NORTH CAPE

North Cape was fantastic.
As we travelled closer to it we were told by campers who had been there that it was ‘not so good’ – ‘ there’s snow’ – ‘the wind rocks the van – very cold’ – ‘its very expensive’ – ‘its foggy’ – ‘no midnight sun’ – and so on.
I really began to wonder if it was worth the bother – and the cold and discomfort and the money! It is also a long way (c. 350 miles north of the Arctic Circle) but I knew John was determined to get there.
The landscape is incredible – very beautiful, very harsh, frozen lakes, no trees, snow, rocks, cliffs, lowering skies but no sunset.
There is a rather odd and very expensive ‘theme park’ type place at the Cape and we free-camped there in the car park (free-camp after you have paid £20 to get in) in the wind and cold with hundreds of other campers and bus loads of people off tours and boats. We saw disappointed tourists photographing posters of the midnight sun! Poor people! It was surreal but not to be missed. Perhaps our photos give some little idea of the place. It does feel like the end of the earth. It was cold but the van was fine and the silk duvet and the feather duvet and the heater and the booze kept us warm.
To get there we went through four tunnels, one was 6.78 km. under the sea (and cost us £50 both times we drove through it!). The first was 4 km. long and was old, narrow, dark, twisty, and wet. I hated them.
We had seen the midnight sun at Inari and had no illusions about the likelihood of seeing it at North Cape but the experience of the landscape more than matched our expectations. It was wonderful and I didn’t want to leave something so unique and extraordinary.

(Caveat: North Cape is not the most northerly point on the European mainland. There is a headland about a mile west on the same island which is marginally more northerly, but it is inaccessible by road and you need to walk 18km to get to it and it isn’t dramatic and 1000ft. high. Notice that word “island”? There are other islands more northerly – cf. Spitsbergen – so how is it the most northerly? Well, most people think it is and we were there and most people weren’t. So there!)