A short ride in a fast machine
It was a wild ride north again. We left Stavanger and enjoyed smooth sailing until we left the shelter of the fjord around midnight. For the next few hours, we rocked and rolled, waking occasionally to hear creaks and whistles (ships always creak in such conditions) and to feel a sudden bump or two. I felt sure that when morning came, we’d find everything on the floor and yet, surprisingly, nothing had moved at all.
When I peered through the curtains, we were already well into the Nordfjord, making our way to Olden, our next port. I didn’t have to open the door to see what the weather was like.
When reading about the enormous P&O ship that was in Stavanger yesterday, we’d noted that it too was heading for Olden. The Captain confirmed this when he mentioned that the town has just the one berth for a cruise ship and approaching the town later in the morning, guess who got there first?
We would be using our tenders then.
This is not a tender! But we’d booked a ride on one of these small boats in the afternoon and during the morning I was eager to keep watch for such things passing by so that I could get an idea of what to expect. It looked to be fun and I was looking forward to the adventure.
But first, some lunch. When we have the time, we enjoy a “proper” lunch in the dining room, with tablecloths and fine china. Just like lunch at home - not! Today was one of those days, so we went down to Compass Rose and consulted the menu.
What to choose?
We both settled on a single course - if we were going to be bouncing about on the waves this afternoon, perhaps it’d be wise not to overdo it!
So I chose the grilled salmon with roast artichokes and fennel, with hollandaise sauce. Yum.
My Hero went for the Cuban chicken, which he declared “fine”.
We didn’t linger after lunch, but carefully selected what we needed to bring with us that would fit securely in our pockets (I didn’t think it was a good idea to bring a bag) and went down to collect our tickets.
Time to board the tender. Thankfully, there are always plenty of very helpful seamen on hand to take an elbow and support everyone up or down into the boat and yesterday, with wet steps to negotiate, they were especially attentive.
Unfortunately the weather hadn’t improved at all but that’s life in this part of the world.
We waited for our group to assemble on the pier and made our way to the boat HQ to be kitted out.
We were each given a survival suit. a lifejacket and a pair of goggles. The waterproof survival suit was not the easiest thing in the world to put on, over our own raincoats but somehow we managed, taking two sizes bigger than we thought we might need!
We zipped up our survival suits and ensured everything was secure, meaning that my camera was also zipped in beneath several layers of GoreTex too. So, the next photo is a bit of a cheat and not our group at all. I took it later!
Our group of fifteen was split between two boats and we boarded the red one, each finding a place to sit and readied ourselves for the ride. No sooner were we in place than off we went, Slowly at first, around the P&O ship and our into the fjord, picking up speed as we did.
I’d like to describe the feeling of the wind in my hair, the sun on my face, but the reality was somewhat different. As we skittered and bumped about on the surface of the water, the rain pelted in my face and I huddled into the collar of the survival suit feeling thankful of the goggles.
After a while, we stopped and Constanza, our Argentinian driver, spoke a little about life on the fjord in this widespread community. Without a boat, the only means of getting to the shops and to school was to drive around the edges, but that was fine and easily managed. a little further on, we stopped in a different arm of the fjord beside a large Viking cruise ship, stopped by the community of Loen, where there was an adventure centre with ziplines, a cablecar and a system of ropes and ladders on the mountainside for those brave enough to try them. Finally, in another section of the fjord, she pointed out a small yellow buoy in the water. This was, apparently, filled with technology to monitor the movement of salmon up and downstream, for this was a prime spawning ground for the fish; a valuable export commodity for the area.
After around an hour exploring the fjord and zipping about on the water, we returned to the jetty, feeling windswept and ever so slightly damp around the edges. I wasn’t cold - the survival suit kept me warm enough and I didn’t feel uncomfortable, but the feeling of freedom once I got out of all that stuff was incredible!
We made our way back to the tender jetty feeling a bit sad that, because the P&O ship was in port today, we had to go through all this rigmarole, rather than simply step over to the other side of the pier where it could have been our ship sitting there ready for us.
Consolation came in the form of a cup of hot chocolate handed to us by the lovely crew member on the jetty, delivered to my hands with a smile and a cheery “welcome back!” Bliss indeed.
The jouney back to the ship was made sitting beneath the dripping lifejackets. It felt quite normal to be in such an environment after all the fun of the afternoon.
Thankfully, the driver of our tender got back to the ship in super quick time and we made a swift turnaround before going for pre-dinner dirnks. As we did, we heard an announcement: The tender service would be halted for forty five minutes to allow the P&O ship to leave its berth and head on down the fjord. We were so glad to have made it back without delay and even more pleased to read that our paths won’t be crossing again in the next few days. We raised our glasses to another fun day, but most of all, for such a lovely home from home on board Navigator!
