I'm Driving to the Arctic Circle Alone

This summer I drove further north than I'd ever been before, to the land of vast forests, wild rivers and fjords carving through mountains. But when I arrived in Norway, something started pulling me further north, somewhere remote and rugged on the edge of the map. So I kept driving my home on wheels another thousand miles north, deep into the arctic where the sun never sets this time of the year. Over the last few months I've been looking for a place to call home in the long term, roaming the wildest corners of Europe for a place to grow roots. And I don't know what drew me to look for it so far away, but who knows, maybe I'll find it here in the far north of Europe. Good morning friends, well it's not morning to be precise, it's midday and I woke up 20 minutes ago and made myself a cup of coffee. The reason I'm awake so late is because I'm completely flipping my sleeping schedule as I'm travelling up to the arctic and I'm going to be awake during the night and sleep in the day. The reason being that the place I'm going to can get a little bit busy from what I heard. Some locals told me it doesn't get very busy, others told me it gets very busy. But the main reason is that there's midnight sun up there, which means it doesn't get dark at all, the sun is up all day, if it's not cloudy or raining of course. And I just want to experience that and make the most of it, because how often do I get to travel to the arctic you know? And it's obviously a really good way of avoiding the crowds. I completely forgot how much I love being awake at night to be honest. The streets are empty, the shops are closed, if I have to go to the shops I go in the last hour before closing, so it's pretty empty. And then I've got the whole night to myself and up here in the north, because it doesn't really get dark, I can do pretty much anything I would do in the day. And I just really love that, the peace and quiet. I am super excited for this chapter. It's been so hot the first half of the summer that I've been really craving somewhere a bit cooler, with temperamental weather and storms and a bit more moody you know? And the place I'm going to is absolutely perfect for that. It reminds me a little bit of the Isle of Skye in Scotland from the photos I've seen, and I know a lot of you guys enjoyed my Scotland adventure, so it's probably going to be a similar vibe. Anyway I'm going to have a slow morning, and then go about my day in the afternoon and evening, and then continue on my journey. I am so excited to experience midnight sun. Here where I am now, the sun technically goes down at half 11 and rises again at 3, and there's just kind of twilight in the period of time in between, so it doesn't get properly dark. But I just really want to experience the sun being up at 1 in the morning you know? I just can't wait to get there. My favourite thing about Norway is that there's rivers and waterfalls everywhere, so I can go wild swimming every day this summer, which is just such a luxury. The roads here in Norway are not for the faint-hearted. I'm driving under a palm tree right now, am I gonna fit? Yeah I just about fit. I had to drive 10 kilometres up a tiny narrow single track gravel road to get to my spot, and there were steep drops on either side, and it's the kind of place where just a short lapse of focus can mean you're just falling down to your doom. It's definitely type 2 fun driving up these kind of roads, but I like to go to places that motorhomes can't get to, because the more accessible places tend to be a lot more crowded, especially during the summer months. So I just want to make the most of the fact that I've got a smaller van that can get to a lot of places that larger vans can't. But it just means driving on some really difficult roads sometimes. But 90% of the time it is worth the extra effort. I've been travelling mostly solo for the last year, and documenting my life on the road so I can look back on these memories in the future. Living and working like this has definitely been challenging at times. Every shot you've seen of me running through landscapes, of the van winding through valleys, and pulling up on the side of the road, I have to set all of that up myself. There's no one in the passenger seat to grab the camera, or tell me whether I'm in the frame, which is why I've been trying out the Insta360 Go Ultra recently. They're kindly sponsoring this episode, and it's genuinely made filming this trip really fun, because it allows me to get angles I wouldn't be able to capture otherwise. The camera pops out of the main body. It's this tiny little square which weighs only 57 grams, and it's magnetic so I can stick it to the van, my cooking pans, and even the screw heads on my walls and ceiling. It's hands-free and gives me a first-person point of view, which is something I just can't do with my big camera. If you want to try the Insta360 Go Ultra, I'll leave a link with my code down in the video description. I went on a bit of a side quest this morning. When I was looking at my route on the map, I saw that there was a glacier just an hour west of where I was going, and I couldn't resist and look at it, because I had never seen a glacier with permanent ice before, and it's really huge. I think it's bigger than the area of Norway's two biggest cities combined, and it never fully melts, and I've just never seen anything like it before. It's just so prehistoric and so beyond human comprehension, and the kind of place that makes you feel very, very small. It was a pretty demanding hike, to be honest. There was no trail. I was kind of just clambering over slippery rocks, and there were marker stones every now and then, and then I had to really run back down the mountain, because I had to catch the boat back, because the alternative would have been trekking through the forest, through a very muddy and overgrown trail for six miles, which I didn't want to do. Didn't want to get lost in the Norwegian wilderness, so I'm really tired and sweaty now, and I think I'm going to go for a dip in the lake here, it is glacial water, so I think even in the summer, it doesn't get warmer than like five to eight degrees Celsius, so it's probably going to be a very short dip. I'm celebrating reaching the Arctic Circle with a cinnamon roll from the Arctic Circle Center. I paid very dearly for this cinnamon roll. It better be good. Oh my god. The Norwegians really know how to make good cinnamon rolls. On the menu today, we have a Swedish dish that's also very popular in Norway, and it's called Kjødbollar. It's essentially meatballs in a creamy sauce with berry jam, and because I don't eat meat, I'm going to attempt to make a veggie version with lentils and crispbread. At that point, I had been driving up north for four days, and whenever I plan to go to a particular destination, I find that I enjoy the journey there just as much as the place itself, because I tend to stumble upon lots of hidden gems that most people would skip, and I also make the most of having a van and spend time scouting out areas that I could see myself living in, and those parts of an adventure are often the memories I will remember most fondly. I spent the evening batch cooking a huge portion of these meatballs to save time preparing food for the next few days, which is what I do most weeks. Normally in the summer, I have to cook more often because otherwise the food won't keep in my non-electric cool box, but being up here in the Arctic where temperatures rarely exceed 15 degrees Celsius, even in the summer, I didn't really have to worry about that. Well, this was a lot of work, but it was so worth it. It's probably one of the best dinners I ever made. Technically, it's lunch. It's like eight o'clock, but for me, that's lunchtime. I'm still getting used to that. It's three in the morning right now. I've arrived in my park up like an hour ago, had a nice hot shower, got ready for bed, and now I'm going to show you guys how I manage to sleep when it never gets dark. As you can see, it's already very bright, so I have a little bit of a routine to make sure I can sleep through the night or sleep through the day, more like. First, I lower all of my curtains like so, and essentially, I don't have blackout blinds because I couldn't be bothered to carry them with me for the couple of months I'm here. So what I do is I just take my blankets, which I usually use in the winter, and I just drape them across the side windows, which is where the most light comes in. Then I also pile my cushions against the back windows to make sure they don't move and let sunlight in. I also block out the cab area with my rain poncho, but I'm going to do that after I speak to you because otherwise you're not going to be able to see me. And now that it's almost completely dark in the van, I put my little sleep mask on, which I got in a pharmacy here, and I will sleep like a baby. I'm just taking a final 9pm coffee break before doing the final 40 minutes of driving to my destination. Well, to the ferry. That will take me to my destination. However, you can't pre-book it, so I'm just going to have to rock up and hope that they have space for me.