On day 10, we were refreshed after a couple of amazing rest days on the island of Magerøya, having visited Nordkapp (North Cape), the town of Honningsvag (including the northmost Tesla Supercharger int the world) and elsewhere on the island. We were excited for the next stage of our electrifying journey. Heading south (obviously) and knowing we were in for a long day, we embarked on the tenth day of our road trip, destined for the vibrant city of Tromsø.
Car charge and usage data
To save time, we had charged up using the hotel’s 11ish amp charger the day before, so we didn’t charge on day 10 until we reached Skaidi. After this charge, the car believed we could get to our destination 6.5 hours away without charging again, but this opinion fluctuated because there were different routes available. At one point a yellow warning about driving at a top speed was given but this disappeared quickly. We charged again anyway, at one of the points we used on the way up. In case you haven’t seen the route map: the top of our loop around Scandinavia has a line attached to it, where we retrace our steps back down the same route we went up.
We managed 3.8 miles per kWh – not too bad.
Story of the day
As per usual, we woke up. Only this time it was much earlier in the day because we had to get on the road earlier than usual. Tromsø was quite a long distance. This was the first day of our journey down the western side of Norway. And such a distance clearly meant almost 12 hours of driving, although this would include charging and rest stops. We went to have breakfast at around 7am, which was when the buffet first opened. It was the same tasty things as we had been having on our rest days, but we had to eat quickly before leaving.
Then, we packed up the car which took four trips of carrying bags down the stairs and to the car. No lift but to be fair they offered to carry anything we needed however often we needed. We just got on with it, though. We checked out and were gone by around 8am.
Around twenty minutes after we got driving, we had left the island which Nordkapp was on (Magerøya- a.k.a. “Skinny Island” because of its lack of trees and other stuff, although technically speaking there are a few trees in one spot). Our route for several hours after we left was the same as when we drove up there, so the scenery seemed very familiar. It was still absolutely stunning though, with mountains to the front and to the left.
Our first charge stop was at some Superchargers in a place called Skaidi, which was about an hour and a half away from our hotel. We took many pictures and videos before posting them on social media and then we went over to the café / restaurant. Our driver got a café latte to fuel the drive and after this, we quickly left.
Next stop, the town of Alta – again. Only this time, we didn’t go to Subway and H & M as part of our fairly newly invented thing of visiting the most northerly this and that in the world. Instead, we walked in the pouring rain to a café in the upstairs of one of the many shopping centres. We split a ham and cheese sandwich in cheesy bread and there was another coffee. Then we ran back through the rain to the car where we through some of our old rubbish away before eating our sandwich. We’re trying to keep as tidy as possible by having a clear-out and recycle session every few days.
There was so much fog on this part of our drive. And, because we were driving in the mountains, we were above some of it so it looked like the sea was a white mist. It looked cool but the sailors must have been struggling in that kind of extreme weather. After the fog had cleared up, there were more problems on the road. The surfaces we were driving on were extremely rough and there were road works along the way. It slowed us down quite a fair bit but it was going to work out.
Eventually, we got to a familiar town. It had been the same town half an hour away from the hotel the night before we got to Honningsvåg for our rest days. So we charged in the place behind the café, where the team decided to get some ice cream. It was made with Non Stop chocolate, which was a chocolate we had been really enjoying on the trip. (UK readers can think “Smarties”.) We also recorded a video by the fjord giving a summary of the day so far and the ferry and non-ferry options coming from the sat nav.
There then was around 3 hours more of driving. Or slightly less because we planned on getting the ferry up to Tromsø. This gave us a break from driving and also an opportunity to look at the incredible view. We got on the ferry just as it was leaving the port; we were so lucky because the next one came at 18:15 and we arrived just before the previous one at about 16:10. There was another ferry further along which would have cut off a fairly chunky part of the drive but the timings for this wouldn’t have worked out so it was just the one ferry. The views from it were stunning.
After this, it was just more picturesque but slow driving for two and a bit hours to Tromsø. The speed limit for the first thirty minutes was quite low as well, meaning it felt like it took longer to get there. On the way, we also went through this dimly lit tunnel with orangey lights and then a sudden burst of white light every four lights. It was really creepy and almost hypnotic we were happy to see the end of it. Except for the fact that there were more road works and we had to wait for seemingly ages for the traffic light to turn green.
We finally got to the car park in the city, which is on an island and reached by an impressive bridge. An interesting fact about this car park is it covers a large amount of the underground below the city centre. We got parked and loaded with all of the bags. We only wanted to make one trip if it was going to be a long walk. The navigation for the walk originally said 9 minutes but it went down quickly when we were back on the ground and there was better signal. We found the hotel and it seemed the lovely except for one thing…
The lift was broken. And our room was on the fourth floor. The receptionist offered us an upgrade to a sea view room as compensation. A more practical sort of compensation would have been fixing the lift! But instead we had to walk up an extra flight of stairs to get to the accommodation, meaning we were pretty much at the top of the hotel. With our backs killing us. (A tiny saving grace is that the ground floor seems to be level one in a lot of these hotels.) We then filmed a quick summary video before getting all our video content selected and sent back to base for around 45 more minutes.
Dinner was difficult to get at almost 10:00 in the evening. But we managed to get a table at a pizza restaurant. The kitchen was to close four minutes after we arrived but they took our quick order and were happy to make it. Then we went to the northern most 7-eleven in the world which was surprisingly not in North America somewhere. We just bought some water for us to help with the heat in the room (not much air conditioning found in the hotels so far) and then we went back to the hotel after our long day on the road.
