The official website of Hilary Coombes

The Northern Lights? What the travel agents don't tell you.

Bergen, socks and alcohol - it's all here - pop in and have a read.

Our 'post' boat carried passengers, mail and supplies to over thirty ports along the Norwegian Coastline. Most of these ports were inaccessible to large commercial cruise liners, so there would be no heaving crowds departing from other boats as we docked.

The paper said optimistically that Alesund was a wonderful place to enjoy the views. That might have been true, had I been able to look upwards without a whole bucket of freezing rainwater sloshing me in the face. (Well, that’s what it felt like).

We eventually arrived where the boat should have been docked according to the map … it wasn’t there! It was nowhere in to be seen. Panic! We had no way of knowing which direction to go and we didn’t have oodles of time to get it wrong

Eventually we did dock. It took well over two hours and we only then had an hour on land to explore, but Tromso, Tromso, I love you — it didn’t rain! Wow! There was wind, yes. Snow, yes, but at long last there was no driving rain to force me to keep my head bowed.

I am alarmed and the feeling grows with each passing hour. Bravado dinner where all I saw was worried faces was followed by a batten-down-the-hatches assault in our cabin. Anything breakable or heavy was stowed away or put on the floor. Hub said ‘maybe we should keep our clothes on, in case we need to respond rapidly to the emergency alarm signals’. (He was joking, wasn’t he?)

The Captain called “Listen! At last! The Northern Lights are on the left side of the ship.” My goodness it was like the opening doors at the January sales. Within seconds there was a restaurant full of tables laden with hot food, but no patrons to be seen anywhere.