Kitchen Sink

We are only going away for a weekend and the amount of kit we have is ridiculous, these words are heard everytime we go away so something has to change as we normally travel by car but the big trip is by air. I havent travelled by air for a lot of years so packing light has never been a feature in my tarvel arrangements. Just checking a few items of essential clothing on the scales and the totals start to mount up. Seems like 23kg is about the standard for hold luggage and 6kg for carry on, doesnt seem to add up to a lot of kit. Camera, lens and tripod add up to 6kg so I will have to be carefull about over doing my carry-on bag. When The Boss went to Japan she managed to keep to her weight limits ok, but it was warm and wet when she went and she went for two weeks. We will be in Oslo for 2 nights on the way out and 1 night on the way back and 4 nights in Svalbard. We are going to Oslo a day early to have time to see the city in daylight. We dont know what the temperatures will be like in Oslo in March but we dont expect it to be warm! So do we take extra clothing or just use some of the stuff we are already taking, that is our dilema.We dont want to have too little clothing but we also dont want to have too much. The layers we are taking for Svalbard will be too hot for travelling round Oslo in as they are meant for standing still staring into space, so do we have to take another coat to cover our time in Oslo? We have lists of clothing and I can imagine they will be changed numerous times before we finally settle on what will be in the travel bags come March 16th. 

Feet First

The e-mail was sent on the 2nd April to Travelquest asking about the possibility of booking two places on the 2015 Eclipse trip! The next day there was a reply from them saying, congratulations you are booked onto the trip all that needs to be done now is phone the team and complete the payments form. Which the Boss did that night and the next day the confirmation e-mail arrived, we were really going to Svalbard. Bradt Travel guides to Spitsbergen and maps of the Spitsbergen archipelago were purchased and then assiduously studied.
We thought that as we were off on a cruise we would have loads of free time to study the maps and books on board as well as the guide books we had for the different locations we would be visiting.
Just as well that we read the books before we set of then isn't it, free time on board was not happening. We thought we had planned for every eventuality whilst we would be on board, cold weather gear, check. Warm weather gear, check. A reduced set of camera gear, check. Tripod, check. Computer, check. GPS, check. Extension leads, check. Everything but the kitchen sink was packed and we then had to carry it all on board. We are so used to travelling by car that travelling light to us is leaving the rear seats in the car. We really thought that we had pared everything down to a minimum and were only taking essentials. This trip taught us a few things about packing and selection of kit. First out are computers, too big and too heavy. We hope to take extra memory cards instead. My tripod is too heavy, so a lighter one is going to be purchased. One camera and one lens for Me again to keep the weight down. Cold weather clothing is bulky but not that heavy so the travel bags shouldn't be overweight but footwear is another matter. We took walking boots on the cruise and they certainly added to the weight of the bags but the boots we will be taking to Svalbard are even heavier, so do we wear them or pack them.

E-mail

Of all the companies mentioned by our friends none seemed to have any future trips available to book on their websites so we thought the proposed trip was dead in the water. We kept looking at the various sites that listed flights for any bargains that might pop up but it was fruitless. I had a look at one of the tour companies websites a few months later and there was an update on the future eclipse page for anyone interested in hearing when this trip was being organised, it said to leave your details and they would send an e-mail with all the details as soon as they had them. Nothing to lose I thought and so added my details and promptly forgot about it as another travel possibility appeared out of the blue. We were at The Bosses parent’s house talking about their holidays and where they were booked for next, it was to be a 7 day cruise in the Baltic onboard the Thomson Spirit. I have never thought about a cruise and neither had The Boss but the brochure was handed over to see the itinerary and dates. While The Boss was reading it her dad said there was a cruise in there that would be ideal for us, I thought it strange that they would turf all the passengers of the ship and just take us wherever we wanted to go! The boss flicked the pages over and her face changed and she became very serious, you have to look at this she said as she handed over the brochure. The title at the top of the page said “Fire and Ice” and it was a 14 night cruise, very nice I said and tried to hand it back. Read the itinerary was the command I got, so I did. Norway, Shetland, Faeroes and then Iceland which happen to be some of the destinations we had looked at for our summer holiday. This was Friday 9th November and on Monday12th November we were booked on a cruise to leave the Tyne on the 19th July 2013, just like that. So having taken the plunge and booked what looked like a very grownup holiday we cast aside any thoughts of the eclipse trip. The New Year started and we had become comfortable with fact we were going on a cruise and what it entailed, roll on July19th. Checking my e-mails one morning before setting off for work I noticed a one from Travelquest, why was that name familiar? When I arrived home later that day I had forgotten the e-mail I had seen just that morning and was making my way through the 80+ e-mails in the inbox, nothing of interest or that couldn’t be dealt with later, just before switching of I scrolled up the screen and saw the Travelquest e-mail again. What are these selling “I thought” and on April fool’s day, this should be good. They would be selling the 2015 Eclipse trip to Svalbard, the one I had asked for information on when it became available. I showed The Boss the e-mail with the itinerary and prices, I could see that She was trying to not get too worked up about it as she was thinking the same as me that it would be nice but we had already committed ourselves to the cruise. So we now had confirmation in the form of the e-mail that the prices we had sort of plotted out were in fact quite close to what was in the e-mail their’s was cheaper but not by much. I think all thoughts of an eclipse trip were dampened a bit by the cost factor again. Later that night I asked what she thought of our chances of going on an eclipse trip and the answer was similar to how my brain was trying to rationalise it. We want to go to Svalbard at some point but it will more than likely have to be during our summer holidays, says The Boss. Which is not the ideal time to go there as you don’t get to experience the raw temperatures and long nights, says I? So we are thinking alike so far, do you think we should just book it.
Not sure whose suggestion it was but the game was afoot.

The Plot thickens.

Two of our Astro friends have done a lot of travelling with different companies who specialise in astronomical events and occurrences and so their respective views were sought about which company and to which eclipse we should be looking at. Everyone has differing requirements when it comes to foreign travel so we listened to the pros and cons of the different companies and how our friends rated them. There seemed to be one thing that all the companies we heard about had in common, their prices! We normally try to book our holidays ourselves and normally don’t use travel agents or tour companies if we can help it, so with that in mind we looked into organising an eclipse trip independently. Svalbard was picked as a starting point as we really wanted to go there and it was far enough in the future that we thought we had plenty of time. We used the different companies we had heard about as a baseline of the prices for past trips and set about beating them. We realised quite quickly that none of the companies had been to Svalbard for an eclipse so we had to budget for higher costs because of the remote location. First we looked at accommodation in Longyearbyen; "Holy Mary Mother of God" is the sanitised version of what I first thought of the prices of £190.00 a night. Next up was flights and it was not to be an easy ride as they say. Newcastle to Schiphol, Schiphol to Oslo then Oslo to Longyearbyen, with it being so far into the future getting sensible prices and schedules proved very, very difficult if not impossible. The prices we found were interesting to say the least, a new professional camera each with change is the best way I can describe the costs. Also each leg of the journey meant a considerable wait before the onward connection, so more hotels were looked at, meaning new professional lenses could have been purchased at the cost of these places!

Time for a different tack.

Background story.

In 2009 The Boss went to Japan for the Solar Eclipse but also to see a bit of the country while there.
This she accomplished despite the evil weather she encountered. The day of the eclipse was probably some of the worst rain and resulted in the eclipse being a complete washout. What made it worse is that I saw the whole thing courtesy of a live feed from one of the American University teams who were covering it. Now that The Boss had joined the ranks of eclipse chasers future trips were studied in detail and the one in northern Australia 13th November was now being touted as a possibility.
We knew two people who were going and they did their best to put the pressure on but there were two things that stood in the way, cost being the main one and then the fact that I dont do aeroplanes which would mean Me going by surface ship to Australia! Costs and time constraints being My main concern the eclipse chasing plan was a non starter or so I thought. We subsequently found out after the event that three of our friends were in Australia and had a great time.

18 Months to go.

The countdown begins here, we arrive in Oslo on the 16th March 2015.
We are spending 2 nights in Oslo before jumping on a plane to take us to Svalbard.
This blog will hopefully detail the buildup to the trip and then the trip itself.