18 June - Hammerfest to Lakselv. 250 miles

We made it. Well, not strictly. I made it.



The Toad, sadly, could not get all the way.

Having arranged - or so I thought - to drive right up to the globe monument that is meant to mark 71 degrees north, permission was denied by the Visitor Centre. So Toad had to wait outside. 

Was it worth it? To be honest, not really. Many feel Nordkapp is a bit of an anticlimax. It is a 1000 ft high cliff, and that's about it. 

But it is symbolic - the northernmost point of mainland Europe. Except that it is not. It is not on the mainland but on an island connected to the rest of Norway by a five mile tunnel that runs almost 700 ft under the sea. And it is not the most northerly point anyway: that accolade belongs to a headland just to the west

that is only accessible by hikers but is around a kilometre further north. And the true mainland northernmost point is 80km east.

Somewhere a long way over on the other side lies Russia. That's an exciting photo.

But we were closer to the North Pole than to Oslo. The British named it - Richard Chancellor, looking for the North East Passage in the mid-16th Century, drifted by and thought "That's a nice cliff. I'll call it the North Cape. Because we're in the North. And it's a cape."

One of my correspondents, who recalled winter training several decades ago and appears stuck at 1982, warned me of Soviet incursion and advised me to bring bottles of Whisky to placate the locals. 

At the start of this blog, I mentioned that two M3Ws had preceded me. The first, part of a three-vehicle works team in 2013, got there on one cylinder after an injector failure, so that really was heroic. Richard Hardy did it on his own shortly afterwards, without factory engineers on hand if anything happened, and I must thank him for giving me the idea for this because every minute (even in the rain) has been worthwhile.

All that is rather out of turn, because we first had to leave a Hammerfest where the view was as lovely as it had been the night before, retrace our steps and turn north to our target before again doubling back and pitching camp in Lakselv.

Reindeer were a more regular sight today. This was just outside Hammerfest, which has found their incursions into the town such a nuisance that it has (in vain, because they still get through) put up a 12 mile fence. It was chilly, but to these chaps it must feel positively tropical. 

We frequently saw them at the road's edge, indifferent to traffic. I suspect they lose quite a few that way. 

After a little while, our first indication that the goal was in sight.

As we have commented in a past posting, Norway is sparsely populated but even in the middle of nowhere houses and cabins pop up regularly. Look at this unspoilt vista.

  

Nothing for miles around. But look more closely

and on that island there are a couple of houses. Who on earth would want to live there? Yes, lovely scenery and tranquility, but cold in Summer and thoroughly inhospitable in Winter. Many miles to the nearest basic supplies once one makes it across the fjord. And what about items such as clothing and white goods that the distant village store does not sell? One would ask the same question about those who live in the north west corner of Scotland. Remoteness has its attractions, but they come with a bunch of frustrations.

In one tunnel (and we have probably been through around 150 km of them here), we were stuck behind an open lorry carrying fine aggregates. Soon the windscreen was coated with them and the entire vehicle looked a mess, so shortly after we reached the other end we found a car wash.

Important to present the M3W well at all times. With so many people inspecting it at every stop, we are brand ambassadors, so I clean it every morning - and, thanks to that lorry, at other times - on these trips. It's my little baby.

It really was bitterly cold now. I could not feel much and, as there are no women listening, I have to admit that when I had to stop to do what old men have to do I could not get the buttons to work.

Up here there really were no trees. Just thin grass and lichen for the Reindeer to nibble. It is bleak.

I was too cold to get out to take this shot.

I am not sure what happened with this one, but if you go cross-eyed you might make sense of it.

The roads not hugging the fjords as we turned due north were often like causeways, banked some way above the ground on either side. As I have said before, Norwegian roads are narrow by UK standards and the thought has often occurred on this trip as to what would happen if one came off. Even if the drop did not kill the vehicle, the terrain up here is boggy or scree, but in one or two places I had fantasies of careering off-piste, picking our way through the rough and finally finding a gentler slope to take us back onto the road. Look, these are long hours at the wheel on one's own and not all of the conversations one has with oneself are about the finer points of French politics.

Although we had to accept the bar on taking The Toad right up to the Nordkapp monument, TomTom was more stubborn. Because it did not completely make it to that waypoint, it kept giving me directions to turn back and refused to take me on to Lakselv. I thought of Hal as I eventually reprogrammed it.

There was a point as we turned south when the greenery returned, trees reappeared and one felt that we had left the pure Tundra. Tomorrow we hit Finland, for which I have done little preparation, so my expectation of flatter topography, forests, lakes and Sibelius playing in my head may be misplaced.

Finally, I took myself off to North Cape Golf Club, purely to tick off another Extreme Golf challenge. This one is the World's northernmost course. Augusta is is not. Nine holes, mats on wooden platforms, greens so bad that carrying a putter was a waste of time

As in Lofoten, growth comes late here and by the end of July they may well be playable. But the course does have a redeeming feature. It borders the fjord, one with a sandy beach, and the view as I stood on the last tee, on a still evening and with no-one about, was quite satisfactory.

I finished at 21.10, when the light was similar to what one would expect at home approaching Midsummer Day. It is just that it will stay at that level for another three hours or more.

Postscript - like many, I try to sample local beer wherever I go, and I have been working my way through Tromso's Mack Brewery card. Really good stuff.