Rob and Sarah Whiteman: Lofoten here we come

Another 6.30 start. These light nights make laying in bed impossible, also the best weather seems to be early morning so off we go again. Heading north in the direction of Narvic to the gateway of the Lofoten islands we again were stunned by the ever changing scenery. Mountains, rivers and forest as far as the eye could see.

Just before Narvic we called in to a petrol station to get fuel and water. The van front wheels were turned in a lock and we noticed that we had no tread on the inside of one front tyre. Big problem. It was raining and no way I could change it for the spare as Carthago make it impossible to either remove the spare wheel or to jack the van up as the jack is a scissor type only any good for the original Fiat Ducato van which weighs much less. We called our breakdown service and were told 60 to 90 mins would see someone with us, This became 3 hours so we called and spoke to the repair man, Kim, who agreed to come the next morning at 8.00 am.

Kim arrived promptly at 8.00am and looked at our problem. We decided that it would be better to take the van down into Narvic to his base so that he had better facilities at his disposal. We swapped the wheel round and put on the spare tyre. It was almost impossible to remove the spare wheel, which is slung under the back of the van but by jacking it up Kim managed to get it out. No way could this have been done by the roadside with the tools given to us with the vehicle. Come on Motor home manufacturers, Get your act together. Real people use these vehicles and need to be given proper equipment to cope in these situations.

Anyway the job got done and we left our man with many thanks just £200 poorer. It seems our insurance company only cover the first hour, the rest is our problem. Maybe we need to consider this when we renew our policy.

We took a beautiful road out of Narvik, the 829 towards Grov. Absolutely fantastic in every way. The scenery just gets better and better.