After a couple of hours sleep it was time to get up and go to action stations while the amphibious assault was happening. As an observer only I took it upon myself to set up my action station in the wardroom in front of the TV and watch an amphibious training movie in the form of the mini-series Pacific. Action finished just before the end of the first episode so I quickly ducked up the bridge to see the northern lights (there were none) before going back to bed.
During the morning the CO of BULWARK decided that instead of the ship remaining around the corner from where the troops were on the beach it would go right in close. This was not to support the troops but because King Harald of Norway was coming to visit the Royal Marines today and he wanted the ship in a great position for photos. It turns out that King Harald, the Queens second cousin, is an honorary Colonel in Chief of the Royal Marines and wanted to come and see them in action. As the King of Norway it appears he is also entitled to good weather so we had mainly clear skies and sunshine. For the rest of us it meant that the ship was in an absolutely stunning location for photos – I am sure even Paula will grow tired of looking at photo after photo of photo of snow-clad mountains.
The beach where the amphibious landing took place
The Skjold ("shield" in Norwegian) class superfast, super stealthy patrol boats protecting the ship. They are capable of 60 knots
The Royal Marines were going to be putting on a demonstration for the King in the early afternoon so it was down to the gym for a quick run on the treadmill (still boring) before lunch. The meals onboard have been pretty good but you can tell the endurance is running a bit low when one of the choices is Cumberland Pie which seems to be sausages and baked beans with pastry on top. Even though it was the recommended choice I went for the pasta
Just as everyone was getting to on the uppers to watch the demonstration on the shore and see if we could spot the King a pipe was made banning onlookers. They were doing a ceremonial gun salute for the King (which luckily didn’t set off an avalanche) and used this as the excuse for banning us. Personally I think the CO wanted to make sure the photos of the amphibious demonstration had the ship in the background without a whole lot of lolly gaggers in view. I decided to watch another episode of Pacific instead.
In the evening the ship went to anchor and we had a clear night and were rewarded with a spectacular light show. It wasn’t the full on northern lights you see on TV but it was still fantastic with bands of green light coming from the west in streams that split apart like waves before disappearing in the east. At times the bands would be quite thin and bright and other times they would spread apart and become fainter. There were even times when they danced a little. It was all very surreal. I tried to capture them on the camera but its not really up to doing justice to them.
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