When I took off from my mountain hostel, I was instantly treated to a fabulous view over the Narvik Fjord, a stunning valley where the Scandic mountains meet the Atlantic Ocean. Once down to sealevel, I started to follow the E6 road northwards and the magnificent views just kept coming. The E6, which leads all the way to Kirkenes and the Russian border, is famed for its beautiful surroundings and rightly so. For a biker, it's heaven.

A slightly cold heaven though. The temperatures vary between 5 and 11 C, depending how much the sun can pierce through the seemingly eternal clouddeck. When you're lucky you get a few minutes of direct sunshine and a sudden lift of the spirits. If not, you're stuck with grey clouds, and sometimes rain and mist. In any case, a wild and wonderful landscape of mountains and fjords is always guaranteed, and the ocean nicely colours up the scene.

So at the town of Bardufoss (not much to look at) I decided to try my luck and head westways to Senja island. Senja, like the more famous Lofoten islands to the south, is relatively undeveloped and has some decent wilderness left, in addition to stunning scenery. It made for a long day's ride (10 hours in the saddle) but it surely didn't disappoint. The route to the island boasted the best motorcycling road I've ever seen, magnificent curve after curve with uncomparable views of the mountains, fjords and sea. And Senja itself had that beautiful rugged wildness. A true highlight of this trip.

It's a shame that this highlight was followed by a definite lowpoint. After a tough long ride, I ended up in the middle of nowhere 40 km's from Tromso and the 'hotel' I'd booked turned out to be a delapidated builders shack next to an abandoned stone quarry. To be fair, it was inexpensive. But some places are just not meant to be used as a hotel, and this certainly was such a place. I won't be going into details, let's just simply call it was it was: a rip-off.

Early next morning I rode off to Tromso for a decent coffee and breakfast. Tromso is the biggest town in the Arctic circle, with a busy harbour, the worlds northernmost university and a nice lively center. All in all a good place to stay, so I decided to stick around for a few days and got myself a small apartment. I've travelled over 4000 km's now, so time for a rest.

I visited the Polar Museum, which hosts exhibitions about polar expeditions and discoveries. Because it's situated at the Ice Sea, Tromso has been the starting point of many such journeys. Roald Amundsen, first human to reach the magnetic North Pole and the South Pole and one of the great polar explorers, had his port of call here. So did Fridtjof Nansen, another polar pioneer. I'm actually staying next to the dock where they used to start their expeditions.

The Polar Museum also hosts an exhibition about the Dutch seafarers, who first started exploring Spitsbergen (Svalbard) and the North Passage over Russia in the 17th century. They have several items here from the 'Behouden Huis', the makeshift camp on Nova Zembla where Dutch explorer Willem Barentsz and his crew survived the polar winter. They actually show the pair of dice with which the crew kept themselves busy during those long winter nights. They also show a mummy of a Dutch whale hunter from Svalbard. He probably died of scurvy (scheurbuik) due to lack of vitamin C. I admit it was a bit of shock to see him displayed there, but the Norwegians are not the sentimental type. In the next room they have a display which shows you exactly how they used to kill baby seals by hand.

My passtime for the next day was somewhat more sedate. I took a tour on the Ice Sea (no, no ice yet) on the ship Capella. We were out on the coastline and did some wildlife spotting and fishing. Of course I didn't catch anything. But one of the Chinese tourists did, after which the boatman directly started gutting the fish. This was at the behest of a Chinese guy who liked to see the entrails. Quite a bloody affair, which drove some of the other passengers back to their cabins. Luckily, this all happened AFTER I had my fish soup. Which was wonderful, by the way (the soup that is). Very fresh.
We also tried to go after some whales, but in a way I'm glad we didn't find any...