Day 6 - Trondheim and me, again! (an unrequited love affair?)
Trondheim and me are meant never to be together. I won't repeat the trials and tribulations of last time other than a storm meant we missed it on the way up and I managed to get lost on the way back down. So this time I was prepared - except for the cold and the time of day. The boat docked at 6.30am, so I set my alarm to be up and ready to go. The Nidaros cathedral is about an hour and half round trip on foot but with about 3 hours in dock, no problem. I was up, dressed (in every piece of closing I have with me) and ready to go by about 6.45. And then I got outside. Bloody freezing doesn't cover it. Allegedly -10º but with the significant wind chill I am going for a bone numbing -25º. And of course it was pitch black. The route out of the ferry port, in the freezing conditions, the icy pavements and the dark looked ... well, let's say less than inviting. I foresaw much worse than getting a little bit lost in Trony (as nobody but me calls it), but broken arms, nose or just dying of hypothermia. Did I go anyway? Did I buggery! Its just a church! A nice church, but just a church and not worth broken limbs. I went back to bed!
So the magnificent Nidaros cathedral will have to wait for yet another visit to Trondheim, if there ever is one. Maybe we just aren't meant to be. Trondheim and me - huh!
So this is the closest I got to a picture, taken of course several hours later. It looks quite close with a 200mm lens - which if I have understood my camera correctly makes it about 6 x closer. But I might be talking bollocks.
After breakfast I spent as long as I could on deck trying to take pictures. But the wind chill is such that fingers freeze very quickly (about one or two photographs worth in my time measurement). Nothing of note really other than the slightly surreal "steam" coming off the sea in the early morning sun. And some pretty crap framed pictures into the sun (have I mentioned its cold?)
Bye bye Trondheim, I want to love you but you won't love me back. Our relationship remains ... unfulfilled, distant, unrequited! But maybe I will be back one day.
And so I found myself, for the umpteenth time, at the Multe Bakery Cafe on the top deck of the ship, enjoying the views in the warmth and hoping there wasn't the perfect landscape picture out there I was missing. Part of the problem is that the landscape is pretty much magnificent all the time. Unless you spend the entire voyage with your camera glued to your face you are going to miss some. And that is ok. The being here is more important than getting the award winning photo. (Both would be better of course!)
And so the day drifted by again. Its my last full day on the boat and I managed to find some time (I can't believe it has taken this long) to start the only book I brought with me, recommended by my friend Gaby: “A Woman in the Polar Night” by Christiane Ritter. I like to read books that speak to the place I am in if possible. It's subtitled “The classic memoir of a year in the Arctic wilderness”. I’m only managing a few days up here, in the relative comfort of a heated boat and a comfortable (if bijou) cabin. I'm only a few chapters into the book and already I feel like an absolute lightweight. This woman put up with some proper hardship and the tone already says its going to get worse! In the book its still summer - there is winter to come! I will report back. It will very likely make me feel even smaller.
So before I go again today, here are some fruits of my hanging around on deck for a most of the day (in between coffees).
Yet more beautiful but isolated places to live
A lighthouse or a church? Or both?
The golden hour
Now if that building had just been painted red!
Some late afternoon clouds
Lit by the setting sun
No filters involved, the sky really was that colour
Well, that's it for another day. Tomorrow I arrive into Bergen so you will at least be spared endless sunsets/rises over water.
Great pictures Alan - I wouldn’t know where to start!
Hope Bergen is good.