Solitude, to be far away from the crowds, off the beaten track, on an unknown water somewhere; it seems like these needs and desires are a fairly consistent thing with me. And as much as I do sometimes enjoy the company, I perhaps crave those things more and more with my fishing, and it’s sadly something increasingly difficult to find on our crowded little island. Don’t get me wrong, there are still beautiful and private places that I am lucky and privileged to have access to, and you can fairly well guarantee you’ll still be the only one, if only for half a day or so. But I don’t think there’s any real, what you might call wilderness, left to explore in the UK, unless of course you head to the far North of Scotland. So when an opportunity presents itself to get a taste of that, a little reminder of what that’s like, I normally grab it with both hands.

I’d had a work call last year, to make a film for a large games manufacturer, based in Oslo. The company had been producing a game to coincide with the release of a big SciFi film, Dune 2. Being a big fan of the first of the recent Dune films, it was a really interesting project for me to be involved with anyway. But with half to be shot in London and more importantly the other half scheduled for Oslo at their HQ, the chance to get away somewhere new to me, made it even more appealing. Of course, as interesting as the project was, before I’d even put pen to paper to write any script, plan or proposal, the first thing I found myself doing was having pre-emptive trawl through Google maps to see what fishing opportunities Norway had to offer for that time of year. I was due to be there towards the end of September and that seemed to coincide perfectly with the back end of the grayling season. The temperatures looked like they were starting to cool a little, but that was ok, I was up for the adventure whether the fishing was any good or not.

A month or so passed with the usual back and forth with pre-production, and I asked the producer if she wouldn’t mind changing my flight back from Norway so I could stay behind for a week or so longer. With that all confirmed and a little more, non work related research later, I found myself booked in to a cabin, four hours North of Oslo on the banks of the Glomma, a river I had never heard of before, but by all accounts was one of the best grayling rivers in the country. I bought myself a fancy new duffle bag to accommodate a couple of fly rods, waders and a bit of tackle and as the shoot dates drew nearer, I felt a palpable sense of excitement begin to build. The London shoot was put to bed and before I knew it, I was on a plane to Norway the following week.

I had shot in Sweden before a few times and had enjoyed the experience and the landscape very much, and I had worked in Denmark for a few months in my late teens, but Norway was a new one for me. It’s a beautiful country, 25% bigger than the UK but with 10% of the population. Consequently and much to my liking, it is very relaxed as I found out, and not as expensive as I’d been warned. Norwegians I had discovered are also very hospitable people and pleasure to work with. The shoot went well and the Norwegian crew were just charming, but as fun as that had all been, I couldn’t wait to say my goodbyes and make my way north.

I left Oslo a little later than planned that afternoon and by the time I’d had a farewell pizza and a beer with the producers, grabbed my rental from the airport and cleared the city, the light had already started to go. My Air BnB host phoned to check my progress and expressed concern that I’d never find my stop off cabin in the dark, he also warned me about the risk of moose on the road, a very real driving hazard the further north you go, a very Scandinavian problem, so he directed me to one of his other stays, a delightful little pod like hut in Espa overlooking Mjøsa fjord. I spent that evening partly star gazing, looking over the moonlit fjord below, my breath now clearly visible in the rapidly cooling night air. It’s at times like this I sometimes wish I still smoked, but content with lungfuls of clean air, I retired to bed under a veritable mountain of cozy bedding. The next morning, I hurriedly packed up the car and resumed my journey.

The Glomma it turns out is Norway’s longest river. It starts in Glomosen, or Arasund, not far from the Swedish border and 621 stunning kilometres later, empties in to Øyeren lake, east of Oslo and then continues its journey down to the outer Oslofjord. I didn’t really start to see the river in its splendour until I hit a place called Elverum, where I was supposed to have spent the previous night. The road then snakes its way right next to the river and accompanies it for a couple of hundred kilometres. I was aiming for a town called Koppang, where I had booked in for the next few days, which is about half that distance and oh boy what a beautiful drive it is. The day was warm and clear and there was a crispness to the quality of light, making everything seem like someone had turned up the resolution. Trying to keep my eyes on the road ahead, I would get glimpses of the river to my right and the sun was flaring through the trees in a way that made it feel strangely nostalgic, almost reminiscent of an old and slightly overexposed 8mm film. I love road trips like this.