Everyone we’ve spoken to about visiting Vancouver Island has raved about Tofino. It’s a 300km round trip to reach so it’s a hell of a long detour but we couldn’t come to the island and not see what all the fuss was about. There were two forest trails on the way around Cathedral Grove which…
Tag: adventure
Paddling around some of the prettiest lakes in the world | Banff National Park
Our alarm went off at 5:45am and with sleepy eyes we reluctantly got up, pulled the curtains back and hit the road towards Moraine Lake. I knew it was a small carpark which is prone to filling up early in the morning but I wasn’t expecting the road to be closed at 6:18am due to…
Kayaking through the frozen sea in Northern Norway
After three months back in the Arctic we’d only managed to get out on the kayaks once and that was in the peak of winter. We had very limited daylight, the sun wasn’t rising at all so after a bit of a pink hue touched the clouds the sky quickly darkened. The sea was completely…
Husky Sledding in Northern Norway
Husky Sledding has always been on my list of things to do while travelling the world and at long last we managed to do it in the Norwegian Arctic. It was a two and a half hour drive to the husky farm on Andøya Island in Vesterålen and on the way we passed a dozen…
Winter mountain hiking in Vesterålen | Norway
We haven’t managed to hike much of Vesterålen due to the abundant snow this winter, but some freak warm weather came along and torrential rain melted all the snow away. In just one day our lovely white scenery was replaced with a drab, brown landscape. The ground was boggy and all that remained white was…
Kick-sledding and Snowshoeing Adventures | Norway
After a wet and cloudy start to Norway we’ve finally got snow…absolutely shit loads of the stuff. We’ve had to plow the pathways, boats and roofs daily. Giant icicles hang like stalactites from our house and wind whips up the old snow creating hard to budge snow-dunes. We’ve made the most of the situation by…
Hiking to Ala Kol and Altyn Arashan in two days | Kyrgyzstan
A single photo of this milky blue, glacial fed lake surrounded by snowy peaks was enough to entice us to visit Central Asia. So when we reached the town of Karakol in Kyrgyzstan we had to figure out how to get to this jaw dropping lake named Ala Kol. Most people do a three day…
Crossing the remote Karkara Border between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan
The Karkara border is a rather remote place to cross from Kazakhstan into Kyrgyzstan but we really wanted to do it to save lots of backtracking. We read blogs online and researched as much as possible but it all came down to luck on the day. So here’s how it went down: 8am, 11th July…
Two hikes up Mount Vetten | Norway
Mount Vetten stands at 467m and is one of the most popular hikes in Vesterålen so we were keen to check it out. Unfortunately when we went up we had pretty shit weather with clouds engulfing us, so it was hard to envision what the ‘magnificent view’ actually looked like. Occasionally a patch would open…
A rough canoe trip to the frozen Hellfjord | Northern Norway
It was our first full day at Guvåg’s wilderness cabin and after a night of heavy snowfall we woke to a calm morning and decided to take our chances and go for a canoe trip. As soon as we sat in the canoe and began shuffling down the ramp into the sea, the wind picked…
Snow storms and wild aurora shows at a wilderness cabin in Norway
We parked at the end of a snow covered road, slung our rucksacks on our backs, grabbed plastic sacks filled with duvets and set off on an extremely snowy trail. We had a 700m walk through deep snow to the Guvåghytta, a remote wilderness cabin in Vesterålen. Our hosts were holidaying abroad so without any…
A perfect kayak trip in the Norwegian Arctic
We had an action packed day waking up at 5:30am for a photography roadtrip and then returning three hours later to such perfect weather that we decided to go sea kayaking. We put on lots of layers and then climbed into our drysuits. It’s important to take the air out of these suits in case…
