JOURNAL

Lyngenfjord

The Norwegian Sea

Flåm, Norway

Mount Fløyen, Norway

Skagen, Denmark

N 57° 44' 40.8804" W 10° 39' 16.8546"

For three days I walk the endless beach.

The wind is ferocious, coming from all directions; lashing the waves against the shoreline and blasting the dunes further across this weathered penninsula by another fraction of an inch. I follow the coast, sand rattling against my legs. My tracks trail behind me as the only marker of my passage, but soon a glance backwards reveals the line of footprints slowly filling up, and fading into the ever-shifting sands.

The ocean is to my right; I know this much. First it was the Baltic, but now it is the North Sea. And the sun; it rises late into the day and follows me wearily, humouring my gradual progress with an uncanny grey light that posesses incredible clarity, before sinking too soon below the horizon in a splash of crimson. The moon rises early, unnaturally large; and it soars upwards above the heavy crash of the surf. The celestial arcs are changing, and the sea can feel it.

On the crests of the dunes, away from the thud of the sea and its bracing spray, the brittle grasses whistle in the wind. Then, down into the shallows and the howling air is suddenly silenced, replaced with an eerie stillness and mile after mile of giant, slowly-shifting dunes. I begin to clamber up and over, momentarily met each time by the fading horizon and a bracing wind, whipping the surface of this undulating landscape, before plunging back down the other side into the eerie calm.

Budapest, city of shadows

Budapest is a city of shadows. Long shadows stretch out from the feet of the city’s early morning commuters as they cross its squares and cobblestones in silent formation. The only sound to break the hush of dawn is the rhythmic click-clack of the trams, effortlessly trailing their own long, hypnotic shadows as they slowly wind their way between the people, the buildings and down the ancient streets.

As the early morning sun rises higher over the Danube, more shadows unfurl across its choppy waters, darting after the little boats that are ploughing their way across the river, and hanging draped like huge blankets from the grand bridges.

Scotland, Skye and the Northwest Coast

N 57° 39’ 3.654" W -6° 25’ 9.9084"

Skye looms on the horizon, glimpsed through squalls of driving rain blown by a ferocious wind; vast, foreboding bluffs rise up from crashing waves, and yet as the eye is drawn along this ancient coastline, angular ciffs give way to undulating lowlands revealed in the enchanting light of the sun as it filters through the ever-opening and closing gaps between wispy clouds.

Along Skye’s northwestern coastline, biting winds lash steep hills and unforgivingly-sheer cliff faces plunge vertically into the icy waters of the North Sea. Hardy highland sheep graze amongst wind-ravaged mounds, and coarse grasses lie pressed to mossy outcrops, almost in deferrence to the relentess power of the highland wind. This is the isle’s northern extreme. Beyond here, across a short, freezing stretch of water, lie the islands of the Outer Hebrides.