Loen

 

Today was the day when we had to make a choice. Face our fears and opt for "danger", or wimp out and stick with comfort. This screen capture from the ship's location readout shows our anchor point at the head of Nordfjorden. There is no pier here. Passengers wishing to explore the town of Loen, or join any of the excursions, have to "tender" to shore.

Tendering looks like this...

...and my reaction to it looks like this:

Mate. That's a nope too far. And then at the shore you have to step out... onto a vertical tire. So we didn't take the skylift to the top of Mount Hoven (one of the things we'd said we would do), or go on the glacier walk along the Briksdal Glacier, or join in with the snowshoe trekking, or the history walk (none of which were on our wish list, in case you were wondering).

There's only one other day where the need to jump in and out of a rubber boat will curtail our options. During the morning, Expedition Team leader Julia tried to persuade Nikki on the ease of boat jumping. "We've never had a passenger fall into the water." She wasn't convinced, and neither was I. You'll probably think we're mad, coming all this way only to miss out on anything at all, but we're happy to leave it to those more adventurous than us, many of whom - ironically - are older than we are.

Older, but distinctly more active. We have, on occasion, felt a little touch of imposter syndrome in their company, all these widely travelled, frequent cruisers who revel in their yompability and familiarity with rubber. Never more so than a couple of days into the voyage when I overheard the comment "I get the distinct impression that the majority of our passengers have never walked further than the buffet."

But hey, we're just happy to sit in the warm, contemplating the awesome sights of our surroundings, and enjoying the perhaps more prosaic but certainly less uncomfortable pursuits as are afforded on board. There are worse places to be.

And despite the higher-than-normal number of activities on offer this morning, we didn't have to hang around for long. Sailing time was set for 13:00, so the "all onboard" call was 12.30. Soon enough the last Zodiac (hey, not a bad title for a book!) was speeding its way back to the Tender Pit and we were sat at lunch watching the mountains of Loen begin to slip past the windows.