Nordkapp with rooftop tent 2022 – part 3

Returning from Nordkapp

In the previous chapter we reached Nordkapp, here it’s time to head back south.

Nordkapp with rooftop tent 2022 – part 2

The plan was simple: get to Alta with a rush, go to bed and explore from the morning. Unfortunately, the weather, which had spoilt us so far, decided to remind us of itself. We conjured up a nice place for dinner and overnight just before Alta. It was raining. As much as it can rain in Norway. Our rubber cloaks fairly rescued us, but our shoes were soaked through. Ahead of the facts – our transport basket under the bonnet worked perfectly as a shoe dryer.

Alta

People come to this town mainly to see the prehistoric cave paintings. It is the only prehistoric relic in Norway, but also incidentally has the most drawings/ engravings among similar sites in Europe. On the flat stones, between 7,000 and 2,000 years back, local hunters carved illustrations into their daily lives. You can see what they believed in, how they hunted and generally – how they lived. When the Alta archaeological site was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1985, three thousand images had been identified. Since then, a second as many have been discovered. The water level has decreased over the years, so the oldest drawings are at their highest.

Some time ago, in order to make the works of prehistoric artists more visible, the recesses in the stone were coloured. This method is now being discarded, leaving the sites in their natural state.

The tour lasts, depending on our own pace, about two hours. There is a basic and an extended trail available. All this with an audio guide by ear.

Attentive observers will notice cloudberries growing in the area.

The museum is very full of photographs and artefacts taken out of the Tirpitz, and a model showing how big and menacing she was in her heyday. The introduction to the tour begins with a documentary.

Hytte?! Hytte!

I think we finally made it to the legendary Hytte cottage. In a clearing in the forest there was a wooden house with benches, a fireplace, and on the table stood beer and Czech schweppes. In the storeroom next to it – wood for the fireplace. A few hundred metres away – an elegant and clean sanitary pit.

We didn’t sleep in the lodge, but we took the opportunity to make food in quite civilized conditions. We took the Schweppes, left the Profi soups.

The only negative, and an obvious one for the area, was the omnipresent mosquitoes. They were dramatically high in number, but we saved ourselves with Mugga and they didn’t eat us. We did, on the other hand, eat the berries straight from the bush.

We simply drove through Oulu, heading south. We had already visited the city before. Now we just visited points of interest on the basis of, a glance, here and there. Mainly to give the girls a refresher on places they remember mainly from photographs.

There is no point in writing about how we drove and drove. However, this was part of the plan for this time. This does not change the fact that we used the time to read up on the places we visited and put our knowledge in order.

We stayed overnight in the car park at the forest museum and drove on.

Mobilia

In 2021, IntSaab was supposed to be held in Finland, but unfortunately, it was cancelled due to the pandemic. And one of the places to visit for this event was the Mobilia museum.

The museum consists of several parts. In the first, we saw vintage Finnish utility motor vehicles (buses, motorbikes, trucks). The next exhibition puzzled us, for an automotive museum. It was about how cars are pointless. :> The next section is about the development of Finnish automobiles, including videos of car fairs.

We were most interested in the section dedicated to Finnish motorsport, with an emphasis on the WRC and Flying Finns.

In a separate building there was an exhibition that we didn’t seem to understand. Inside were 10 Italian cars and others, in our opinion, random and arranged without a specific key. But they were sponsored by a garage key manufacturer. Maybe someone reading this knows what it was all about?

Lasse

Being in Finland, it is a pity not to meet our friend Lasse.

Lasse is a distinctive figure in the Saab world. A mysterious Finnish-Estonian parts and car dealer. According to legend, he measures his SAAB possessions not in units, but in the hundreds of square metres of space they cover. And somehow, strangely enough, he likes us. Every time we are in his surroundings, we have the opportunity to go for coffee together.

Previously, on the way to Nordkapp, we also met up with him. Because of his age and experience, he is a fascinating man. Knowledgeable about the European economic situation. We drank coffee, discussed geopolitics, post-pandemics, and current affairs from the perspective of the Polish and Finnish people, looked at a handy stash of SAABs, handshakes, and souvenir photos and went on our way.

To catch the morning ferry in time, we decided to spend the night in Helsinki. A walk in the harbour area of the city is a must on the departure list. We already had to forfeit our torches, as it was dark. Also, it was time to reset the biological clock, to go to bed at a reasonable time. We slept in a car park near the zoo. A very good place. It was quiet and safe. We weren’t the only ones who got the idea, so we didn’t cause a sensation.

We made it to the ferry in time, but note that the ferry port is located in the city centre.

It is possible, for example, to hit a traffic jam just before the exit to the queue, due to a rubbish truck that just happens to be at that place and time. The ferry journey was smooth and without incident.

We landed in Tallinn and headed straight for Latvia. We took a hint from a friend and changed our route. Furthermore, we drove on side roads, parallel to the motorway, not among the lorries, but among the forest.

Riga

We had a coffee appointment with Ingus in Riga for 18:50.

Ingus is our colleague, whom we could also meet during the Warsaw Youngtimers, as well as the Latvian IntSaab. Ingus also has his fingers in the organization of the rallies. We spent a nice time talking about Latvia, Russia, Latvian Russians and Russian Latvians, Ukraine, geopolitics, and rallies. We mentioned the previous meeting in Warsaw.

After Ingus, we drove around Riga some more, had a look at the market halls, the bread house, which looks like a brother to Warsaw’s Palace of Culture, and finally drove up the TV tower (it’s worth going up, it was too late for us now).

Originally we had planned to sleep at a campsite in Riga, but we figured we could actually drive a bit further. That’s how we finally ended up at a car park near the village of Birja, already in Lithuania.

Lithuania

When we arrived there was a meeting of the local BMW and sportswear fan club. All we had to do was walk up, give a small bottle of alcohol and tell them they were cool – after a series of pats on the shoulders they went away and didn’t disturb the peace.

The car park was next to several tourist attractions, with maps, information boards, tables and something that was supposed to be a toilet, but in our cultural circles is not. That is, a room with a hole in the floor. Well, no. There was a bird darting about at night, a gentleman with a lawnmower turned up in the morning. And then there were more tourists, that was the signal to get out of there.

Since we were in Lithuania, cepelins were a must, if only for breakfast. Near Panevezya, we have a favourite bar. Not only are they good (and exactly as they should be), but one weighs half a kilo. Yummy.

Soup with cream served cold (Lithuanian, mind you, served accompanied by boiled potatoes on a separate plate), soljanka (the first time we’ve ever encountered one so thick) and the obligatory fried bread, with cheese. And to top it all off with “pig jellies”, i.e. smoked pig’s ears. And cold bread sour. Of course, we weren’t able to devour it in its entirety and the 4 cepelins went on with us, in the storage compartment under the bonnet.

And then Poland and the direction home. Along the way, of course, we planned where we would go next time, but we kept quiet about it.

The trip in numbers

• 1 Nordkapp
• 11 days
• 5500 km
• 7 countries
• 40+ reindeer (we didn’t bother to count from a certain point)
• 1 rainy day

Conclusions

With every trip to Nordkapp we feel more and more at home there. The first time we were there with a tent, and it seemed like the achievement of a lifetime. Then we went in winter – whoooo, what a challenge! Nordkapp is an interesting destination, but you can see a year-on-year increase in the number of tourists wanting contact with undisturbed nature, who violate that nature by their presence. Car parks full of cars of people who have come to a crowded place dreaming of solitude. It will be interesting to see what it will look like in a few years’ time; we hope there will be no Chinese souvenir stalls or teddy bears to take photos with.