First Lesson in Cross Country Skiing

After our luxury ski resort Xmas in Geilo, J and I headed further towards Oslo to meet our friends Kamilla and Karl Arne and head to one of their family cabins in the mountains. There they gave us our first lesson in cross-country skiing, an absolute must try for foreigners because Norwegians are said to have 'invented' the sport. While not everybody here skis, of course, staying in mountain cabins and going on ski tours for the holidays it is an astonishingly widespread practice. It is also a deeply embedded part of national identity and culture. I was particularly thrilled to get the chance to try it, J might have been happier snowboarding, but had fun nonetheless ;)

The snow was not as much or in as good condition as hoped so the idea of skiing around and across a big frozen lake was off the cards. I was quietly grateful with my visions of falling through the ice, but the lake was beautiful and we did walk on it later with the dogs.
The best thing about not being able to have our first cross country skiing lesson on the lake was that the piece of forest we used instead had real life moose tracks! I was super dooper excited!
And even more super dooper exited about the little hard blocks of real life moosey poo.
J and I were given the basic instructions from our wonderful instructors and we set off in some small circles around the moose track tract of forest. Once we got a sense of the gliding striding action, which was a rather delightful sensation when one managed to get in the swing of it, we were asked to take on the mountain!
Okay, well more like the hill we had been circling around, but it did prove to be quite a challenge. K-man led the way and gave instructions for climbing up the hill fishbone style. Unfortunately, this is where J came unstuck. Quite literally I am afraid. After a couple of falls trying to fishbone up the hill, J ripped off the entire bottom of his borrowed boot and it was game over for him. I soldiered on without him though don't worry!
After a while I managed to work out the going up part, and even rather shakily, the turning around on the slope part. It was the going down that proved difficult! I extended my run with each attempt but never quite made it to the bottom standing up unfortunately. Note the snow on the bum as I watch K-man demonstrate super smoothly!
Oh well, it remains something for next time, when J actually may actually manage to keep his boots in one piece for more than a couple of hours :)