The forecast said “A chance of rain”. Really, a chance. How about all day although it stopped as I arrived in Narvik. Today was one of those gentle days with not too much distance and time to plan a few stops. Some were purely roadside or short detours and all were worth spending the effort. Following the main highway north, the E6, has become the norm. It is not a motorway but a well graded A road, sprinkled with ongoing repairs. I mention this because the road has essetially low traffic volume but it comes in clumps and you can be in one of those clumps. With the roadworks there is at least traffic lights and in some locations we follow a works vehicle in convoy. This means that the traffic forms into these clumps. The good news is that a stop soon after some roadworks to let the clump depart gives you empty road and with little chance of the next clump catching you. Lovely! The road follows the now familiar pattern alongside  rivers, lakes and fjords with tunnels to move between and some big bridges over narrows. The difference today is that some of the mountains that could be seen were bigger and more rugged and had more snow patches. They were often either shrouded in cloud or were wearing cloud scarves. The tricky bit along the road are the trucks. They drive at or over the speed limit and have no concern about drifting over the centreline and this becomes a challenge in the tunnels. In one there were two trucks in opposite directions and the one on my side chickenned out slamming on the brakes and pulling dangerously close to hitting the side of the tunnel. The one coming the other did not lift off the throttle and roared past me as I was slowing to avoid the now almost stationary truck and, I am sure, a terrifed camper van driver who was right behind our truck. I captured another near miss with a different camper van which you can see at the end of the post with some other GoPro frames. Here are a few images from the day. The headline was from one of the little detours which I planned and a further shot from there is below. That is an isolated house, remembering we are above the Arctic Circle. Next are a few pictures from a remarkable landscape but which is more famous for the reindeer images polished into the stone. Not easy to see in today’s flat light and dating back to the Sami people in the stone age. The Sami people feature next with the excellent Árran Lule Sámi Center. The displays show the lives of the Sami people includig boat building, fishing, hunting and reindeer herding. All of the display information is in Norwegian but the helpful lady at the entry got me set up with a website, linked to the centre, with an audio guide, but more importantly for me the audio in text form. One of the display areas raises the sort of concerns wherever indigenous people have been over-run by settlers, mainly from the main countries of western Europe. They consider the indigenous population backward and try to assimilate them by taking children away from there families to be educated. In this case they also enforced photographs which were used to identify physical traits that might indicate why they might be backward! It is incredible that this is not so far in the past. I have added a few photographs from the centre. I learned a lot in about 40 minutes. The center is on the edge of a fjord and as I went out to the car a ferry was heading out in natural monochrome, that is it is a colour image but there is not any colour! My route took me across a fjord on a ferry. This is not straightforward here as everything is either managed by a toll tag, essentially for natives, or via number plate recognition via an application. I have now two systems in place, one for road tolls and one now for ferry tolls. When I arrived to get on board the crew member saw that my car was foreign registered and captured an image of the number plate. The good news is that it was in the system, I think, as he let me on board. The actual picture of a ferry was not mine as there are three ferries from the port of Bognes, including one to tomorrow’s destination, the Lofoten Islands. Mine was essentially empty. Once over the fjord it was a 50 minute run into Narvik with a few snaps along the way. I am staying at the Scandic which is by far the tallest building in town and my room is on the 15th floor on the cheap side where I can look into people's houses. :-) The hotel sits over a public car park where there are Tesla Superchargers. Sounds like a good idea except for the layout. Let me say it took me several minutes of manouevering to get into a stall and two others gave up trying and left while I was there. I will say no more as my language may deteriorate. Let me say that whoever designed the layout has never driven any vehicle longer than a dodgem car! A wet but satisfying day.