Sommaroy - Aurora Borealis

It has been a long, long day. I set my alarm for 4.15am but of course woke up at 3.30am. Gavin kindly drive me to Heathrow Airport, I planned to be there at 5am but a mile from the off-ramp to the airport there was an accident and we sat stationary on the motorway for 15 minutes. I was worried I would not make my flight but the airport was so quiet and I got through security in good time.

We flew to Oslo and then had an almost 4.5 hour wait for our connecting flight to Tromso. We sat chatting over coffee and the time went by quite quickly. We arrived in Tromso in snow and with an icy runway but the plane landed effortlessly. It was just over an hour’s drive to our hotel in Sommaroy (Sommaroy Arctic Hotel). It was dark and we could not see the beautiful scenery on the drive there. By the time we arrived we only had enough time to dump our bags in our rooms and go into supper.

While we were waiting for dinner to be served someone mentioned checking to see if there was an Aurora, so we went outside into the car park and this is what we saw! This was taken with my iPhone and has not been edited, it is exactly as the camera saw it!

After supper we went out to see if we could get ‘proper’ photos of the Aurora with our cameras, but it was very faint. It was freezing cold, about -3C but there was a strong wind so it was more likely about -10C so we gave up after about an hour and came back to the hotel.

It’s now late and I need to unpack and get sorted as we are departing at 6.20am tomorrow morning to shoot the early morning light. I am tired!