Chasing the Lights

After seeing the Northern Lights from the ship, the official trip to find them turned out to be an anticlimax. The short explanation of the Lights is that plasma from solar flares, attracted to the poles by the earth's magnetic field, hits particles in our atmosphere causing a glow. The long explanation, which we've heard several times now, doesn't make you that much wiser. Unless there is a large amount of solar activity the Lights come and go in different parts of the sky and are often obscured by cloud. To improve your chances of seeing them you have to chase around in a coach trying to be in the right place at the right time.

We had been told that there would be a lot of waiting around and as this was Arctic, in winter, at night, we put on the full polar exploration kit including the the thermal underwear and the Salopettes. We left the ship at 6.30pm and got back just before 3.00am having chased the Northern Lights way up to the Finnish border. After spending most of that time on a heated coach the best way to describe our condition when we got back was “medium rare”.

There's obviously a good business in Tromso chasing the Northern Lights. Our guide said they had coaches out every night but I'm sure they don't often cater for the numbers provided by Fred Olsen. Estimates varied but it was between six and seven hundred in two waves that started an hour apart but got mixed up during the evening. The clues that the tour company was out of its comfort zone were a motley collection of “coaches” (ours had wide doors, a hanging rail and bells) and a lack of appreciation of that number of elderly persons' toilet requirements. A hour into the journey our guide announced that we would be stopping at a filling station for a comfort break which “would be everyone's last opportunity”.

Now please don't misunderstand this but I know quite a lot about how women go to the toilet. I've designed hundreds of them and the key word is “slowly”. Wearing thermal underwear and Salopettes does not help. I digress, but on several occasions I tried to design ladies toilets with double the required number of cubicles and I was always told by quantity surveyors that I was creating unnecessary expenditure. If ladies ever want to break through the glass cubicle what they really need is more female quantity surveyors. Anyway, filling stations throughout the world seldom have more than one toilet per gender and underpopulated Norway is no exception. Underpopulated countries also don't have many filling stations. “We'll just have a short break” our guide said innocently as the queue started to reach towards the door.

Eventually back on the coach our, now wiser, guide shouted (buses don't have PA systems) “I bet you've been wondering how we drive on ice” I didn't argue but I'll bet I wasn't the only one who, as we thundered along at 60mph on narrow ice roads with periodic sheer drops, had been trying very hard not to wonder about that subject. Apparently they use spikes in their tyres so it's really not a good place to get run over. I don't think everyone was convinced about the explanation and I felt that slowing down a bit would have been a better way to reduce the risk of another toilet break.

Between toilet breaks and hurtling towards Finland we did manage two stops to look at the Lights. In truth these were really only pale greenish clouds that faded in and out of view. They were nothing like the swirling display of green plasma that we had seen from the ship. To photograph the Lights you have to use a long exposure and, with help from the right filter, this enhances the colours way beyond what you can see with the naked eye. Our guide may have needed some toilet training but he was fortunately a keen amateur photographer. Everyone got their picture taken in front of a pale green cloud which magically appeared as a dramatic green backdrop when you looked at the screen on his camera. He's going to put his pictures on Facebook and has promised to email us any that we request in high definition. That way we'll be able to show all our friends pictures of us watching the beautiful Northern Lights and they'll never know that they weren't quite as good as they appear.

Dave