Phileas Fogg - Pah

So I've been traveling for a while now.... now there is an understatement if ever I heard one!

My ship was due to set sail and 03:00 on Wednesday 8th May bound first for Sweden and then on to Norway for my 3rd summer in Ulvik. The usual route, Immingham on the east coast of Britain across to Gothenburg, unload a few containers and then up to Brevik slightly south west of Oslo on the south coast of Norway.

The trip normally takes 41 Hours but they let you on the boat at around midnight while they carry on with the loading. There is not much on this boat as its primary function is a cargo ship that has a few cabins and is willing to take the odd stray onboard. Breakfast is at 7:30 - 8:00, Lunch 12:00 - 12:30 and dinner 17:00 - 17:30 after that you go hungry. Unless you like toast, then there is a toaster in the mess with a beautiful sign above it which reads 'only toast to be put in the toaster' I always wonder what else you could do with a toaster? turn it sideways and fry up some bacon?

There is a cupboard which opens once only at 12:00 - 12:15 where the chef doubles up as Mr Ben's shopkeeper, selling chocolate, shampoo, up to 6 small cans of beer, and 2 packets of cigarettes only. Once that highlight is out of the way its back to the cabin and another movie on the laptop.

Its quite a relaxing journey to be fair, no phone signal, no internet, nothing, just time to chill out, read books and watch films. However there is a limit to how much one can take of this. 

As we turned up the estuary to Brevik we were in quite heavy fog, but still we packed up our kit and awaited our arrival at the dock and the call to go to your vehicles. And then the boat stops, switches off its engines and just sits there like a spoilt child who has just folded his arms, stamped his feet and is frowning at you. 

After an hour or so past our scheduled arrival time of 10pm the captain comes down and explains to the 4 remaining passengers that the port wont let him dock because of the fog (and more health and safety nonsense) and that we will just sit here until 2am before we make a decision on where to go. Knowing I had a good 7 hour drive after this, I decided to get my head down for as long as I could.

3:20am I awoke, a bit confused but slowly waking up, I looked out of the window to see more fog, so I decided to go onto deck and see if we were about to dock or not. It was futile, I couldn't even see the end of the boat, never mind land. I then got out my iPad and opened the Tom Tom App. Obviously it couldn't find a road but there is a page on it that lets you 'browse on map' Well you should have heard the expletives that came out when the map placed the boat near Kristiansand in southern Norway.... heading back to Immingham in the UK!

So now I had another 41 hours to kill on the way home to where I started! Speaking with the captain later that day he informed me that the next boat would be leaving Immingham on Sunday morning and he could get me onto that one, or I could stay on this boat and get dropped off in Gothenburg. I chose the Sunday boat.

So we arrived back in Immingham on the Saturday morning at 3am had 24 hours to do nothing and then get back on the boat at 3am Sunday, do the whole trip again and finally arrive in Brevik, unscathed at 8am Monday morning and completed the 278 mile drive to Ulvik some 168 hours after leaving home, 129 of them on a cargo ship!

That has to be the longest trip I have ever done, but if you think that I left Morzine in France on the 19th April, drove to England, flew to Kos, flew back again, trained it up to Leicester and then started this trip... Its hardly surprising I slept well on the Tuesday night!