Finally getting to North Cape

The weather up here next to North Cape is highly changeable and there had been low hanging clouds during the entire time of our stay on the island with North Cape. We are getting up the last morning and before breakfast I have a little look outside the door – according to the weather forecast the weather is supposed to clear up today. But the clouds are still hanging on all the mountains in the area so I find it doubtful we will be able to reach North Cape on top of one of the small mountains.

We decide to have our breakfast and then we will just drive off without actually ever getting to the main destination – the North Cape itself. It is a bit of a shame having gone all this way and then has to go back without actually reaching the main attraction.

We eat breakfast and then have another look out the window – and it actually does look a bit like the clouds are lifting a little bit. We can see a little bit of the top of the mountains. We decide to postpone our departure half an hour to see what will happen.

After another half an hour it is pretty clear the weather is improving – there are still a few clouds but now we can see the mountains. So we decide to head up the hill along the road to North Cape.

We drive up through the mountains and get to the entrance gate of North Cape – the weather is great now with clear sky and full sun. So today we can actually see the entrance gate unlike what we saw yesterday when everything was covered in thick fog. We pay the exorbitant parking fee to go in the gate – we have to pay 200 NOK for parking which is more than 20$.

We get into the parking place at the visitor center – this is a huge parking space which is divided in two parts – one for ordinary cars and one of tour buses. The parking area allocated to cars is far from full so we get a spot not too far from the edge of the cliff. The area for the buses is virtually empty – there are only two buses and I would assume there is enough space for a hundred buses at any given time. I guess the number of visitors to North Cape has been reduced from the usual flooding to a tiny trickle during this year with the pandemic reducing international travel and pretty much stop all cruise passengers from heading up along the Norwegian coast.

We leave the car and as we do the parking ticket we just purchased for 200 NOK blows out the door and are rushing towards the edge of the cliff. It is really annoying to see this expensive piece of paper just disappearing like this. I run after the paper and fortunately catch it just before it goes over the edge. I head back to the car and take better care to make sure there isn’t a draft from the other door when I place the ticket on the dashboard one more time.

After the drama it is time to go and see the area. We go to the edge. From here we can see Knivsodden. Knivsodden is actually further north than North Cape so we can stay here on the top of the cliff and look at the northern most point of the island. I guess North Cape is lucky it is much more dramatic than Knivsodden below – this is why this spot has gotten famous and attract a lot more visitor than the actual northern most point. Probably a bit like the Rock of Gibraltar which isn’t the southernmost point in Europe – but still get many more visitors to the dramatic location than the southernmost point in Spain which is a couple of hours drive away.

After having a look at Knivsodden below we head to the main attraction here at North Cape – we go to the small structure of the globe at the edge of the cliff. We are not the only ones going there – but there is only a limited number of visitors up here today so we manage to get some pictures without a huge crowd around.

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After enjoying the view of the cliffs we go back to see a bit more of the plateau of North Cape. They have made a few attractions at the top. There are a statue and a couple of large round plates which is actually originally made by seven children from around the globe which had been taken on a trip to North Cape to make some childish art of humanity. Later these small plates where made into large round sculptures. After having a look at the outside it is the time to go inside the visitor center where there are several museums.