Narvik

This particular 7am seemed like the earliest yet but at least the sun was shining (actually it hadn't stopped doing that the whole time we were on the island)! Roberto and I said 'Au revoir' and I set off for the port which was sadly over a mile away. The boat was waiting for me and once aboard my shoulders thanked me for the brief 3 and a half hours off before Narvik.

With my shoulders fully recouperated I disembarked at Narvik without realising that the railway station was well over a mile and a half away! My shoulders groaned at me but played their part in the next 45 minutes admirably. The station was all but deserted so I ditched my bag in a locker for a reasonable fortune and headed back to town.

As luck would have it (for once) the cable car, that I had suspected was closed, actually opened for business within the hour so I made for base camp and took the 7 minute journey to the top. The view was amazing, fantastic, stupendous and therefore not quite worth the price of the ticket! I bought a small Lion bar for £1.50 and decided there and then to get the hell out of Norway before I ran out of cash! The descent was welcome and after a short visit to the library for my 'evolution given' right to 30 minutes of Internet access I headed back to the station where the screeching brakes of the Swedish iron ore trains deafened the waiting passengers.

After a short wait, my train, which was supposed to be my home for the next 20 hours, arrived on time and my 3 berth sleeper carriage was all mine until the next station 2 hours away. I say 'supposed to be' as it didn't actually make it that far before a technical fault caused us to be transferred to coaches but that didn't really matter much as the most breathtaking part of the entire journey had already taken place, the dramatic half mile ascent to the Norweigan/Swedish border village of Riksgränsen. The hour on the coach was uneventful and we arrived in the mining town of Kiruna more or less on schedule but on a train with a distinct lack of sleeper coaches!

Boden was to be our next stop and a final change to our new train allowed me to meet my single cabin partner for the rest of the journey. A nice chap who's English was sadly only slighty better than my Swedish so I smiled politely and made my way to the restaurant carriage to see first hand how much cheaper Swedish beer is. Not much! I shared a table with a very nice doctor from Boden who upon learning I was English, apologised for Swedish beer! I said (quite honestly in fact) that it was very nice but he remarked that as a Brit, surely I must hate anything other than good old British ale. He went on to explain something about the way in which Swedes get their alcohol and that the state owned system allows anyone to order anything from anywhere and it will be delivered the next day. "Fancy that" I said as I opened my second bottle of Swedish lager, "I bet nobody orders Blue Nun".