Bodø; Sunday, 03 May, 2026

I had a bit of a lie in and a relatively late breakfast and was considering if I had time to very quickly pop to the Bymuseet before I needed to head down to the harbour to catch my ferry across to Moskenes on the Lofoten islands when I received an email that made the decision for me.

Torghatten, the ferry company that was supposed to be taking me across to the Lofotens emailed to say that due to the weather conditions my sailing had been cancelled. The earliest I could hope to get a sailing would be after 9pm which wouldn’t get me to Moskenes until midnight and then a 5Km walk as no public transport would be running.

After a brief panic I fired up the laptop, went Widerøe’s website and hoped. The 12:45 flight, which would have been very comfortable was sold out, but the 14:25 did still have seats, and for only £75. A check of the bus times told me I’d have 45 minutes to walk the 20 minutes to the centre of town to catch the bus that I would otherwise have picked up at Moskenes if the ferry had been running. I booked the ticket and hoped that there wouldn’t be a delay.

Of course, it now meant that I did have time to pay a slightly longer visit to the city museum so I headed out of the hotel into the snow and up to the museum.

The museum had originally been a museum of fisheries, and this is reflected in the dry aquarium in the basement which houses many of the stuffed fish that were originally on display. Today the main part of the museum is a history museum of the city with the upper floor a changing exhibition space, which at the time of visiting had a display of works by Sami artists.

From the museum I headed back to the hotel, checked on line to see that my flight was now predicting a 10 minute delay, which made me feel a little sick, packed my bags and headed out to the airport.

Just before heading out I had one final check on the ferry companies website, to find out that the evening sailing had also been cancelled, so I’d definitely made the right call by not waiting.

I got to the airport with way more time than I needed and began the wait, hoping everything would work out – and things started positive as the 12:45 that would fly to Leknes, turn round, come back and then form the 14:25 departed a couple of minutes ahead of schedule.

In fact it landed back in Bodø nearly 15 minutes early, but I still worried that something could go wrong, and as the time ticked down towards departure and we didn’t start boarding I could feel my stress levels rising. They announced boarding and the process was pretty quick, not surprising given the plane only had 37 seats, but even then it wasn’t until we pulled off of stand and headed to the runway a couple of minutes ahead of schedule that I could start to breath a little bit easier.