Travelling Diaries
2018 Swedish Lapland / Day 7 - Travel to Björkliden
Previous and next: Day 6 - Kiruna / Day 8 - Björkliden
8th February 2018
Off on our travels again as we leave Kiruna behind and catch a train to Björkliden (pronounced bee york lee den).
This required us to travel on the Narvik train, and our experience so far is that these trains are always late.
This one was no exception. However it was only about 20 mins past it’s expected time so we didn’t really complain too much.
The journey was uneventful and we arrived safely into Björkliden and taken promptly to our hotel.
The room we were given had magnificent views across the mountain range to the Lapporten pass, a U-shaped valley in Lapland, one of the most iconic views of this region.
We were tired after our few days so far and in the afternoon, to prepare ourselves for the evening in search of the elusive northern lights, we ended up having a short nap.
The sleep was very much needed, and we both woke up just in time for dinner.
The meal was followed by a brief talk on the northern lights by an American photographer who had made his living from taking pictures of this visual phenomenon.
Karen wondered why he was bothering to talk to the Tourettes and I said that, being a photographer, he probably needed the exposure.
Camera, lights, action?
As the Tourettes are a large number of people, we were split into two smaller groups for this evenings events; one to go off with a professional photographer for lessons, and one to go on a sled ride through the forests. This grouping was to be reversed the following night.
Tonight we were in the group going with the photographer, and were bussed off to a tourist place not far away, where we were kitted out in even warmer clothes and given the loan of a good SLR camera.
Having the use of a reliable camera was lucky as I had been having a lot of trouble with my own camera, probably due to the extreme low temperatures which had caused it to struggle to even start up at times.
Luckily, when using the borrowed camera for this excursion, we had brought our own SD card to store our photos on. All the photographer had to do was to teach us how to use the camera in these extreme weather conditions, which was, basically, to let more light in to the lens and to give each shot a long exposure (20 to 30 seconds).
Armed with this knowledge, we got ready for the night. However, the warning we got from our photographic expert was not to expect anything as the lights were fickle at the best of times.
We duly lowered our expectations and set off walking to a flat dark plain not too far away to set up camp and to wait to see if the northern lights would perform.
We didn’t have to wait long.
It started with a little glimmer on the horizon. Often this was only visible when you took a photo.
However, soon the real show began.
From little shoots of green columns of light, the sky opened up to a blaze of dancing and shimmering beams and swathes of emerald hues.
It was a glorious night and Karen and I managed to capture lots of good images.
The lights continued to perform for a good couple of hours and our photographer was giving us great hints and tips on how to get the best pictures.
We were just about to pack up when the sky suddenly went wild with a magnificent finale.
Magical.
Memories are made of this
On our return to the hotel I made sure that I had the SD card which, by now, was full of our wonderful memories from the nights activities.
Back in our room I went to test the memory card in the little computer I had brought with me to do the blog.
The computer couldn’t read the card.
Panic!
I was almost in tears.
All that work, effort and joy with nothing to show for it (and, no, I’m not talking about marriage).
I tried everything: inserted the card, took it out, cleaned it and re-inserted it, put it in slowly, put it in quickly.
Nothing worked.
In desperation, I took the battery out of the computer, put it back in, restarted the machine and prayed.
Thankfully, once the computer came back to life, the memory card and it’s precious contents became visible.
Karen said, “Next time I ask you to do something and you have trouble with your memory, can I try the same with you?”
I laughed, whilst at the same time breathed a sigh of relief and immediately backed up the photos to the computer, Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive, and every external device I could put my hands on.
Here are a couple more of the 133 photos we took.
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