The last sunset.

We woke up this morning after a night of very heavy rain, the rain had started after I finished fishing and was torrential for a bit throughout he night-according to Joyce anyway. At 7am I woke up, and heard the rain and rolled back over again, no rush this morning. We had a very relaxed start, got a washing done and dried in the superb Kleiva campsite ands had grilled mackerel for breakfast which was a very welcome change to cereal. The boys weren't quite so sure about it and it took a wee while for them to finish, they don't yet realise that some foods are harder to swallow if they are chewed too long or allowed to get cold. They are programmed now to think that cereal is the only thing to have at breakfast time and this can be hard to interrupt, however we all got there in the end and the Omega 3 will do none of any harm.

We set off late morning to explore a little island of Vikna and try and spot the elusive Elk, this proved rather unsuccessful and Joyce is now convinced the road signs are a hoax and its a great big tourism white elephant thought up by the Norwegian tourism board. Elks became extinct here 1000 years ago-until we see one that is......We did however spot for the second time a very large pair of birds away at the end off a field and this time they had young with them, these look like small emu's but are not, we are pretty sure they are Common Crane, I tried to get a little closer but they seem very aware of my presence and moved away, and I also upset another driver as my parking of the van could have been better, lol. The weather was still pretty grey as we passed through Rorvik and left Vikna, we needed supplies so stopped at the Rema1000 at Kolvereid, filled up with diesel and also got the bank also. We headed north east along the quiet and poor quality 771 road, it was however very scenic and the landscape was starting to change, it was becoming more rugged again. We were soon back on the 17 road and heading north to Holm and the ferry over to Vennesund and the start of the Helgelandskysten. We had a scout about the ferry during the 30 minute crossing and then headed north in a convoy of motorhomes cars and lorry, I soon found somewhere to pull in and let them pass, I like to got at my own speed. Unfortunately the clouds were down on the hill and although we could see that again they looked quite dramatic we couldn't see all of them, hopefully we will get some better views tomorrow although it looks like the great weather of the last few days has gone for the time being.

We were heading for somewhere around Bronnoysund for the night, the cheaper the better as we don't

really need anything tonight. We have found a lovely spot at Toft marina, it not free as you pay harbour due's but 150NOK for the night plus a wee bit if you want a shower, or washing machine is not too bad. Tonight we ate the fishcakes gifted to us last night by Rune, they were delicious, I didn't manage to fathom out what exactly was in them but they were very sweet, not unlike lobster, I will need to ask him what was in them.

We are now at a place where sunset is at 12:34am and it rises again at about 1:30am, so for the first time we will have a midnight sun, and almost certainly tomorrow will be the first time that we have no sunset at all. The sunset times change quite dramatically with a small move further north at these latitudes. We are at about 65.5 degrees north and I recon no more than another 50km north the sun will not set. It's quite bizarre, I've never really given much thought to the fact that people living up here have these huge changes in daylight hours between summer and winter seasons. These long summer night must be fantastic and getting to sleep has not been an issue so far, however the winter must be long, dark and cold and the much harder of the seasons to deal with.