This has certainly been a holiday with a difference, so before returning home (and back to ‘C69’) I thought I’d share a few integer based observations on Svalbard:
The town is located at 78°N, by some distance the furthest North we’ve ever been,
It’s just 814 miles from the North Pole, but with lots of polar bears inbetween,
And the resultant 24 hours of nighttime (in Winter) really messes with your head!
The average temperature this week has been 0°C when it should be -12°C …
… confirming Svalbard’s reputation as the ‘fastest warming’ town on the planet,
The Svalbard treaty (signed by 9 nations) makes the the island uniquely open …
… so the town’s 2500 pop. is <50% Norwegian and spread over 50 nationalities.
But enough of the numbers I hear you say, what about those Northern Lights?
Well so far we’ve been (very) unlucky; their best Auroras for months took place on the 25th & 26th November, and we arrived on the 27th!
Hope springs eternal though, we’re here for another day/night yet, and the latest 6% ‘likelihood’ that’s showing on my Aurora App might just be proven wrong!
Even if we miss the Borealis though it’s still been a fascinating trip, and the very act of missing the ‘lights’ has, unsurprisingly, suggested a couple of tunes to me;
Villagers - “I waited for something … and nothing arrived,” which, I kid you not, they played in the restaurant at breakfast, as if to taunt us! but even more fittingly, given our N.L.s near miss, the holiday’s theme has to be,
Abba with ‘The Day Before You Came’!!
We will be back home from the (not quite so) frozen north on Sunday, so I’ll send a ‘Track 8’ timing update then. Bye for now.