We were noticeably moving south. It was getting light much earlier. This was the view from my cabin window at 09.15.
It was New Year’s Day, and that was presumably the reason there were no excursions on offer, since local guides and other bodies will have wanted to use it to recover from the night before. Also, the stop at Trondheim was only for an hour, where, had we not extended our stay at Rørvik the night before, we would have stayed much longer.
I didn’t go to a talk on ‘ice ages, glaciers and climate’ at 10.45, because we had arrived at …
… at 10.30, and I wanted to take pictures outside, including casting off. Firstly from Deck 6, forward starboard,
… where, to my delight, I had a first! I had never seen an eider duck before. This is a male.
From the same spot, but looking over my right shoulder.
Continuing round the boat, anti-clockwise.
More wildlife! Hooded crows scavenging from a waste container, which I saw being reloaded on board a few minutes later. (In the UK, hooded crows are only found in N and W Scotland, N Ireland and on the Isle of Man.)
Behind us – the Richard With! The boat that had led J and me astray (have to blame something) when we were previously in Trondheim! Only this time she was at the Hurtigruten terminal, not several miles/kilometres away.
I went up to the open part of Deck 9.
We moved off.
In this next video, in the distance, the other side of the fjord, can be seen a very large building, sunlit on one side. That is the Kornsilo building where we had found ourselves, lured by the Richard With, when we had been lost in Trondheim eight days previously.
I repaired to the panoramic lounge, deck 8. I had spent almost no time there during the voyage.
This video was taken from ‘upstairs’ of the double-decker lounge.
Lunch was in a very (sideways) sunlit dining room – what a change!
There I took the opportunity to consult fellow passengers on how to find boarding cards on a phone once you’d downloaded them – not something I’d never had to do before, always printing them out at home beforehand.
I spent a quiet afternoon in my cabin, except for the last English-language briefing, and started sorting out my packing.
We overtook this boat. The only name I could see on it was ‘M-35-A’ and I’ve been unable to find anything out about it. It’s in Hurtigruten colours, but is that significant? Are those colours unique to Hurtigruten?
The following morning, this would be the last time Heinz would invite us out on deck.
It had occurred to me that, given that the skies were so clear, there just might be a chance of seeing the Northern Lights again that evening. Sure enough, at at 20.45, the dulcet tones of ‘Onchel Heinz’ came over the intercom – and I was just stepping into the shower. I just could not face layering up again…
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