It’s a strange and wonderful world living on a cruise ship for a week. We are not on one of those massive 3,000 berth Caribbean monster liners with 7 passenger decks, 7 bars and 17 nights of restless B-factor entertainment. Rather, we are on something of a mini-cruise on a robust Hurtigruten Nordic ship, working…
Our giant ship sidles into the little Norwegian town of Vardø, gently buffering up against the daisy-chain of old tyres pinned along the dockside. Then, throwing out its ropes as an invitation, it is accepted and entwined to the harbour cleats. Five minutes later the boat opens its mouth, sticks out its gantry tongue and…
Kirkenes is a long way north. I mean a LONG way north. For those of you in London, it’s WAY beyond the M4. Even the Watford Gap is a comparative nip to the shops. For those of you have ventured a little further upwards, you may have seen the motorway signs on the M6 for…
I spend my weeks traveling to and from various Nordic countries. Tired of the procession of planes and nights in formulaic hotels, I decided, for once, to take the big slow boat from Oslo to Copenhagen, only to discover that this was an amorphous mixture of the two. Everyone who boards is staying in the…
A place and a time where there is no darkness only the all-consuming grey of a damp June evening Never starting, never ending, barely existing in very slow motion without definition or purpose. A dinner where the salmon is tasteless garnished with a disappointingly limp salad – Eating under artificial heating. Will that invisible sun…
The thing about travelling alone on a plane, is that whilst we can chose our own seat, we cannot chose who takes the seat next to us. Last week I ventured on three planes between Copenhagen, Oslo and Helsinki. I carefully selected aisle seats in each case, and as near as possible to the front…
Unwrapping The World 