We arrived in Norway yesterday, flying from heathrow to Oslo, and then on to Tromso. We picked up our car, a Mazda 6 estate, loaded it to the gunwales, and set of in search of a supermarket to buy some provisions. To British eyes Norwegian supermarkets are strange things. None of us knew any words of Norwegian, so a lot of our purchases were real lottery tickets. Beer is unbelievably expensive. We managed to fill the trolley with £200 of provisions, found some space in our already packed car for them, and set off for our destination, Magic Mountain Lodge in Lyngseidet.
Accommodation is hard to find in Lyngen. Google Lyngen and you’ll only find the Lyngen Lodge, a very upmarket hotel which runs ski tours in the area but charges £3000 per person for the privilege. We ended up staying cottage complex which caters for tourists on fishing holidays in Nord Lenangen. At the 11th hour we heard about the Magic Mountain Lodge, but couldn’t find any information about it, although we heard that the owner, Patrik, is very helpful. Well, I can tell you that the Magic Mountain Lodge is an excellent base for ski touring, and that Patrik is indeed very helpful. Despite not staying in his hotel, or giving him any more of our custom apart from four beers, he spent 30 minutes with us talking about conditions, routes, the weather, and other useful local knowledge. He also offered us four portions of snus, the tobacco bag you put next to the gum, and not wanting to offend we accepted, a decision we all immediately regretted.
Reluctantly we left the friendly and welcoming Magic Mountain Lodge, and headed for our fishing cottage, which turned out to be lovely, and went to bed dreaming of skiing.