Serious Arctic

Back to Lofoten one more time, only on this occasion we flew, clutching a bevy of copies of the new guide. One hour thirty, Manchester to Oslo, one hour fifteen Oslo to Bodø, a three hour drive to Skutvik and a two hour ferry crossing to Svolvaer. It sure beat the usual five day trek to get here. Two months earlier then usual it is all a bit strange, lots of snow on the mountains, a daytime high of 7 degrees at the moment, and the racks that cover the island decked out with cod, looking like miles old grey socks drying in the wind - very pungent!

Sherri caught SIX cod in half an hour fishing in her favourite spot, and we had a pleasant day doing the great classics of Gandalf and Gollum - we had the crag to ourselves, which was great!

Busy Boy!

Three books published in less than two years - and all fat ones at that! Eastern Grit was a rewrite, so that was less of a task but Northern England and Lofoten Rock were done from scratch. Working on two books in parallel was quite an undertaking, but having both volumes roll off the press just a couple of months apart has been great - all three are crackers too! My bookshelf is starting to creak and crack a bit!
What I need now is a bit of a vacation, well at least once I have got the Western Grit rewrite out of the way - should only take about eight months!

Westward Ho!

It was a great journey home. 8 hours 15 minutes from Chamonix to Zeebrugge (570 miles) - the French motoway network is superb. Then it was an overnight ferry to Hull followed by a 70 min drive, and now its all over!
We brought the weather back - as per usual, and apart from heading to Nottingham for the printing Lofoten Rock I have been using the sunshine to get stuck into the photography for Western Grit 2.0. Today was superb in the Chew Valley, we had to wait a couple of hours for the sun to come round onto Dovestone Edge - but we coped!