I like exploring in computer games, music, cricket, drawing and pizza and sharing those with people. Oh and I also inherited the name Sleepydwagonman too ! The site is a work in progress at the moment but it's getting there, features will come in over time !
Been thinking for a while that I should resurface for a bit and say hi … I have to admit to being rather in the bunker at the moment. It’s a combination of things. Most of it is IRL worries, not so much with me (because I don’t do that), more with family. But that’s not something I’ll put here except saying that I’m very worried about someone/somepeople.
Yeah, I do that, I worry more about other people than I do me. And that little monitor voice is telling me I’m getting close to hitting that wall again. That’s perhaps my biggest fear. I keep on going, whatever. But I know that at some point, I’ll deplete all of the reserves and be forced to stop. I have that feeling that the stop is approaching. So I’ll attempt to look after myself so I can look out for others, as limited as that might be.
It does feel more often now that I need to do a change of life style. The barge plan is one of those ideas. It would be a reset, a chance to start fresh. The job is another, I’ve been working for who I work for since the end of 1997. That’s a long time – 26 years ? I’m still committed to getting stuff done … but I’ve been at it for a long time. Perhaps that’s another symptom of being closer to that stop wall.
So that’s me in the bunker again, trying to hang in there again. Being able to escape for another cruise or similar getaway would be good, although the amount of leave I have remaining means that won’t happen until after Easter.
Gosh, that’s more than I intended to go into when I hit Add New Post, this was supposed to be a quiet one about :
What’s in the box !
Something from the Xmas break.
This was bag 1 of 4. Lots of little components to pin together, what will they make ?
The rear frame starts coming together.
There we are with the engine in the back and the start of the steering rack up front. The cog up top is how you steer the wheels. The back wheels are directly connected to the representation of the engine. This time, it’s 4 cams that rotate, which push the brown things up and down. The model is of a Bugatti Bolide, which has a highly unusual W16 engine (wiki linky) which is a pair of V8 (2 banks of 4 cylinders in a V) engines smashed together. I’ve been hunting for a diagram of how it is inside. Nada. Techie geek needs the info !
Another peek with the sills and body frame coming together.
More progress, now with the steering in place at the front and some of the yellow bodywork at the back behind the engine.
More bodywork appears, including the Bugatti signature bumper grille. Nice detail in the pieces representing aerodynamic devices.
Now with engine cover.
Almost there, that’s the front hood bodywork been added and the gull wing doors are on there as well. Last one coming up.
There we go. Last one. They actually look more similar than you’d think you could get with Lego. Nice job by them and a good little kit to put together.
That’s it for me for now. I’ll be hanging in there, although that IRL stress is manifesting in increased levels of pain. I was able to disappear into Little Big Workshop and a couple of others (like the Motorsport Manager mega campaign) but I haven’t done much flying lately. Too much soreness from the shoulder, which is another indication of hidden tension.
We’ll be ok, I suspect you’ll be putting me in your thoughts after reading this, that’s appreciated. I’ll pass them on to the people I’m worried about.
I went quiet for a bit again there, I think I needed a little hibernation time.
Quite.
Let’s see what happened up to the end of last year ? A games post happened. Lots of gaming happened over the Winter break, I kinda disappeared into those … Cruising got as far as Red Island, so I have a few more posts to go there. Plus a bit more about the ship because drama happened on there just before Xmas …
I did have a quick trip up to see the mum, sister and future brother in law. That’ll be good later in the year. And dogs !
Multidog
It was good to see everyone, even if just a short time. I need to make the trip up there a bit more, instead of staying inside what feels like an increasing shell. I’ve come away with some Lego too which will make an appearance in a later post.
That’s a weird increasing feeling that I need to address … the tendency to stay inside the easy zone instead of taking a few steps to get out and about and enjoy things more. There’s a few things to talk about there too … (this post has gone random now, let’s see where it goes !)
I was really glad I managed to get out of the comfort zone to disappear on the cruise for a fortnight. It was a wonderful experience, I learned a fair bit, experienced stuff well out of the zone, had a chance to relax and talk with lovely people among guests and crew.
And then Stuff Happened on the ship just before Xmas. On my cruise, we had a bonus day where we did a boat cruise up and down one of the fjords. It was to delay our North Sea crossing to allow several storm systems to dissipate and the decision worked very well for us. The cruise just before Xmas wasn’t so lucky, the info I’ve picked up from the various sources tells :
There was a sudden rogue wave that built up about as tall as the ship. (MS Maud is 30m above the water). The water was high enough and powerful enough to smash windows on the Bridge :
The Bridge of the ship is the sticky out bit above the letters “MAUD”, with wings that extend out to the full width of the ship (it’s so they can see the full width for docking). It looks like what happened is that the wave smashed the windows, the water got in and wiped out the electronics on the Bridge. (Someone sent a video from the webcam to one of the UK papers, I’m not linking to them). The emergency signal sounded immediately (the water would have tripped main power off) which would have had people rushing to the muster stations where they were in the survival suits for several hours.
Loss of power would have meant the sea determining what happened to the ship, although rescue ships were on the scene to help out and stabilise the situation. Power was restored, ship was able to make her way to Bremerhaven port where they’ll have everything fixed up by the end of the month. Happily no serious injuries reported and it sounds like everyone was well taken care of by the crew.
There are probably a bunch of lessons for Hurtigruten to take out of this, like having an emergency navigation facility available. We can do this ourselves, the geek in me was running through what I’d look to set up : Laptop with basic map software (i.e. Google maps), all smart phones have at least GPS and probably access to the other positioning systems as well and remote desktop to allow what’s on that laptop to be seen from where the emergency controls would be. The difficulty is that the reversionary controls down near the engines are would be inside the ship and phones can’t see GPS signals through all that metal.
I think that would work as a minimum to build on … but it’s something you’d want to have set up prior to going to sea, all that stuff would want licensing and downloads to set up. It’s an In Case thing, not a Response thing. (Like when I downloaded Canada map to the phone ahead of going out there because I would have heavy data restrictions !)
But that’s me going into back up plans mode. What’s important is that everyone among passengers and crew are ok.
After seeing what happened to the ship, would I personally do anything different ? I’d definitely do cruising again. It was a great experience and it was fun to see different places every day. That’s not a thing that happens with hotels, unless you’re traveling between each. The ship did the travel overnight for us.
What I’d change is the time of year. With climate change becoming an increasing factor, the seas are only going to get wilder. It’s pretty much guaranteed that a North Sea cruise in Winter is going to be subject to disruption. So I’d be looking to do something in the Summer instead. Snow is good though. There’s a cruise to south Scandinavia in June that looks tempting.
The “who with?” is a curious question. I like variation and seeing how different companies do things. So on the one hand, I’d do a cruise with a different company to see what the other side is like. But on the other, I’d totally go with Hurtigruten again and the Xmas incident does nothing to change that.
Did I mention random ?
Games happened over the break too. I did fall backwards to an old favourite, Little Big Workshop and therefore my sleep schedule is now a myth.
I picked up Jagged Alliance 3 (tactical battle, strategic liberate a country game) and Star Valor (space thing), which I need to actually play. Rogue Station is a quick one where you build up a little space station and attempt to fend off the enemies. I went back to Aliens Dark Descent which I would thoroughly recommend. It’s a tough tactical game set in the universe of Ridley Scott’s Alien movies. It’s atmospheric, dark and implemented extremely well as a game. Take a peek !
City Game Studio was one that the streamer Shenryyr was enjoying, so I figured I’d look at that one too. And then there’s Seaorama, which has you running a shipping company. I’ve been enjoying that one but have stepped away for a bit because it needs patching. Oh and occasional Motorsport Manager where I’m about to finish one phase of the long campaign because my team is winning all of the races this year, so I’ll swap to another team.
Is he ok ? I don’t think he’s ok.
Yep. Good game, very challenging (even on Normal difficulty) and at times very frustrating. But I’m also enjoying the story and want to know where it goes.
Books also happened over the break, with me finishing the James David Victor series of 9 Star Breaker books. It had a great start building its world … but I don’t think I’ll be back for more. The overarching story kinda fizzled for me towards the end. But it’s always worth reading these to see how the story goes. And it was still a better than what I consistently see from other authors. I wouldn’t count Fuzzy Nation in that, that was another excellent novel by John Scalzi.
(Checks size of scrollbar) Uhoh, post is going on a while so I’ll save some for other posts.
It was a very quiet Xmas period. I’ve been back at work for a bit and diving back into things. Games were good, sleep is a myth, pain levels are … up and down at the moment, enjoyed the books, was great to see the people. Oh and a little Cardiff trip happened where I managed to not spend money on a DSLR or mirrorless camera or on a remote control car.
There’s been a couple of year recap things come out lately, the one from today is from the Steam games store showing what I’ve been up to this year. I figured, hey, let’s share this one.
Games have come a fair way since the early days. The days (hushed voice) of 8 bit microcomputers. I started my gaming on a BBC Micro. Yep, last century, I am old. Oh ! I even did a meme for that a little while ago.
Yep. That fits. Elite Dangerous doesn’t appear in the list because I play it through the Frontier launcher but it would have a position high up here as well. I had a peek at a port of Frontier Elite 2 from 1993 too, might go back to that. What’s Steam say about me ? Here we are :
There’s a bit more detail on the Steam page itself. The stats are heavily dominated by Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms, which is an idler game that you just set up and it runs itself. So that’ll be running on the machine for many hours at a stretch and it’ll be running in the background of other games too. (For some of the stats, the game has to be running). A good few of those sessions will be from troubleshooting mods for games like Skyrim, where the game is launched, has a crash, the mods are tweaked and we try again. The others in that panel are :
Little Big Workshop – it’s a cute factory game where your little gnomeployees will set about building toys with the workshop tools you provide for them. It’s a lovely little game and I’d thoroughly recommend it. It’s a game I keep going back to.
Motorsport Manager – should really have had its time by now with the release of the frankly not good enough F1 Manager games but I still keep going back to this one. It’s a low interaction game, so I can do a race with the tactics and stuff while I’m munching my dinner.
One Military Camp – this one came out this year and it’s a fun little camp building thing, where you manage the one military camp to survive an invasion. It’s your job to set up the army to push back the evil dictator guy.
Trans Road USA – hmm, an ok game, probably not one I’d recommend. It has nice mechanics for setting up the trucking company but the campaign mode gets very silly. Still, I got my value out of it and it kept me amused for a long time.
Like the space trucking game. That one’s from Elite Dangerous, which I have connected to Steam but I just play it through the separate Frontier launcher.
My games seem to have gone more recent than the average, with 70% of them being released in the last 1 to 7 years. The average of that is 52%. Forgetting Idle Champs, the most played style is Management Games, i.e. games where I can mostly sit back and watch and occasionally intervene. 146 of the 306 achievements were from Idle Champions.
Highlights of the year were :
Dredge – a charming little game where you’re a ship captain of a little fishing boat. I’ve mentioned this one before. If you like the spooky vibes from the trailer, it’s definitely worth a look. I enjoyed it.
Skyrim – for the endless variety of mods you can add to it. Plus I like the vibe of being able to set out in a direction and find something new. I still need to finish it.
Deus Ex Human Revolution and Mankind Divided – the pair of Adam Jensen games that leaves everyone who plays them pining for a sequel to finish off the trilogy. They’re set in the grim near future, where cyborg augmentations are being added to our bodies. They’re a good pair of shooter stealth story type games, maybe ageing now but good story games don’t really lose their appeal. I’ll mention another of these in a bit.
Battletech – oh there’s one. Harebrained Schemes (the devs) did a great job with this one and I keep going back to it.
Mars Horizon – was one I played to death and I’ll keep occasionally going back to it. It puts you in charge of a space agency. The sequel due in 2024 will hopefully be a great game.
Old classics – Stellaris and Knights of the Old Republic. I feel these games have aged badly. Kotor was an early game of its type, newer games have made a lot of improvements. Stellaris started great but it lost me along the way with too many patches and gameplay changes. Master of Magic had a good remake but I think it’s stuck too much in the past. I miss the old wizard avatars too.
Fun but I’ve finished with them – Tavern Master, nice little pub builder but I’ve seen all it has. Euro Truck Sim 2 and American Truck Sim, I did enjoy taking the loads to the varied places but … it was hurting my hands to play it. Airport CEO is one where I’ve seen all it has again.
Promising but could be much better – Farm Manager 2021, I got annoyed by the restrictions of a seemingly endless campaign. Pegasus Expedition, this story based strategy game has an interesting take on space Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate but the mechanics let it down. I might go back to it. Final Upgrade, a factory builder but … was finding it a bit tedious.
Mechanic games – Rover Mechanic Simulator is an occasional pleasure where you take Mars rovers apart and fix them. Offroad Mechanic Simulator is a successor to the car mechanic sim games.
What’s left ? Lots !
Games I bounced off but need to give more of a chance to : Solasta, a table top style role playing game. Just can’t get into these. Cyberpunk 2077, a future shooter role player. Mount and Blade II Bannerlord is another new one for me. Sky Haven is an airport manager builder game that I tried the other week but Brain said NOPE. Mechwarrior 5 Mercenaries is like Battletech with the big war robots but this one puts you in the pilot seat. Dorf Romantik and Rogue Tower are both fun little additions.
Stuff I completely and totally bounced off : Ticket to Ride, would be a fun board game with friends, very meh solo. War for the Overworld, Game Dev Tycoon, Two Point Campus (on a free trial).
And that’s them all ! Highlight of the year is definitely Dredge.
YOU CAN PET THE DOG
Quest of the year, game of the year. (Haven’t bought Baldur’s Gate 3 yet)
Hope you enjoyed this little peek into my gaming life for 2023. Back to cruising next post probably 😀
Apologies, been quiet for a while … I managed to pick up bugs that affected me all last week and instead of knocking the bad vibes post off quickly (last post was a grumble and not great vibes), it’s taken a bit of time to summon the finger tapping. Back to cruise stuff !
The middle Monday of the cruise saw us heading off to explore Rødøya island, as we headed back down south again. (Rødøya is going to be a stretch for the old copy/paste so I’m going to call it Red Island from now on !)
Red Island is one of the landmarks going up the Norwegian coast. We went from the ship to the shore in the Zodiac boats as there is no dock or jetty here :
There’s our ship, MS Maud, resting at anchor while we were off having a wander around the island. We got ashore in the small Zodiac boats and I was really impressed with the systems in place to get the guests transferred ashore. In the picture, you’ll see some platforms coming out from the middle of the ship at the waterline. These are tender pits. The boats are driven up alongside the tender pits and you literally step straight from ship to boat, with very little hassle or difficulty.
It’s a system that seems extremely well practiced, it’s secure and safe, with assistance from the crew all the way. Very impressive, especially when you consider that the average age going on the boats is 60+, probably 65+ and I’d include myself in the groups that have some mobility issues. (Getting older)
When we got to shore, it was a similar operation :
Yep, steps ! We went from ship to boat by stepping over the side of the boat, for shore side we went over the bow. The two ladies in yellow and black you see there are Maeva and Holly of the Expeditions team, who were absolute legends tirelessly pulling the boats in and making sure everyone got to the dry bit of the island.
While we were all off taking in the scenery, Holly and Maeva were non stop on the boats pulling them in and helping everyone off. We had some amazing people looking after us on the cruise and these two were brilliant throughout.
Norwegian man tells stories
That’s Magnus, telling us about the mountain. It’s actually one of the trolls, who was too busy arguing to see the sun come up … and now the troll is one of the navigation landmarks on the coast. Magnus was great, he’d tell us about the myths and legends and totally true stories about Norwegian history.
It’s a rich country for culture and they’ll surprise you. They’ve been a subject nation to one of Denmark, Sweden or Finland for so much of their history but now, with North Sea oil bolstering them, they’re fully independent. The country doesn’t actually need the oil for energy, they have ample hydroelectric power from the landscape. They’ve been very smart in turning the proceeds into a rainy day bank and it’s made sure they can stand on their own. And they’re also extremely humble with it too, they haven’t been changed by the oil wealth.
I’d thoroughly recommend visiting, it’s a lovely country and the people are very welcoming.
Norwegian man makes fire
And that’s Peter, who was really fun to listen to when he was telling us about his country. Very proud fellow, lovely guy, with a great humility. It was a pleasure to be around Peter, Magnus, Holly and Maeva and the others in the team, Geraldine the photographer, Fran the antarctic scientist, Emile the organiser and all of the others who were a bit more background but who made sure everything went incredibly smoothly.
After a little wander, it was time to head off again as the sun was setting. It was about this time in the cruise that we were starting to get warnings of very heavy weather coming through with multiple storm systems starting to gather together to have a fight where we were looking to pass through the North Sea on our way home.
(I can feel my shoulder getting a bit sore again so just Red Island today)
Red Island was a lovely little interlude on the trip, away from civilisation. I had big feelings of trepidation about going on the boat transfer but a big part of me was going “You will not get the opportunity to do this again for a long time, DO IT” and that part won. Just like booking the cruise in the first place, I’m very glad I let that part of me win over the overcautious side that likes to hide away a bit too much.
This was also when we came back across the Arctic Circle, pretty much exactly at sunset.
There was a bit of a race to get there, with a German cruise ship steaming across a bit faster than us. Bit too much of a hurry, needs to chill out and enjoy the milkshakes some more :-D. We got to the landmark just as the sun was fully going down.
Not a great picture but the best of the series. That’s the monument which marks the boundary of the Arctic Circle. We didn’t see it on the way up (passed in the night I think) but it was good to see it at dusk with the fading light.
And that’s where we’ll leave Norway for this post.
I mentioned bugs … I also fell up the stairs (oops). The bugs weren’t too serious but I stayed working from home with sniffles on Monday and by Tuesday, didn’t have much of a voice available. But they’re mostly gone now, pretty much all better. I’m feeling the aftermath of tripping up the stairs though. I basically missed the last step and almost faceplanted myself on the landing. Oh well.
I’ve been feeling the damage in my wrists and shoulder. They basically took the brunt of me going thud at the top of the stairs. Didn’t feel it much at the time (was about to sleep half the weekend to get rid of the bugs) but the wrist is a bit sore now. But it still works so I don’t think there’s any permanent damage.
Time to hit post, listen to Tashnarr learning guitar Rocksmith (linky) and head back into the latest book. It’s The Hollow Places by T Kingfisher, not too sure what to make of it so far but T Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon) does write lovely, very readable books that steadily draw you in with the characters, style and steadily unfolding story.
I kinda got out of the habit with the blogging since I got back on shore ! Don’t worry, the cruise posts will start up again next time, I just need to talk about some after cruise stuff … and maybe get back to a little cruisey summary too for some good vibes at the end.
This is skipping ahead a little bit with cruise stuff but the not too spoilery summary is : storms happened ! They were looking pretty serious, so our return was delayed a day with that day being spent sheltering in a fjord. More on that in a future post. But it did mean that instead of me returning on Saturday and having a sleep day on the Sunday, we got back on Sunday and then I was up the road again for a car service on Monday before restarting work on Tuesday.
I’ll be either for a bit of quiet over the coming weekend.
The car service is drawing a bit of a rant actually … It could well be Strike 3 for the Lexus organisation. They make wonderful cars but I’ve had them delivered with pre-delivery defects that in two cases, should have been picked up in the 150 point pre delivery quality and safety inspections they talk about for the used cars.
The least bad one was the IS with the battery terminal that popped off leaving me with a dead car incident. I think this would have happened as a consequence of the cars probably being shipped (by ship) with the batteries disconnected … and then all the predelivery configuration gets done and the battery’s connected. It was just bad luck that it wasn’t tightened up enough, but also careless.
The serious one was my last car, I think it was shipped with a fault in the back suspension which led to massive understeer and excessive body roll. This would have been picked up in a test drive and it would have been a factory defect. It also wasn’t picked up in two services.
And I got a £700 service bill for my latest car. The extra cost was for wheel alignment and a new tyre because the old one had excessive wear due to the poor wheel alignment. Red’s a 68 plate car, which means it was registered in the second half of 2018. When a UK car is 3 years old, it has to start having annual road worthiness checks, which is how stuff like bald tyres and faulty wheel alignment get discovered.
So when it comes to having a car delivered 3 months after one of these checks, with faults like that … you could call me rather ticked off about it. I don’t think it was anything I’d done post delivery, I can’t remember whacking anything. (Although I had another bout of covid not long after getting the car) Especially as it had the wobble vibration kicking in between 35 and 50mph which is indicative of either alignment or balancing. (Or a faulty wheel bearing)
Yeah, I’m decidedly unhappy about it. But it’s not something to immediately change the car about, like what it was with the Blue car with suspected suspension fault and the Silver one which had a power steering fault which was also skipped over in a service. My impression of both those was pretty much “Ok, you’re not finding and discovering these obvious faults, so I’m not going to tell you about them as part of the negotiations for me changing to the next car.”
This might be giving a bad impression of the brand though … The 6 Lexii I’ve had so far have been fantastic cars. Their drive by wire behaviour fits exactly the behaviour I want from the cars I drive. I like to be able to settle into a chilled out essentially autopilot for cruising, with the option of going very quick when I need to. The CT200h (aka Posh Prius) is on the low side for power for me (10 sec to 60, 134bhp system power) but when you ask it to, it cheerfully gives you everything it’s got. And what it had was far more effective at getting down the road quickly than the performance Focus ST170 I had before.
The toys are great too. I’d like to keep going with the brand, except they’ve caught the marketing urge to move everyone into SUVs … which is not something that I can support. They get a lot of things right though, with no design stupidity like you’d get with Ford or dodgy electronics which you’d have with the French cars. Or cars which just disintegrate like certain other EU cars, cars which have special modes to cheat emissions and economy figures, or cars which are excessively difficult to repair by design.
Toyota (and Lexus) make excellent cars. Maybe it’s a Corolla next.
Book stuff ! I read two books while off on the holiday :
Erebus by Michael Palin. It’s tagline is that it’s the story of a ship. Essentially, two ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. They were special Napoleonic War ships, with the war ending before they could actually do their purpose. So after being mothballed for a while, visionary people saw their potential as extreme exploration ships with them being dispatched to the Antarctic and later the Northwest Passage. This book is the story of the ships and what we know of their expeditions. It’s well worth a peek as a look into life on the ships and the discoveries that were made when so much of the map was Terra Incognita with “Here Be Dragons” labels on it.
It was a bit of a slow one though, perhaps a bit too much in there and it felt like a bit of a slog. Still worth checking out though.
Next up was Winter World by A G Riddle. This one’s set in a near future Earth, which is becoming steadily colder. It’s like an Ice Age is coming but it’s not from planetary conditions, it’s ALIENS blocking out the sun. Good book too and it sets up a trilogy. I’ll be looking forward to reading the next two in a while when the book 2 is on offer. (Bought book 3 in a 99p offer)
Ref the cruise though, there will be more posts with pictures to come there but the quick summary is :
It was a Hurtigruten Expeditions cruise on MS Maud. She’s a small cruise ship accommodating around 300 guests. Cozy. The crew were amazing, making it a lovely experience from start to finish. The expeditions team were fun, super motivated, friendly people with an infectious spirit that got us massively looking forwards to what was coming up to see. And Norway supremely delivered on that promise of good things to see.
I’d thoroughly recommend them, when I do more cruising (and that’s a definite), I’ll be looking at Hurtigruten again. You see cruise ship and you think Party Boat. It was a fun atmosphere but it was much more about the getting out there and seeing great things than a dress up for dinner party ship. Just what I wanted and what I didn’t realise I needed.
Economical too, I was able to book less than 5 days before the sailing date with a nice little discount and … there is no solo traveller supplement like pretty much everything else applies to the cost of going away. The atmosphere on board totally supported solo travelling as well. You’d be placed with other people in the main restaurant for food but the guests were lovely too and meal conversations were very pleasant. I could have picked up a collection of great new friends on the trip. (I hope some of you remember me and are reading this – you’re amazing and made the trip much better !)
Disclosure note time – I paid fully for the cruise, the only freebies were what every traveller with them gets : free coffee, cookies, wifi, food, selected expedition things. There was absolutely no nickel and dime behaviour here (like you might remember me complaining about with Novotel)
It was a very rewarding, informative, pleasant, educational (camera, science, people) trip. And it was the getting away from the world that I desperately needed, even though I didn’t know ho much I needed it.
Last message ? Sometimes we need to get away from the world for a little while and do something different. The world can get you down. I hope you all get that chance to escape from it for a little while. I was having lots of fun out there and I hope the posts here about the trip and the pictures I was sending around the various parts of the internet brought out smiles.
Last post from on board ship today. It’s a case of LAND AHOY on each side of the ship as we start making our way up the Thames. But that’s something for a later post. It’s been a wonderful cruise, talking to the other guests has been lovely and we’ve been incredibly well looked after by the crew. I’ll definitely be doing another cruise holiday at some point when I can see how to fit it in and it’s almost certain to be with Hurtigruten again.
Saturday saw us heading into Tromsø, which is a larger Norwegian city set on an island in the fjord, with additional settlement spreading into the mainland on either side. We had a little look around the city itself with a little bit of scouting in the local souvenir shops. But it was a little limited for me because ….
HUSKIES
Yep. I didn’t sign up for many of the additional trips but I didn’t want to miss the visit to the Huskies. And it was a magical couple of days too. The Huskies were just one evening, we’ll get back to Sunday later. We visited a farm where they breed and train up the dogs, taking the best ones into the racing team and looking after the rest of them. Whether that’s using them as sled dogs or looking after them until they can be adopted by loving homes.
And they’re lovely dogs too.
That’s one of the puppies. Very curious, very bouncy, totally acclimatised to the conditions. Ready for running across the snow, very happy to have all of the attention they can get.
And there they are, ready to run. And run fast. No rides for us because the snow isn’t old enough yet to support guest safety but it was a definite case of feeling the excitement in the air as the dogs were getting ready to do what they were born and bred for.
And then we disappear back inside a hut and enjoy a warm fire, a bit of cake and some hot chocolate. Best trip of the cruise. And I have a few more pictures too, including a couple that went to Geraldine, expedition photographer. We’ll be getting all of her stunning photographs later (I’m in some !) and I’ll be sure to drop the link when we get it.
And then there was Sunday. The morning was in Narvik and one thing about this trip has been educational about Second World War history. Terrible things happened all of the world, Norway definitely wasn’t spared. We don’t hear enough about it … The northern parts of Norway above Narvik were essentially Scorched Earthed as the Germans made their way out and that’s just one of the terrible things. It’s well worth educating about it, more than I’d want to go into here. And it does make you ask the question : we seemed to be winning the Battles of Narvik and pushing out the Germans. And then we abandoned the town to try and protect France. What would have changed if we’d held that northern flank of Norway ? That’s a definite one for the alternate historians.
Yep. Check out the Norwegian side of the WW2 story, it’ll be illuminating.
And then there was the continuing transit south … With a break in the overhead conditions too ! I have to admit, the pictures are much better than I could see. The assembled Northern Light Hunters were limited to seeing a grey on the horizon as our eyes couldn’t make out the lights.
I’d mostly figured out how to get good pictures out of the Pixel 4 camera by this stage and then had a bright idea involving the camera timer … A guess at a good spot, a tap of the timer, a gentle saunter across to the rail and there we go.
This was about the last chance we got (except maybe last night, faintly) to see the Northern Lights, the remaining nights saw the clouds coming in a bit too much. It was an amazing sight to see though, definitely a Bucket List thing if you do those.
There we go. Last one for now, this was just after midnight on the same day. It’s the Pixel 4 camera again on a tripod, with me gently sauntering over to the rail to do the timer selfie. This was the best spot on board for these, there wasn’t enough incidental light on the flight deck to pick up the grinning idiot.
I should probably hit post now and start to pay more attention, docking soon !
I’ll do more steady catching up later. Tilbury Docks are very nearly in sight …
We spent Friday last week at the top of the world. Well, nearly 😀 The northernmost point of this cruise is Alta, at 69 degrees 58 minutes North. It’s quite far North. Sadly not much in the way of Northern Lights for most of us (too cloudy) but the group that went out and about did catch some good lights. There will be more about that in a later post …
More about that little one later. Actually, let’s rewind a bit further and give another special mention to photographer Geraldine, who is part of the expedition crew. I mentioned Orcas earlier, let’s see if this Facebook Post Linky works … Hopefully that’ll take you to a page with pictures of whales on.
It was good seeing the pod of Orca swimming alongside us for a little while. I was able to catch sight of them but wasn’t anywhere near fast enough to get the camera up in time for a picture. However, there should be plenty behind that link. Plus the MS Maud page has more of the various pictures from this fortnight’s cruise. Go take a peek :-D.
Norway has waters that are warmed up by the same Gulf Stream that keeps Britain warm, so the Orca and other whales like to visit.
(Note – there’s a very sleepy vibe going on in the Explorer Lounge at the moment …)
So – Alta !
Alta grew into a city a few years ago, which also meant they needed a bigger church too. Cue the Northern Lights Cathedral of the picture. Good place, it also serves as a community centre as well.
The textured sides that you might be able to make out in that picture are actually titanium plates, which are slotted together to provide the shell of the building. They reflect the mood of the environment around the building. For our visit … that meant grey and cloudy :-D. Oh well, no Northern Lights for the town that day. But there are several microclimates around Alta, so the group that went out and about hunting for clear skies were given a treat.
However, we had a treat of a different kind … With the explorer group going for a building of an impromptu snow person. Norway doesn’t seem to go in for building snow people. Perhaps it’s because the trolls don’t like the snow people and bop them all on the head while everyone is sleeping. It’s another curious difference between Norway and the UK.
There we go. Almost complete. I’ve been staying quite wary of my back and legs, so I was just doing the spectating thing and taking pictures. (it’s a bit cold, I’ve been needing to defrost a lot and conditions were treacherous)
And there we go ! The members of the expedition crew (not searching for Northern Lights) proudly presenting their new snow person. I think it might be still there too (this was from Fri 17th) and also gained a friend.
As I type though, I’m really struggling to stay awake 😀 (It’s a very quiet, chill, sleepy vibe up here in the Explorer lounge) So it’s time for me to retreat to the cabin after taking just one more picture of a lovely sunset.
(I’m cheating this was Monday 20th). Later everyone, have a wonderful rest of the day.
This could be another race post today, there’s a tomorrow’s activities thing starting in 50 minutes from this point in the post :-D.
We spent Thursday morning in Svolvaer, which is one of the traditional fishing towns on the coast of Norway. There isn’t so much fishing now due to the quota system, which is aimed at maintaining the fish stocks. Not too much fish caught, to balance the rate at which the fish can replenish their numbers.
We had a good little wander around the town, with 3 talks on the cod fishing ways, the fishing industry and the evolution of the nature of the local population. It’s been very interesting listening and learning about this part of the world. And I can never resist a little tall tale as well.
That was an interesting and curious little art feature on top of the little hill by the church. Or was it a coastal defence, designed to keep the fisher people from the South of Europe away ? Because Norway isn’t part of the EU, they can set their own rules for fishing limits, which means the fishing people from Portugal and Spain are banned. But if they get too close …
Boom. Not even boots remaining. In the distance there are the racks on which the cod is put to dry out after being caught, a process which takes months. But it leads to preserved cod which will last for years.
We arrived to quite closed in cloudy conditions but things cleared a bit later to reveal some spectacular hills behind the town.
Very pretty.
But also time to move on further up the coast and along the way ….
Spooky
This is the entry to the Trollfjord, which we reached at just after 7pm. Very spooky, very dark, with the ships lights illuminating the sides of the fjord which were perhaps within 5 metres of the ship on each side. Lovely sight.
Very tight confines in there. We were able to get in there, turn around and come out again by virtue of the Azipod system the ship has. Instead of propellers on shafts, an Azipod is a propeller that can turn through 360 degrees. It allows the ship to turn in place, which let us get into and out of the fjord.
A very beautiful little corner of Norway that we were quite lucky to be able to visit. Oh ! There was also …
I’ve now seen the Northern Lights ! We’re also above the Arctic Circle now so it’s definitely a case of wrapping up warm when we venture outside. We were greeted by this fellow, after a rousing cheer to wake him up.
NJORD
That’s King Njord, who led the Arctic Circle crossing ceremony on Wednesday morning, where crew and guests were (optionally) baptised with a spoonful of codliver oil followed by a “drink” of water. And by “drink”, we mean a bucket down the back of the neck.
I’m sad to say that I kinda hid when the baptising was occurring, mostly because my back has been giving me the warning signs to tell me to look after it better in case the pain levels increase to where I’m going to have to restrict the movement even more. But it also let me disappear to the stern of the ship where …
Sun says hi. We’ve been treated to some lovely sunrises and sunsets as we go up and down the coast. It’s a fairly extended period too, so that picture was at 0935 and it was already pretty light outside at before 0900 when we passed this lighthouse.
That was from Wednesday morning and at time of writing, we’re headed past glacier covered hills on our way into Alta. But that’s for a later post as I catch up more. Alta is a northern town/city and we’ll be visiting their Northern Lights cathedral. I’ll have the old (yep, the one I’ve owned for 7 days) tripod with me and we’re hoping for clear skies so we can see more of …
That’s from my Canon Ixus 265 as I steadily figure out how to get the best out of it. I think I’ve learned a fair bit so far. One of the expedition team is the lovely Geraldine, expert photographer. While there isn’t much scope to do much with my little Canon camera, Geraldine’s tips to us all have pointed me towards the settings needed to start getting pictures like that on the little camera (high ISO, long exposure and the tripod is coming in handy too). And I’ll hopefully get more aurora pictures soon.
Geraldine’s excellent tips and advice also let me figure out what was going wrong on the more automatic settings … like a night setting with ISO 100. ISO is a sensitivity setting. Lower settings are less sensitive, so pointing the camera at an aurora at ISO 100 and long exposure time was just giving me a black screen. The picture above is ISO 1600 and I have another click to ISO 3200 to try. I have some decent pictures of one of the bridges that we passed under that may make it to a later post.
But one real start with the aurora is …
Cor. Looks good doesn’t it. That’s from the Pixel 4 mobile phone camera in its night sight mode. It’s given me some spectacular looking views of Trollfjord. That’s on an automatic setting, on a tripod and I’m really impressed with how that one has turned out. Maybe a bit over exposed at ISO 5877 but I really like the picture, especially having the ghostly figures below.
I’ve really enjoyed seeing the lights and also learning how to get the best out of the tools to capture the memories of them.
If you’re curious about the equipment, the compact camera is a Canon Ixus 265 and I’m now doing the night shots in P for Program mode, which lets me open up the ISO settings. It’ll be sitting on a tripod for these shots and I bought the cheap £30 National Geographic tripod. It’s simple, does the job, although I have trapped fingers a couple of times with the smart phone attachment. (It’s a springloaded thing with sharper edges than need be). The mobile phone camera is a Pixel 4, running the automatic settings of Night Sight.
I might be steadily catching up with posts. Since King Njord gave us his blessing yesterday morning, we visited the pretty fishing town of Svolvaer, with a longer visit coming up to Alta today. Pictures later ! For now though, I’m wondering how they fit everything they need to into this boat …
That’s not processed or squished at all … She really is that short and is packing a lot in there. She’s the fishing vessel Skolmen and is just 27.4m long. (Marinetraffic link)
The port there is Svolvaer, with drying racks for cod visible in the upper right. More about Svolvaer later. Sadly no souvenir because I forgot to bring my wallet with me … oops :-D. I’ve seen several Orca as well this morning but sadly wasn’t fast enough to bring the camera to bear.
It’s probably getting time for food though before a couple of activities prior to the ship coming into Alta. More on the weekend :-D. Have a lovely day everyone.
Last post was a bit quick … I didn’t have long before disappearing off for another of the excellent and informative lectures that we’ve been having throughout the cruise so far. We’ve been hearing about the history of Norway, the culture and the places we’re heading in to visit.
So yesterday, we headed off in to Bergen for the morning and most of the afternoon. That’s Bergen in the picture above, with us sharing the port with a series of research vessels and offshore supply vessels.
You’ll have to forgive me getting a bit spotterish about the ships. In the picture above, Maud has her portside (with the doors) alongside the dock, with her pointing outwards. The 5 vessels on the dock to the left are all offshore supply vessels. I think the yellow is for Viking, the blue and white is for Maersk and I didn’t catch the other ones. They all have the really tall wheelhouse where all of the power and crew areas will be. The deck behind is open and flat (for containers) and they’ll usually have a massive crane on board as well.
That picture is from the top of the Fløibanen funicular, which took us to a viewpoint above Bergen. And a lovely bit of walking around a nature area.
May include goats.
This is what happens when the trolls are going home drunk, fall off the top of the hill and are still there in the morning.
The troll was guarding the way to the lake above. Unusually for Bergen, we have brilliant sunshine and clear skies all day. Possibly the only day in the year that’ll happen. A good respite after the bad conditions we had coming across the North Sea on Monday.
And that’s one of Bergen’s streets, looking down the hill from the entrance to the lower funicular station. Lovely place. And the ladies in the cafe at the top were also happy, smiling and I suspect quite amused at all of us cruise people coming through. But in a chuckling with us way. The best way.
Bergen is also being a victim of climate change and is being affected by how the world and landscape are changing around us. That’s illustrated by the Brygge houses :
The houses weren’t built that way, with the lean … they’ve moved over time, with active preservation and renovation efforts ongoing to hopefully keep them there despite the land moving underneath them.
Being on the harbour, they are of course somewhat of a tourist trap. But also filled with a mix of lovely little items plus more practical winter weather gear. Something nice to remember Bergen by. Like …
I got a boat, on a boat. That was only £16 (I think, will check in a bit to see what the exchange rate adjusted amount is). And there were many more things like that, I was very curious about the varied little figures that could have been turned into a chess set. Actually, there’s another boat on the boat … a not-quite-Lego but you get the idea representation of the Hurtigruten ships. I am very tempted.
And I’ll leave you with a bit more temptation there …
That was lunch yesterday after 14,000 steps around Bergen. It was delicious and definitely filled a spot. If you’re feeling hungry looking at it, I am too :-D.
There’s been aurora sightings announced though so … (hits publish buttons)
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