Nordkapp 71° 10″ 21
We reached Nordkapp today, the most Northerly point in Europe. Its 11 weeks since we left Bristol and we’ve driven 14,830km before arriving here. We placed a beacon here this morning so anyone who comes here can listen to all the love songs we record. They’ll be listening to the same love songs as someone listening at the beacon we left in Punta Tarifa in Spain, some 4315km away (as the crow flies).
The sun doesn’t set at this time of year this far North so we’ve been in continuous sunlight for a while now. We reached the Arctic Circle in Sweden yesterday (we’ve left a beacon there too) and half bouyed by the magical light, half chased off by a mosquito apocalypse, we just carried on driving after dinner and didn’t stop until we’d arrived in Norway. The midnight sun illuminating the forests and fjords as we drove through lapland in a weird late night hysteria was one of the highlights of the trip so far. After a few hours sleep we continued on until we reached Nordkapp. Despite its extreme remoteness, people have been visiting here for centuries (the first tourist was Francesco Negri, a priest from Ravenna in Italy who came here from Ravenna, Italy in 1664) so the North cape itself is a strange combination of utter barren remoteness and tourist trap. The Nordkapp centre includes a panaromic cinema and a ‘light cave experience’ (we don’t even know).
Tomorrow we’ll head south again starting the long journey through Finland and take the ferry at Helsinki to Tallin and keep heading south until we get to Athens. Take a look at the map and you’ll see there’s now lots of beacons playing the love songs. If you’re curious to hear some of the songs before you make the 4,000km trek to Nordkapp you can listen to a few of them here