Mountain Adventures

Last week, J and I were invited by my boss, Roger, and his family to spend some time with them in the Norwegian mountains. Like almost every Norwegian family, they have a cabin in the mountains that they retreat to in the holidays and we joined them there for a few days. After an interesting 3 hour train ride with the dogs through some of the spectacular countryside between Bergen and Oslo, we arrived at our location. On our first day, we all went for a hike in the mountains around the cabin. The following are some photos from that adventure.

This is a photo of J and I with the 'adults' of the family, Roger and Kjellrun at the top of the 1500m hillock we climbed. Of course the teenage girls, Idun and Eirill, were too cool to take part in this set up photo at the top of the mountain! While not a great shot, I thought some of you might be interested to see what my boss actually looks like...not sure this shot actually captures his 'uniqueness' very well though.
The next day I agreed to go horse riding with Eirill because she is a horse fanatic (riding at a riding school in Bergen 3 times a week) and no one else would go with her. Little did I know that it would be for 3 and a half hours and that I would be left with no skin between my butt cheeks afterwards! It was worth it though because we rode through some unbelieveably beautiful landscape, crossing multiple snowy rivers and ascending a mountain for a view that I doubt will ever be surpassed in my life. Unfortunately I did not get more than a mental photograph of that amazing view (too focussed on not falling off the horse!), but here is one I took from where we watered the horses at the bottom of the mountain. In the shot is our guide with both his and my horse (the dark one in front).

On the following day we just took a short walk and I tried to recover from the horse riding induced aches, pains, bruising and bum burn. Then J headed home on the train with Eirill and Idun, Roger and I headed off for three days of hiking through the landscape, staying at National Parks cabins along the way...but I think I will save news and pics of that for the next post! xxxx