Saturday 12 October

It took a while to settle last night after our excitement as we were buzzing. We allowed ourselves an extra half hour sleep in before checking the weather and making the most of the forecasted sunny day. We are slow learners, as the forecast sunny day was not a sunny day as hoped. As usual a bit of a mixed bag, with a good wind cool blowing. We set off regardless taking the scenic drive west to the sea side village of Sommaroy.

It was interesting driving the roads in the daylight, especially some of those that we had driven the night before, where we had no idea of where we were going. At times we were a little anxious as the roads are not wide dual carriage and we could see on the nav that there was water on the side, if not two sides at times.

Tromso is surrounded by mountains, currently delightfully snow capped. It is also surrounded by water. And this pattern continues for all of Northern Norway. You simply drive through, or around mountains and fjords. We keep expecting to see some flat land, or even rolling hills and meadows, however here it is rugged with very little arable land. There is an absence of pasture, horticulture or agriculture.

People do not seem to have gardens – they live in nature’s garden. We even saw reindeer on the main road into town grazing on an small patch of grass next to the fjord! We got within a couple of meters of a stag, he was more interested in the grass than the tourists.

So we travelled for about an hour, albeit was a short distance and got blessed with a few occasions of sunlight that made the landscape come alive in autumnal splendour.

I have never seen such bright and intense golds, mustards, browns, brick-tan, colours, alongside fresh spring green and leafless trees adorned with deep cherry red berries. The rocks are covered in lovely small mosses, lichens and to my delight Lingon berries!

Notwithstanding the frequent rain (as expected) we are very pleased with the time of year we have chosen to come to Norway. Firstly for the opportunity to see the lights, at good intensity, secondly the scenery is magical with snow topped mountains, autumn colours, and yet not too cold or unpleasant weather to be able to travel and see and experience things. We would still love to go to Finland – Lapland in the middle of winter to experience dog sledding, and more aurora!

Our other advice for visiting Norway is allow double the days you think you need, as the weather will knock at least half of them out!

Sommaroy was pretty, however, had there not been a bitter wind and low light with lots of cloud, it would have been quite a show stopper with the beautiful crystal clear green and blue water surrounding its many bays.

We decided to stay in tonight as there was lots of cloud. Wrong choice as by 930pm it cleared a bit and then we saw some lights out of our bedroom window. Unfortunately I did not have my tripod in the room, and could not get a stable shot and there was a lot of light pollution. They were also some distance away, which reinforced to us how very fortunate we were to experience what we did the other night.

We move on to Lofoten tomorrow, which will be a big day of around 7 hours drive. The weather looks absolutely shocking for our time there, including a current medium force gale. We really hope it moves along quickly and we get another shot at the lights, or at least some lovely weather to view the scenery at its best.