Touring Scandinavia Photobook Blog Part 7 now available - The stunning Island of Senja

[Pinhaw]

Part 7 of our 2020 75-day 9,218-mile (14,835 km) tour of Scandinavia in a motorhome. This blog follows on from part 6 and details in pictures and maps the trip around the stunning island of Senja often called a ‘Norway in miniature’

 

https://duncan-brown.org/travel-blogs/

 

When we were planning this trip, we struggled to find information about motorhome trips in Norway. Hence, I decided to start a photobook blog to help others.

 

Thus far I have a blog covering the preparation plus seven covering the trip, with a further 3 more blogs to go.

 

If you like what you see please feel free to share the site and if you subscribe as a follower you will automatically be notified when I publish my next blog.

 

The next blog will detail the trip southwards taking Duncan and Liz out of the Arctic Circle. Places visited within this blog include Narvik, Tranoy, Rognan and the blood road.

[mtravel]

Wonderful, thanks for sharing your travels.

Quite ignored by most of Norway's visitors, I confirm that Senja leaves you with unforgettable sensations.

 

A curiosity:

Which route planning program do you use to build the beautiful maps that you insert in your reports ?

 

Thanks again,

 

Max

[Pinhaw]

Thanks - hopefully it may form a guide for others wanting to tour.

 

I use the Guru Maps pro app https://gurumaps.app/. It works both on and offline with vector maps, also when online provides outdoor activity maps. I also add way mark points to remind me where I have taken my photographs.

I take screenshot from Guru Maps for the area of travel that day then use Paint 3D to draw the route we took on the day / add any other comments.

[Steve928]

We really loved Senja (in early 2019). Our friends&neighbours had visited there 6 months before us a part of a European tour in their VW camper and told us that we should go there. There was something intangible yet very special about the place and we stayed for 3 or 4 days walking and cycling on an otherwise fairly rushed trip.

That said, the main road across the island was atrocious, but looking now on Google it seems to have been resurfaced. We also took a lengthy (5 or 6 mile?) gravel track at about 5mph out to a remote campsite, didn't like it and promptly inched our way back to tarmac, suspension rattling all the way - not to be repeated. All good fun though!

[Steve928]

Not much fun cycling on a tandem I can assure you :-S

[Pinhaw]

The roads were generally very good. Far better than many Iceland roads

[Steve928]

Pinhaw - 2021-05-14 7:13 PM

 

The roads were generally very good. Far better than many Iceland roads

Yawn.

 

Really? Iceland is a walk in the park compared to Spitzbergen.

Oh contraire - have you not driven on Jan Mayen then...

 

Continue ad infinitum in an effort to impress.

[mtravel]

Pinhaw - 2021-05-14 6:05 PM

 

I use the Guru Maps pro app https://gurumaps.app/. It works both on and offline with vector maps, also when online provides outdoor activity maps. I also add way mark points to remind me where I have taken my photographs.

I take screenshot from Guru Maps for the area of travel that day then use Paint 3D to draw the route we took on the day / add any other comments.

Thanks, I didn't know Guru Maps and I will give it a try.

 

Max

[mtravel]

Steve928 - 2021-05-14 8:06 PM

 

Not much fun cycling on a tandem I can assure you :-S

We too found a gravel road in Senja, by heart a side street of the 228 but I turned back after only one kilometer.

Of course the roads in the southern part of the island are not the best, I compared them to the Romanian ones, strange for Norway where they are usually quite good.

However I have doubts that this area (Rødsand, Skrollsvika) is worth seeing.

 

Tunnels. Those of Senja are narrow but quite short, less than a kilometer.

If you want to experience some thrills, try the two on road 50 that climbs towards Hovet and Holo, illuminated only by the dim blue light of the rescue call points.

Four and six kilometers, I guarantee, each one a dozen minutes of anxiety.

And in any case, think of those who traveled the roads of Norway before the eighties when 99% of the tunnels were not illuminated.

 

Gravel roads. Try road 258 (Scenic route Gamle - Strynefjellsvegen), twenty-seven kilometers of which 80% dirt with a couple of challenging bridges.

 

Max