News
Tales out of School by Anne Cormack
08/07/2010 08:29:00
To hell and back
We spent a couple of hours in Hell during the NTS cruise to Orkney, Shetland and Norway earlier this summer. Never fear, all will be revealed later.
We were aboard Spirit of Adventure, which, as Orkney Today readers may
remember, called at Longhope on May 23. Our first 'taste of Orkney' was,
however, the day before on Rum, when we sat with Steven and Donna
Heddle enjoying a morning coffee in the island hall. For Donna it was to
be very much a working holiday, as she was one of the cruise lecturers.
Over the next fortnight her inimitable ability to bring the past to
life in a humorous and lively way was to prove a hit with all the
passengers.
Once arrived in Longhope there was no question of our doing the
'touristy' things. Having sheltered from the torrential rain in the
lifeboat headquarters and been given a quick, unofficial tour round
them, we then borrowed an umbrella from one of the lifeboat men and
headed uphill to call along our old friend Johnny Pottinger, a stalwart
Orkney View contributor. We had a rare blether with him, and were
delighted to see him looking so well after a recent stay in hospital. In
the afternoon we had to deliver a few books to the Scapa Flow Visitor
Centre at Lyness, but the question was how to get there. The problem was
solved by Billy Hill, who was driving one of the ship's tour groups to
Rackwick. As he had two spare seats left in his bus, he happily allowed
us to hitch a lift as far as Lyness. At the Centre we met up with two
more weel kent faces. John Grieve was busy manning the shop, while
Louise Budge was greeting and chatting to the folk pouring off the tour
buses. After a while the weather had greatly improved , so we said
cheerio to Billy and set off to walk back to Longhope, a big mistake! We
hadn't quite realized the distance involved for our septuagenarian
legs, and to make matters worse after about five miles a damp drizzly
mist descended. Isles folk never let you down, however, and a car which
had passed us, reversed back. The driver, who wasn't even going as far
as the pier at Longhope, said it was no bother to take us there. A big
thank you to the kind owner of vehicle SV53CKF.
If we had a little taste of Orkney by chatting with Steven and Donna in
Rum, then we had an early 'taste of Norway' in Longhope. A Norwegian
yacht was newly berthed there, and the crew told us that they had been
in Orkney for the 17th of May celebrations. They hadn't realized that
Orkney Today and the Orcadian had both featured photos of the 'tog'
(parade), so I went back up the pier to Groat's to buy them papers. One
of the lads had actually carried the leading flag in the 'tog', and was
thrilled to see his photo.
En route to Norway we circumnavigated Fair Isle and were able to see
from a distance the fine new bird observatory built in, and transported
from, Orkney.
With seven ports of call in Norway there is only space here to mention a
few of the highlights. We started off north of the Arctic Circle in
Bodø and, rejecting the official tours , chose to take the service bus
to Saltstraumen, the famous maelstrom, over thirty kilometres away. We
arrived an hour or so after it was at its most spectacular, but it was
still very impressive. Walking up the steep bridge that spans
Saltstraumen, we became aware of a cyclist pedalling behind us, but were
rather taken aback to hear an Orkney voice suggesting that we might
'git oot the wey'. Yes, it was Steven, who had borrowed one of the
ship's bikes and had energetically cycled all the way, while we owld
folks had had to rely on public transport.
And then we went to Hell - and on a Sunday, of all days! We were in
Trondheim, and having been in the beautiful Nidaros Cathedral on a
previous visit, looked for something different. What could have been
more different than going to Hell? It is a little hamlet about half an
hour's train ride east of Trondheim - and is a request stop - of course!
We found no church, no shop selling postcards from Hell for the
amusement of English speaking tourists, it was just an attractive,
sleepy village. We did discover, quite by chance however, amazing rock
carvings from many millennia ago, but there was no guidebook only a
small sign in Norwegian directing us there. Later on board ship you can
imagine the teasing we got from fellow passengers about being allowed
out of Hell!
The highlight of the cruise was literally high. At Skjolden at the far
end of the Sognefjord we were greeted by our friends Inger and Arne from
south of Bergen, friends we first met thanks to ONFA over twenty years
ago. In warm, clear sunshine they drove us up Sognefjellet, above the
snow line, on the highest mountain road in Norway. The views were
incredible, and Inger herself said she had never seen the landscape so
beautiful. On her previous visits it had always been shrouded in mist.
Our last day in Norway was spent in Stavanger, and again we took a short
train journey, to nearby Sandnes. This trip was chosen because it
passed through Paradis (no 'e' in Norwegian), a nice contrast to our
visit earlier in the week to Hell.
Indeed, the whole cruise was paradise from start to finish but it was
also hell - the word in fact means good luck or success in Norwegian!