Final Hurrah

Last weekend, J and I travelled to the mountains with some friends to enjoy the snow for the last time for the season. Six of us drove up to a friend's cabin in a place called Oppheim, about 2 hours from Bergen. All Norwegian families seem to have a cabin that they like to escape to on weekends and holidays. Sometimes it is in a great position for winter activities, sometimes for summer, and sometimes for both! The cabin we went to was one of the latter I would say. Situated on the edge of a huge (currently frozen) lake with an amazing view over the mountains, it has a top quality skiing resort only 15 mins away. This was the view from the verandah...

Here is a shot of the cabin, good old Cedric and a hound or two happy to be free range out in the countryside!
These Norwegian cabins (from my limited experience) all seem to have similiar elements of design and decoration. To begin with, the walls inside must be wood paneling...lots and lots of wood paneling, can't get enough of that good stuff and oh so scandinavian! Then there has to be lots of single bunk beds, especially in the attic, so as to fit in as many people as possible. Then there has to be games of the old school variety, cards, board games, wooden puzzles etc, and of course, a few Donald Duck comics...in Norwegian! This was a particularly super fabulous cabin, with all these essential elements in place, and it provided a wonderful place for us all for the weekend. Here is the clan sitting around the kitchen table...

Of course lots of time was spent telling stories, drinking red wine and generally having a good time...


When we went to the slopes on Saturday, it was raining and threatening to be miserable. The three guys and me had snowboards while the other two ladies were going cross country skiing for the day. We agreed to meet in the cafe to eat our 'matpakke' (packed lunches - sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper and some fruit) in a couple of hours and headed off into the drizzle. To celebrate the end of the season, a live band was playing, a grill cooking, and a competition water jump was even set up. It was almost for the benefit of no one though as the conditions meant that the whole place was almost deserted. The boys immediately headed to the top of the mountain while I chose to practice my new footing arrangement on the beginners lift and slope first. After an hour or so they came to 'kidnap' me to take me to the top. I was initially highly dubious about my abilities to ride a snowboard on a T-bar for 3kms straight up a mountain face, but somehow I managed it and it was amazing! Up the top of the mountain it was snowing rather than raining and the conditions were fabulous, with not another person in sight...well except for once or twice...It was really great fun and I finally managed to pull off a few forward turns without completely eating it :) Oh, I ate it plenty of times trying to do them don't worry, but sometimes, just sometimes, it worked! As this was the first time I really managed this, I was very excited. It felt great to return to the same resort we started snowboarding at and see how far we had both come. The first time J and I didn't even buy a lift ticket! While the last time, we were riding the T bar right to the top and pulling off some fancy moves all the way down! Unfortunately I have no photos from the snow on this day as the rain/snow conditions did not make for ideal camera conditions, and besides, we were having far too much fun to take any photos!
So here are some photos of the dogs having fun instead...


And finally, a picture from along the way home. Take a good look, it will probably be the last blog about snow for quite a while...xxx