My northern playground: April 2007

I have discovered the key to Norway's economical success. It isn't its oil, no no. It isn't its cheese. Nope. It is the small, unobtrusive (but ingenious) engangs grill, or one-time grill. This little piece of convenience comes loaded with coals, fire starters and metho, meaning that it can be ignited by every incompetant light or fire stick wielding maniac. And the moment spring sticks it's head out of ground, these engang grills sell like hot cakes.

Well I was a engangs grill virgin up until last week, when I finally consumated my marriage with my dear land Norway. You see, the weather was fine, we were by the sea, and really, who wants to eat dry bread for lunch when you can grill! So after buying the compulsary pölse, spröstekt lök and ketchup, we sat our self down,, surrounded by groups doing just the same by the harbour of pretty little Karlvårg and spist our grilled sausages in the sun.

Now this trip was filled with new experiences. Firstly the engangs grill. Secondly, I caught my first fish in my life. That was a great feeling. Thirdly, I ate the fish i caught (grilled on an engangs grill in fact!).

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"The Town Hall is closed untill opening. It will remain closed after being opened. Opened tomorrow."

600m of ice straight down. 487 square kilometres of ice. The largest glacier in Europe - the Jostedalsbreen.

And we (almost) walked the whole length of it last week. Not quite though. Almost. I stress the word almost.

I can't say we had the best weather really. Well, as a matter of fact we had pretty terrible weather. Windy, blizzardy, not much sight - a complete whitout for almost the whole trip. We did get an hour long religious-sun-shining-through-the-clouds-choir-singing-moment when the clouds parted, the sun came out and we got the feeling that we were actually on a huge lump of ice, looking out over a quilt of snow topped mountains.

I thought it was a great experience. If you ask some of the others who was on the trip, you may get some different responses! One of my friends expresses it like this: "Jeg hate Jostedalsbreen! Jeg håpe det smelte!" (I hate Jostedalsbreen, i hope it melts!)

So my experiences:

Best Experience No 1: Realising that, even though my sleeping bag was completely soaked through, it was still warm. And having a great nights sleep. (Thanks to my earplugs I couldn't hear Öyvinds commercial-plane-with-engines-at-take-off-thrust-volume snoring.)

Worst Experience No 1: Knowing that, after having been on the go for 13 hours, that my sleeping bag was completely wet. Having a broken primus stove and having to wait for another tent group to finish before we could borrow theirs (we ate dinner at around 11.30pm). After this, staying up another half hour to melt enough snow for drinking the next day. Then crawling into my wet sleeping bag, in a tent filled with three snoring sleeping people who had left me with roughly 13cm of space to sleep in.

Best Experience No 2: Reading the book "Broken English spoken perfectly" and laughing my head off with my tent group.

Worst Experience No 2 (or stupidest thing i did): Falling through the front of our tent into the culdegrup (the space in the foretent where you dig down into the snow maybe 1.5 to 2m - it traps the cold air so the sleeping area stays warm) ripping part of the tent off in the process.

Best Experience No 3: Seeing the schools minibus driving through the valley 600m below us to collect us from the trip. Getting to the bus and sitting down. And taking my beanie off for the first time in 4 days.

Worst Experience No 3: Taking my boots of after walking down the mountain with my heavy sack (with skiis attached), and feeling the excruciating pain in my toes as they were freed from my boots!

Best Experience No 4: Doing 2 successfull telemark turns down this rediculously steep hill.

Scariest Experience: Skiing down the hill i just mentioned. Very very steep (avalanche risk steep). Complete white out with no sight and very flat light meaning you couldn't see where the snow goes up or down. Add on the fact that i have a 20kg sack on my back, am not very good on skiis, and am on stupidly thin cross country style skiis with flimsy leather boots!

Tastiest Experience: Eating my turbröd (trip bread) for lunch. It's increadibly heavy and packed with nuts and lots of tasty things. Then eating some turkake (trip cake). Supersweet and chocolatey brownie cake packed with eggs and suger and fat and all things good!

Most Cramped Experience: Fitting 24 people into a 4 man tent.

And now for some photos. You may think me stupid whinging about the bad weather when you see these photos! But remember, the only times i pulled out my camera were those seldom occasions with sun.