Ooop North

We find ourselves camping in a flimsy tent at the North Cape - that's 71 degrees north, the same latitude as North Alaska or northern Siberia, and the furthest north you can go in Europe.

What were we thinking of when we left the throbbing, hedonistic delights of Tammerfest way back down south just 20 hours ago? Tampere had heavy metal and lager; the North Cape has an extortionate entry fee and an irritating Dutch family who insisted on erecting their big top-sized tent right next to us in this empty, windswept place.

We made the 900 mile journey through the night. Or what there was of it. The sun never really sets this far north in July and last night it just merely skimmed the horizon somewhere on the road between Kemi and Oulu.

Sustained by Rammstein and rye bread we sped along empty roads with only road trains and the odd reindeer to trouble us, the latter blissfully unaware of the numerous unpleasant plans the locals have in store for them (reindeer kebab, anyone?).

Our Nokia Sat Nav made little of the huge deserted spaces we passed through - a straight black line through an endless block of green, like an early Nintendo game.

Crossing the border into Norway brought little immediate difference, other than the odd green number plate and the appearance of strange letters with funny lines through them. Once we actually stopped and ventured into a store it was a different matter however, with a hike in prices which would make a Chelsea footballer swoon.

Living in the country which regularly tops the UN quality of life index clearly comes at a cost.

Fourteen hours in to our journey the landscape began to change as we left the thickly-forested flatlands behind. The road twisted through gentle fells before winding down into Alva - our first sight of a fjord. In the distance mountains rose out of the mist, some still holding pockets of snow.

Out of Alta we climbed up onto high a plateau, where flimsy wooden shacks hug the ground and elderly Sami hunched by the roadside selling inumberable reindeer-related trinkets to tourists on the long road up to the Cape.

Beyond the mountains, we skirted the edges of huge fjords, through sparsely scattered fishing villages, their nets and catches drying in the brilliant sunshine.

Finally the tunnel to the island holding Europe’s most northerly point appeared ahead of us: an impressive seven kilometres of engineering (and boy did we have to pay for every metre at the toll station at the end of it).

Into a spectacularly craggy landscape, where the road never ran straight and the land started to run out. And so did our patience with the money-grabbers in our way, refusing as we did to pay the £60 fee to enter a car park marking the ‘official’ North Cape.

Rather we opted for the more thrifty and healthy option of a brisk 12 mile yomp across the rocky landscape to the farthest northerly point - technically farther north than the official one.

Flushed with this moral victory we celebrated with a warm Finnish lager before making a break for the border and a land where some things at least, are free.