Total MX-5 – July 2019

46 | TOTAL MX-5 |^ Summer 2019

[ ROAD TRIP ]

What’s the least likely car in which to tackle a 500-mile daytrip inside the Arctic Circle?

That’s right, a mk4 MX-5 roadster. But editor Fraser does love a challenge...

Deep

freeze

O

ut the window of the small twin-

turboprop airliner all you can

see is snow. A relentless carpet

of white, unsullied by rocks or trees or

any sign of human habitation. It’s

strangely beautiful despite its lack of

features, a mesmerising vision of nature

conquering all. You can’t help but

wonder how people can live in such

conditions, but live down there they do.

Somewhere...

Then the pilot steers us along the

coast, and suddenly there are cliffs and

inlets and, nestling in small clusters

down near the sea, houses. What there

doesn’t seem any evidence of are roads,

a means of escaping these isolated

pockets of civilisation. Perhaps the

inhabitants use the fishing trawlers

bobbing up and down in the harbours as

a means of travel: we’ve been told that

some of them use the very aeroplane

we’re crammed into, which acts like a

hoppa bus linking the few towns in this

winter wilderness.

While it might sound a little as though

we’re flying over some remote chunk of

Canada or Alaska, we’re actually still

above mainland Europe. Norway, in fact.

We’re heading for Nordkapp, the