Overview – London to the Artic Circle
To celebrate InterRail’s 50 year anniversary a special promotion was advertised in May 2022. For an old codger like me this offered three months of rail travel throughout Europe for the grand sum of £341.00. That works out at less than £4.00 per day. What’s not to like.
The only remaining issue was how to use it. Travelling continuously for three months, although appealing, was not practical so a number of shorter trips was settled upon.
Looking at the InterRail rail map Cadiz, Athens, Istanbul and the Artic Circle all looked tempting as destinations. First time out I decided to head to the Artic Circle in September, travelling overland from London, via Cologne, Hamburg, Copenhagen and Stockholm on the way up and returning via Bergen and Stavanger to Oslo. Cheating a bit, I flew from Oslo back to London on British Airways at the give away price of £45.00 + 2900 Avios points. Who said visiting Scandinavia had to be expensive.
Just to add to the adventure I also managed to secure four extensive but cheap ferry trips through the Norwegian fjords for a total of less than £170.00. These included:
- an early morning local ferry trip between Svolvaer and Bodo;
- an afternoon cruise through Aurlandsfjoden and Sognefjorden from Flam to Bergen; and
- another afternoon cruise on Fjord Line’s ferry ship MS Stavangerfjord from Bergen to Stavenger.
This was all topped off with some 19 nights of accommodation for an average price of less than £50.00 per night.
An overview of the whole route through France, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway is depicted on the map below.
More detailed maps showing this route through:
- northern Germany and Denmark;
- within the parts of Norway located to the north of the Artic Circle; and
- within the southern area of Norway
are shown on the next page.
A detailed itinerary is also presented, detailing each step of the journey and providing links to daily blogs for each of these steps.
Qwe