We decided to use today’s hours of daylight to go on a hike up a hill on Alta’s north side. The lady in the tourist office assured us that lots of people go up and that there was an easy, clear route to the top, hard to miss as there was a radio tower at the top of the hill, so of course we got lost.

In our defence things weren’t nearly as easy as we’d been led to believe. We actually found ourselves on a winding cross-country ski route. The main path was groomed and floodlit, but all offshoots were not (crucial when it is dark virtually all day). Despite the grooming, the path was still hard going and we were pretty tired after a couple of hours. We must have missed the particular track to the top, which was not, as we had been told, well trodden – ours were the only footsteps on the main route almost all the way round. So we never found the proper path to the top. In the end we turned our hike into a nice loop and returned to the starting point (once we had found a map which told us where on earth we were of course!)

After our hike we cooked some food and then started driving back to Tromsø. As the distance between Alta and Tromsø is over 400km we decided to split up the journey and stop in the nice rest point we found on the way to Alta, by Hatteng. Once there we discovered the rest stop had a special hut with a fireplace in the middle, so we thought, let’s have a fire! The fire was much easier to light than in soaked Lofoten and soon it was big and steady. It was gloriously warm. We stayed at Hatteng overnight.

In the morning, we continued to Tromsø. It wasn’t a very eventful day as it was mostly spent in the car. Once in Tromsø, we arranged to go cross country skiing the day after – that was probably the highlight of the day. We also (sadly) finished listening to the last Harry Potter audio book.