16 TRAVELNORWAY
NORTHERN LIGHTS:
THE STORY OF
‘AS FAR AS
WE CAN’
WORDS: ADAM SIMS
PICS: MATT SIMS, ALINA SHALIN, ADAM SIMS AND
RICCARDO MARCA
IT’S 9AM, STILL DARK, THE VAN IS FROZEN OVER AND
SHAKING LIKE HELL FROM THE WIND HITTING IT. WE
ARRIVED WELL AFTER DARK, SOME FERRY WE HAD
LUCKED IN ON, SHOWED UP LITERALLY AS WE PULLED UP
TO THE PORT AND TOOK US BY NIGHT TO THIS SMALL
ISLAND FAR OUT FROM THE NORWEGIAN MAINLAND. We
had been led there by an ambitious social media
audience who voted on our stories for what we should do
next, the options were to drive an overnighter as far north
as we could, or take a detour along the coastal ‘road’.
The uncertainty, the extreme weather and total lack of research into
where we had ended up, was the exact reason I woke up in the back of
the van with a huge grin on my face. To me, this was what I live for, the
discovery of unridden spots far from any crowds. Ok, there was a
moment’s hesitation as I opened the door and got smacked in the face
with what felt like an iceberg, but a second later, I was facing something
that was beyond our imaginations.
I was there with fellow freestyler Riccardo Marca, we’d decided to head
north just a few months before when we sat down over a pizza and beer
at the B-Side restaurant in Fuerteventura. “I wanna go somewhere
different, like not the usual places,” Riki had said to me. I thought for a
moment and remembered my short trip to Lofoten the year before, “Let’s
go north, after PWA Sylt and EFPT Holland are over,” I answered – and
that was the start of it.
uk
WIND
SURFING