Day 10 - On the Lofoten islands

As the next stage of our journey was aboard the MS Lofoten to Trondheim we had a full day on the Lofoten islands before it would arrive in the evening. Being a Saturday our options were a bit limited, as weekend bus services in Norway are often much reduced.

We decided to take the morning bus to Lenknes, a journey of about 90 minutes, have a short break there and return to Svolvaer in the early afternoon. The round trip was about 140km.

On the way to Lenknes we attempted to take photos, although reflections on the windows made this difficult. The church is in one of the small settlements south of Svolvaer.The scenery surrounding this road is dramatic and includes several climbs up into the mountain passes as well as a long road tunnel.

Typical coastal scenery on the east side of the island.

More dramatic peaks.

So far the journey has been on the island of Austvågøya but the E10 road is about to cross a bridge onto the small island of Gimsøya which is seen on the left.

To do this the road crosses the Gimsøystraumenbru which is 839 metres long, the main span is 148 metres and the maximum clearance to the sea is 30 metres . The bridge has 9 spans and was opened in 1980.

On the other side of the Gimsøystraumen sound the mountains rise to about 600m.

Seen from the bus the road bridge looks a bit like a sky jump as it has to climb from see level to over 30 metres above the water.

The road crosses the  island of Gimsøya and then goes over a much shorter bridge on to the island of  Vestvågøy. Here the road is seen below as the bus descends from on of the passes through the hills.

Lenknes was, to be honest, disappointing with no real points of interest that we could see and almost every building was modern. After lunch in a café we returned to Svolvaer, this time sitting on the west side of the bus.

The western side of the island seems less rugged with several inland lakes as well as some connected to the sea.

We then had a lazy afternoon wandering around Svolvaer in the warm sunshine, visiting a supermarket for supplies for the ship and sitting in various cafés drinking tea.

In the harbour area there are several small islands which have fisherman's houses and warehouse on them...

Some of  these have now been converted into hotels or holiday flats.

There are large numbers of the fish drying racks all along the harbour.

Click here to go the next page - Svolvaer to Trondheim