My last words on the previous blog were very premature. At 11pm two people entered the hut, head torches blazing and a herd of Elephants would probably have been quieter! They were two local Greenlanders walking the trail for the 8th time. If I said that this hut was about 3.5 metres sq. and slept six people in theory and is made up of only the one room, you’ll understand our dismay when they started cooking their dinner, then proceeded to chat until after midnight. I’m not innocent myself when it comes to snoring, but let’s just say that one of them had rhythmical snoring that made the last part of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture seem very quite by comparison and to top it all the snorer got up every hour for a pee!!! Anyway some fitful sleep was had!

Day 3: This morning we were far more considerate than our room mates were the previous evening, we, quietly as possible took all our belongings outside to pack as well as making our breakfast drinks there as well… butane/propane camping stoves sound a little like an express trains when lit. What good fellows we were. We expect to meet them again at the next hut, as Stephen would say… Jaysus!

So before sunrise we were in the canoe starting our, well I am going to say, our voyage into the unknown, as you could write what we both knew about canoeing on the back of a postage stamp, although postage stamps appear to have got a great deal larger these days. The sun rose over the mountains giving the near perfect reflection of the cliffs and vegetation at the side of the lake, a wonderful brown/red hue as our paddling caused the only ripples that slowly spread and vanished into the near perfect reflections.

Stephen is younger and definitely stronger than me so keeping a straight course was not easy, but the 20km was covered in 4 hours 45 minutes including a 30 minute break on a sandy beach for lunch. It made for a short day, so in the afternoon we dried boots, socks and aired sleeping bags in the glorious Arctic sunshine… an afternoon spent blissfully unaware of this mad, mad, mad, mad world.

It’s now early evening and what little wind there was has now gone. The lake is again at perfect peace with the surrounding mountains, unable to tell where the reflection stops and the mountains begin. The late evening Arctic sun still has a little warmth in it, but that will disappear fast as the sun gets lower in the sky… absolute silence, absolute tranquility.

Our friends from the last hut did turn up at about 20:45, one of them totally exhausted. They are sleeping in a separate room… May everyone’s god be praised. The good news is that they are spending two days at the Canoe Centre hut!

Day 4: Today started as yesterday, a near cloudless sky, with the waning moon still dominant in the sky as the sun was still waiting to creep over the horizon. The first half of the day was a gentle walk down a wide valley to lake Kangerluatsiarsuaq. As we stopped for launch it was difficult to judge where reflection and reality merged.

I’m sat just North of the Arctic Circle next to a crystal clear tarn, it’s only the slight breeze that indicates that there is water there at all. The surprisingly warm breeze is blowing the white cotton grass seeds through the air, sticking to the rusty red of the beach and willow scrub, which is in the last throws of its Autumn transformation. In the distance are snow capped mountains separated by deep turquoise lakes, the mirror like reflections exaggerating the size of these white topped peaks. I wish I could describe the scene better, they say a picture paints a thousand words, but no picture could do this justice.

After lunch the trail took us into the mountains, crossing boiler plates with erratics dotted all over. The hut, most people might call it a shed, was perched at the head of a small valley. The late evening sun was still warm enough to be able to sit outside in a polo shirt… I was expecting temperatures of -5 to -8 at night and in the low single figures during the day, but today has felt like a beautiful Spring day in the UK at about 10 to 12 degrees.

It was a late finish . It’s the longest day on the Arctic Circle Trail itself. The book says 22km, but my GPS made it 25.5km. Which ever is correct it was still a hard long days walk. The scenery, though, never disappointed.

Tomorrow hopefully only 11km… but through a ford that could be waist deep!