So our week in Lofoten has now come to an end. The weather is still bad, and forecast for Saturday not good either, more storms due, so I suppose that makes it a bit easier to be going.

We were tremendously lucky with the weather, and getting those 2 days of blue skies is apparently pretty unusual for March. We certainly saw Lofoten in many weather conditions.

Our direct flight with Widerøe back to Oslo was at 1.55pm, which worked great with our noon check out time from our cabin. A short drive to the airport, fill up the petrol en route, park the car, drop the keys in the key box – sorted.

The flight was smooth, although there were no views until ready to land, due to cloud cover.

Arrived at Oslo, checked in to our airport hotel, the Park Inn again, a short walk from the terminal, then met up with our friends Mike & Sam, who live near Oslo, for dinner, which was lovely.

To summarise our trip …

• A week is a good amount of time, even if in winter and not hiking. Although driving distances are short, if you want to allow for bad weather, a week gives you plenty of leeway. If you are short of time you can do all the highlight in 3 (or at a push 2) days – heading North once day, South the next, and local side trips on the other day.
• Assuming there are no nasty surprises when we see the charge goes through our bank (if there are I will update this to reflect that), then Keddy by Europcar (booked through Vehicle Rent) worked great – friendly staff, good car, good email communication, easy pick up & drop off, good price at approx £30 per day.
• Although it can be a bit more expensive, the twice weekly direct flights between Oslo & Leknes save time and the hassle of changing flights en route.
• As a base, in the vicinity of Leknes is a great choice. If you plan to travel as far south as the road goes (to A) and as far north as Svolvær, then Leknes is approximately half way in between. This means no really long journeys from south to north or vice versa.
  You also have the convenience of the town’s facilities, including 2 large supermarkets, a booze shop, a recycling centre at the big supermarket (you pay a deposit on plastic bottles & cans, but you can take them for recycling and get your money back via a supermarket voucher), restaurants (if you plan to eat out), fuel stations etc.
  At the same time, choose to stay 2-3 kms outside the town, you can feel like you are in the middle of nowhere, as we did in our cabin on the fjord.
  And finally, no long journeys from / to the airport, so you don’t have to worry too much about bad weather on your arrival or departure.

A couple of photos from our last day… bye bye Lofoten (not the best of photos as we missed seeing all the jagged mountains due to us going into cloud very quickly!)

So we noticed a post on Facebook last night suggesting a storm was coming…well it certainly did! It’s been a wild day, most of it we stayed in and really enjoyed just watching the waves crashing over the deck outside our cabin with rain, hail and snow showers thrown in. Occasionally, although the wind and wild seas continued, the weather broke a little and let some sun shine through.

Later in the afternoon, when some sun and blue sky had broken through (the wind was still blowing a gale!) we decided to take a short drive out back to some of the beaches we visited yesterday. We somehow managed to choose the best window of opportunity, and saw these same beaches in a more dramatic setting and light conditions, so it was definitely worth a revisit!

We have certainly experienced many different weather fronts whilst in Lofoten. Flights were cancelled, so it is just as well we are not due to leave today, however the storm is still raging and it’s 9pm now…. flight tomorrow is at 1.40pm, so watch this space!

See what you think, photos below both of the storm from our cabin, and of the beaches of Vik and Haukland….

So today the weather started out looking promising again, and we decided to head out to the beaches of Uttakliev, Haukland & Vik, all very close to each other so not much driving required. These beaches are around 12kms from Leknes, and about the same from our cabin.

It was lucky we made another fairly early start as the weather deteriorated by midday.

Uttakliev is apparently the most popular beach for photography, with the big round boulders scattering it giving lots of photo opportunities. There is also a big heart shaped rock balancing on a huge boulder. This beach is also popular for photographing the northern lights.

Haukland is probably the most visited by tourists due to its soft pale sand and turquoise sea, and is popular for catching some sun in summer. However, for me the one I liked best was Vik, which you arrive at just before Haukand (the latter of which was, at the time, full of people who seemed to be on a photography tour).

For me Vik had the most stunning backdrop, with mountains looking in both directions along the long pale sandy beach (see the panorama photo below). Paul, however, preferred Uttakliev beach. They are all stunning though, and all worth a visit.

We also drove on to Eggum beach, which we had missed on day 4, as we had plenty of time. The drive was lovely, but when we finally got there I have to say we both thought it was a let down. And also the only place we have had to pay for parking! Perhaps the fact that the weather had deteriorated and it had started to rain didn’t help, but neither of us even bothered to take a photograph. It is the only place we have been in Lofoten that we would agree was “underwhelming”. However, please don’t let our opinion put you off going, and remember, the drive in was very nice.

See what you think from the photos below (by the way, the one with the little red cabin was taken just along from where we are staying, not at any of the beaches mentioned above)….

The weather has broken today, what we call “dreicht” back in Scotland!

So just a short trip out today to Ballstad, which is one of the largest fishing villages in Lofoten. I’m sure we didn’t see it at its best due to the overcast weather, but I am happy with some of the photos we took, which I think gives a good idea of how pretty it is (or would be in good weather).

Being a fishing village, there is a LOT of cod out drying, both the fish and the heads (nothing goes to waste here!)

A few photos from Ballstad….

For Northern Lights viewing, we saw them mainly by looking North and West. Our cabin looks out more or less to the West, and we saw a lot of the aurora just by looking directly out the windows! However we had to go outside and walk past our row of cabins, to get the aurora to the North.

Both gave great views with nice background, but we especially liked looking outside over the fjord, where we got a reflection of both the mountains and some of the aurora.

A few of our best Northern Lights photos…

We were blessed with the weather yesterday, and once again the same today, so we decided it would be nice to go back down south as far as Hamnøy and Sariskoy, to get better photos.

So not much more to say other than the extra side trip we did to Yttersand beach, well worth the 5 km or so side trip! Lots of people in summer hike on from here to Kvalvika beach, but we were super taken with the stunning scenery at Yttersand. The beach was partly snow covered, the mountains also snow covered, it was just gorgeous! And to think that we almost didn’t bother with this side trip, it is definitely worth it!

Some photos from today, note that some are very similar to Day 3, but in better weather…

A lovely sunny day all day today! This time we decided to head north as far as Svolvaer. The islands we covered were Vestvagoy, Gimsoy & Austvagoy.

We followed the E10, taking our first side trip up to the surfing beach at Unstad. We thought we could drive round from there to Eggum, and back on to the E10, but you can’t (there is however a walking trail to Eggum, but considering the snow and that we’d have to come back we passed on this).

At Unstad we saw some crazy guys out surfing, it was about minus 5 air temperature, I don’t even want to think about how cold the sea must be! The drive was dramatic, and it was fun to watch the surfers for a while, just a shame we couldn’t continue on to Eggum, but we have now saved that for another day, as it was a LONG day, from 9.30am till 5.30pm.

Next stop, after plenty more photo stops along the way, was Henningsvaer. This is a really pretty and colourful place, and you cross a few small islands connected by bridges to get there. Lots of fishing boats, and cod drying (the latter as you see at this time of year all over Lofoten). We spent a short while walking around, then got back in the car to drive on to Svolvaer.

We have to say that to be honest (in our opinion) Svolvaer was nothing special. And pretty dead on a Sunday in March. So after a short stroll round, we started to head back.

In summary, the drive north was very scenic indeed, lots of photo opportunities along the way. Both Unstad and Henningsvaer are worth visiting, and later in our holiday we will try Eggum, which we are sure will also be worth a side trip, we just didn’t want to rush things or arrive back after dark.

Once again we struck it lucky and saw the aurora in the evening, not as dramatic as yesterday, and just a couple of short displays, but with the mountains and lights reflected in the fjord outside our cabin, we have some lovely photos (again the northern lights photos to come later).

Some photos from today…