Sunday, August 09, 2009

Sunday Stroll

J and I had a rather hungover headachy thirsty lay on the couch watch movies and eat junk food kind of day yesterday. We spent friday night across the fjord with our new buddies, grilling and singing and dancing and seeing the moon for the first time in months (winter must be on its way!). This left us feeling a bit flat on Saturday. Thank goodness it was raining so feelings of guilt about doing almost nothing except consuming fat, sugar and hollywood movies were kept to a minimum. Today, however, we felt the need to do the Norwegian sunday stroll thing so we headed off into the drizzle to climb the mountain we see outside our kitchen window. It was a bit of a dodgy day but we didn't let that get to us and I loved that we got to walk up through a little forest full of bright orange mushrooms and masses of blueberries. I did not get any pics on the way up as it was too wet but when we stopped at the lower peak to the right of our kitchen view, I got a couple of snaps in before being rained out.

This one is looking back down Kaldfjord and out towards the sea. Our house is nestled down there somewhere on the left hand side :) This second one is looking out along the road towards Sommerøy. There is a great little white sand beach down there about 20kms. J and I took the motorbike down for an afternoon with friends not so long ago, but today that was not such an appealing option for what to do with the day.
Down from this peak was a lovely little mountain lake. There was evidence of prior fires and I could totally understand why. On a nice day it would be a lovely place to stop and swim and spend some time. The Norwegians love an outdoor grill. They get a little wood fire going, roast a sausage on a stick and put it in some flat tortilla like bread. Luckily I have found one place in town that sells soy sausages and am now stocked up for such occasions. However, I still have not found a shop that sells tofu, how weird is that? Not a single one. Feel like I might be living in the middle ages...not helped when at the party the other night everyone was eating dried fish as their snack with beer. Strangely enough, I actually didn't mind it...
J and I had hoped to be able to then go on and ascend the higher peak that we see out our window to the left. When we got there though, we could not see any path traversing the gulch between the two peaks. After quite some debate, we decided to try and bush bash our way up. Here we are pausing in an amazing patch of blueberries about two thirds of the way up.
Mina learnt to pick blueberries while we were here. I gave her three little ones and within no time at all she had worked out that she didn't need me and was off stripping the bushes all on her own (see video on facebook). After this stop, things became quite a bit more hectic though. The ground was very uneven and you could not see the gaps between the rocks because it was all covered in bluberry bushes and ferns. It was very steep and very slippery in the wet and we were clinging to spindly trees to keep us from toppling backwards down the mountain. Mina decided she did not want to go any further so J went on a bit for a look and unfortunately, we decided we had to head for home. We will try the ascent from another direction another weekend though and I will post some more pics then :) xxx

2 comments:

Escaping The Winter Darkness said...

That was a crazy attempt to conquer the last part. I guess we we're warned by our Norwegian friends not to try that sort of thing? Now we know why the warning was given..We won't try that again will we?

Anonymous said...

Just wanting you to know that I had a look and a read of this posting. And to tell you I'm so glad you are still doing the blog -- it's great for those of us who are not on Facebook ! Cheers - Annette