summer, where art thou?

3 posts ago, i admitted that it's finally summer. a month on, i think autumn has arrived..... in between, i've been on summer holidays, yay! and there even has been a day when not only did i paddle without a cag, but even in short sleeves:



more often, it looked like this though:



or even like this:



and the forecast kept saying partly cloudy.....

nevertheless, the holidays were great! we started in kalle, a super popular climbing spot on lofoten and used the sunshine on our first day for some climbing. unfortunately, the super keen climbing friend who wanted to join us couldn't come and it started raining, so the rest of the holidays was spent paddling! some really great spots like:





kjerkfjorden near reine on the westernmost of the three big islands of lofoten,






the southern tip of the island sneaking past the famous maelstrom, the biggest tiderace up here (we saw 7 sea eagles in 2 minutes from our campsite that night, wow!),




paddling with orcas in øksfjorden thanks to the guiding expertise of jann from lofoten kajakk,






and trollfjorden with hurtigruten (check out the last pic, can you see mr d?? look closely! yep, that's how huge these walls are!).

after a bit over a week on lofoten, we started travelling back north again via vesterålen. if you're in the area, make sure you stop in nyksund, fantastic place!! a former fishing village that has been abandoned over 30 years ago and is now being claimed back by an alternative community.





and then senja, this amazing and underrated island. well, underrated by those who don't know it, and to be honest, one almost wishes that it stays this unknown gem so that it does not get run over by tourists like many places on lofoten.




the first time i have been on senja was 4 years ago and purely land-based. last time, in june, i managed a tiny little bit of paddling in ersfjorden. but the one fjord i really wanted to paddle was mefjorden, which is flanked to the north by those incredible mountains that basically form a wall along the entire fjord. and so we started at the bottom of the neighbouring fjord, paddled towards the headland, camped, and went around into mefjorden the next day. lovely swell, wind and waves kept us entertained until we were well inside the fjord... but then, for a little while at least, the clouds lifted and let us enjoy the full view!





a great paddle and a nice taster for a trip around the entire island :)

less strenuous and less dramatic was the last paddle of the holidays: nice and gentle around sommarøy and hillesøya, camp fire on the beach in the evening, perfect end!







oh, and the first night in the van!! which was a good call because it started raining and raining and raining again sometime in the early morning....... as if the weather was trying to chase me back into the office!


the paddle wagon :)