes as we make our way to Svolvaer, where there is an express boat back to Bodø.