Tinayrebukten | Steve Walker

Thursday 4 September 2025 – We emerged, blinking, to the wonderful surroundings in Tinayrebukten.

Mirror-smooth, calm water (therefore no wind) and mild temperatures were the order of the day.

Kuba had given the guests an option – a Zodiac cruise or a hike. Even without a deciding factor, I think I would have gone for the cruise, on the basis that hiking in wellies is not that rewarding. But the possibility of seeing puffins sealed the deal, so the cruise it was for us. Kuba was careful to explain that we were past peak puffin season, but he expected there to be some around.

As we started out in the Zodiac, we got a great view back of Kinfish.

Kuba told us that there were harbour seals on the shores near us. As usual for me, I had difficulty picking them out, but patient explaining from Jane and the Big Lens helped; and anyway we got really quite close to them. Kuba counted 13 seals, and they, like the walruses, watched us incuriously as we drifted almost silently by.

It wasn’t exactly difficult to get good close-ups, so photographically these seals weren’t too much of a challenge. However, I invite captions for this picture:

I don’t know what these seals are thinking, but in my mind it would be with a northern English accent

The folk in the other Zodiac had made land and started their hike.

We kept an eye on them as they worked their way up the hillside.

The glacier at the far end of our fjord had some great light playing over it.

Before long, we spotted our first puffins.

There were a handful on the water, and if we got too close, they took off. Annoyingly (but unsurprisingly) they tended to fly away from us, which made getting a photo of a puffin flight quite challenging, but after a few hundred attempts I got one halfway decent shot.

I hadn’t appreciated that both puffins and guillemots are species of auk, and the similarities are clear when you see them flying – neither bird takes off or lands elegantly.

We approached a couple of caves,

and the colours of the rock formations in the roof were very striking.

Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the fjord, the hiking team were steadily making their way up the hill.

On our side, there was an even steeper hill, and, amazingly, reindeer were cavorting up and down it. See if you can spot one in this picture.

As you can guess, I had difficulty spotting them,

but eventually got the Big Lens to pick them up.

There were probably half a dozen in all, and we watched as they picked their way around the hillside.

On the other side, the hiking team had made it to the ridge at the top of their hill.

They’d been out for an hour by this stage, so had clearly been working quite hard.

Our geology continued to present some wonderful palettes – glacial water, coloured rocks and moss.

We even encountered a ledge which has been christened “the hanging gardens of Tinareybukta”.

Further along the fjord was a glacier, which we went to explore.

You can tell from the blue colour that it’s a fairly active one; blue means fresh ice, which means bits are falling off it.

It was instructional (for me, anyway) to compare the different colours that different cameras saw. The phone saw the ice as very blue, but my little Sony had a much greener cast. I corrected it a bit, but there’s still a noticeable difference.

Phone

Sony

I think the Sony’s version is a bit truer to the scene as I recall it – but the blue was very striking. Although the glacier made some rumbling noises, it didn’t oblige us with a calving, so after a while, we made our way back to Kinfish where the crew had prepared a surprise for us:

A barbecue lunch!

Annie, our stewardess, was doing her usual job of making sure we were well looked after,

dispensing a rhubarb-flavoured cocktail to those who wanted it, as well as G&T to the discerning passenger.

After lunch, the boat moved to a different point in the fjord, called Lilliehöökbreen, where we were close to the glacier that was to be the subject of the afternoon’s Zodiac cruise. It was clear that it was a somewhat more active glacier, as we could see as we looked back at Kinfish.

Lots of brash ice made for interesting progress, but Kuba swore that the Zodiac would be robust enough to withstand it. We approached the active edge of the glacier – it’s very long, some 5km – and maybe as tall as 60m high.

Among the clutter floating about there were some chunks of black ice, i.e. ice containing no air bubbles, thus perfectly clear and almost invisible in the water. Rolf retrieved a very, erm, chunky chunk

bits of which I’m sure will be gracing our G&Ts before long.

Kuba took us as close to the glacier as the brash ice would allow,

which gave us some great scenery.

A 5km glacier cliff sounds wonderful, but it makes trying to be somewhere near a calving rather challenging. We saw a couple of chunks falling off, one of which made a huge splash, but none of these was considerate enough to happen when I (or anyone) was pointing a camera in its direction. Kind of frustrating, but very much to be expected. The noise of being near a glacier like this is amazing – every so often there’s a “boom!” as something somewhere collapses; and a few minutes later a wave reaches you in the brash ice.

The colour of some of the icebergs was simply fantastic.

I promise I haven’t emphasised the blue colour you see when processing the photo.

After an hour or so of failing to witness a calving, we headed back to Kinfish to find that the crew had organised yet another surprise for us – the opportunity to jump into the water again! This time, however, you were allowed to wear the immersion suits that the ship carries for real emergencies – the sort where you have to abandon ship. They’re basically (rather comical, bright orange) drysuits, and many of the guests opted to clamber into them