Lofoten by paddle: the tide table is the itinerary
Five days planned around water, not the clock.
Sigrún Halldórsdóttir On most routes the day starts when people wake up. On Lofoten by paddle it starts when the water says so, which in September means two departures before six in the morning and one lunch eaten at four in the afternoon.
We plan the five days around tide and wind, in that order, and then fit sleep and food into what is left.
Why the tide leads
The crossings between islands run fast on a spring tide. Timed right, the water carries you and the day is easy. Timed wrong, the same crossing is two hours of work against a current that does not care. There is no version of the trip where the schedule wins that argument.
What that feels like
Strange for a day, then obvious. By day three nobody asks what time we are leaving; they ask what the water is doing. The group starts reading the table over breakfast, which is when the trip becomes theirs rather than ours.
The landings
Five beaches, all black sand, all with a window either side of the tide when they are pleasant and outside of which they are a scramble. We camp above the high line, always, and we have never regretted the extra fifty metres.
