The weather doesn’t get any better… We drive past the mighty Queen Marry II to a petrol station to fill up with fuel. And meet an elderly gentleman with travel experience, who asks me interesting questions, and at the same time informs us about the upcoming Midsummer festivities, which seem to inspire all the people here. And indeed, as we pull out at a headland, we see a huge pile of wood that will soon be lighted and delight the heart.
Outside, fish farms pile up, breeding Norway’s ‘swimming gold’. We drive closer to these huge circular cages, which lie in groups of six or twelve in the fjords, and watch as floating cranes and suction machines ‘harvest’ the salmon.
There is massive criticism of these fish farms, partly because the aquacultured animals keep breaking out of the enclosures and infecting and weakening the natural salmon population with diseases, and partly because the often degenerate farmed fish only look nice as fillets on display or in the plastic sachet in the shops. If we consumers saw these massively mutated fish in their original state, we would neither buy nor eat them. Even the ‘red’ of their meat is caused by the special food – who knows what else is in there… In any case, fish farming is ‘big business’ controlled by a few families or clans that even in Norway do not have only friends; there are often heated and controversial discussions.
Today we decide on the way where to moor and sleep; we look on the navigation system where there are harbours with a petrol station and decide on Aure. It’s a nice place with a small harbour where just three of my size boats are moored. There is a shop here right on the pier for everything from fishing to gardening to spare car parts, further up there is a small shopping arcade with a grocery shop, a wool and knitting shop (for the ladies), a hairdressing salon and a kind of coffee restaurant, as well as a bank, and there is a new, large grocery shop a bit off to the side with a spacious car park, so for the whole region. (Here we finally also find a toilet, which is good in that this shop opens from six in the morning and doesn’t close until eleven at night – only it’s almost a kilometre from the harbour). There is also a very beautifully situated church with a surrounding cemetery, which would make this place appear quietly splendid to the eye if it weren’t raining cats and dogs. And there are new, very generously laid out school and sports facilities (which of course I notice immediately) as well as a hotel, which to Loi’s regret is closed – the season doesn’t start until midsummer…
So we squeeze back under a two-metre wide canopy at the shop at the harbour, cook our dinner – and get a visit from an older, but very robust-looking gentleman who has moored his kayak (!) next to the ArgoFram: he has set out to row from the southern tip of Norway to the North Cape… A few dozen kilometres a day, if things go well, bit by bit- amazingly fabulous!