It was a close call as to what constituted the major high point (when in fairness there has been so many).......but aside from buying and installing a new washing machine and a tumble dryer (even I was little excited to be able to wash some clothes whilst on holiday.....and the tumble dryer has a light inside which lights up your washing when you open the door....no more lost socks....i really need to get out more...) we finally managed to hike up the mountain at the back of the house.
It was probably our fourth attempt to actually get up the mountain after many failed episodes;
Aborted attempt 1 - Ned was scared of the forest as there might be unfriendly trolls/the Gruffalo might be lurking.
No.2 - the above still applied + there were too many ants and the mountain was steep...he has yet to grasp the concept of a mountain.
No.3 - All of the above plus the resident cows were particular menacing and decided to chase me, who was chasing Ned, after Grandpa told us specifcially not to run in a field of cows.....I was however impressed that my arm waving a yelling stopped the stampeding herd!
So attempt 4 it was.
We finally assembled the troops at about 10.30 on a Sunday morning after a good brunch of pancakes, bacon and maple syrup and Kath prepared her first ever batch of Norwegian dough for some bread making on our return (more on that another time ;).
It was a beautiful sunny day without a cloud in the sky, we made up a ruck sack of some hot chocolate, sweeties and of course a couple of Kvikk Lunsj's for the adults we're still Maisie they are made with beer and not suitable for children. Fully suited and booted, we set off on our bear hunt.
The start of the hike was out the back of our house, past the neighbours and into the tree line and about as far as we had got previously.
The going was pretty steep, but the snow underfoot was quite easy going. On previous excursions, we have always had trouble finding the route, but this time I had done a bit of a pre trip reckie the night before and we quickly found and then followed a snowmobile ("don't call it a skidoo as thats a brand name...."...i was once told off in Norway for calling it a skidoo!) trail.
We were soon stripping off layers as we climbed higher and higher and up through the trees. Ned managed to forget about the trolls, there was no sign of the gruffalo, and despite the moaning form the kids they seemed to forget about how steep it was!
After about 40 minutes, the tree line started to break and eventually we started to head onto the mountain plateau. The snow mobile trail eventually finished and we came across the snow mobile happily parked unattended with a cross country ski trail leading from it further up the mountain. It's always hard growing up in the UK trying to imagine leaving things lying around unattended without someone taking off with them! ...... Welcome to Norway :)
Whilst the kids were feeding I headed up further and then persuaded them they should definitely make the effort for the last 10 minutes. We headed up to follow the winter trail marker posts and just took in the beauty of the plateau and the 3 summits which led off. Sadly these weren't reached for this trip but we had finally made it - to the top of our mountain.
... and how did we get back down..... well after making some quick snow angels, having another snack and staring open mouthed at how beautiful this place is.....when your come to Norway, you realise you do that a lot!......we did the only thing any sensible family in our situation could do...zipped up our jackets and snow suits and slid down on our bottoms! - that's right 45 minutes up and less than 20 back down.....oh and despite billing it to the kids as 'going on a bear hunt'....not a single bear in sight......we'll have to save that for another trip ;)
