Patience dear boy....

BWith just over a week to go till we fly out and the Hoover already packed (you need to keep up....) the kids are currently residing at grandmas and we're sat drinking tea and hot chocolate in bed......living the dream baby ...:/.  It's been a very odd few weeks and too be honest not the easiest of weeks, but focussing on how I might be able to route drainage through the house keeps me positive....(yeah I know) ...   We were at a great wedding last night tucked into the secret beach at tunnels in ilfracombe and set against a backdrop of the sea. A group of us managed to congregate around the fire pit for some warmth ( after much piss taking over the man trying to light it and his rather bad attempts.....never light a fire in front of a panel of experts ) and it was lovely to have so many positive comments and discussions with people who don't think we're mad....     One person asked me ( I promise I was  asked) to show them some pictures and I duly whipped out my phone to show them and flicked quickly past one which id forgotten about taken across the border in Sweden ( about 39 minutes away) but that captures the feeling at some points  in time.  Read into it what you will.....but for me it shows many things, not least of all that sometimes you just need to be patient.................…..................

.........and in Scandinavia  always wear warm pants and a vest as it can get cold waiting for your dinner to swim by.

Vikings

When we tell people that we bought a house in Norway, one of the first questions is 'Oh are you Norwegian?' 

Well as far as we know, both of us are pure Anglo Saxon.  However my sister posted this photo of our parents wedding @1973, and given the appearance of one of uncle's (very blonde far right), I'm now wondering if there is some Viking blood somewhere!

Crockery....

After a very busy month, we sat down at the weekend to finally watch Kevin mcClouds 'Escape to the wilderness' and watched a  couple from Wales’ adventure in northern Sweden unfold on the TV. They had followed their dreams of living off grid with their Huskies and lived a pretty sparse, but i have to say beautiful, existence with their dogs, collecting water from the river, rolling in the snow (you know you want to) and chopping wood to keep their 2 stoves going 24/6. There were 2 things that really stood out for in me in the programme - the first, that when he started talking about food he almost went into some kind of trance, especially when on the subject of battered sausages and indian takeaways, and the second thing was that he had used expanding foam to fill around his windows! 

Now you might be thinking how did I notice the expanding foam, but it was actually the first thing I spotted after thinking “what a great looking cabin and that external woodturning flue looks a bit dodgy”. You might think - expanding foam, so what? But whilst i don’t want this to be a rant about the bizarre virtues of expanding foam I’ve seen used in cars, by builders who couldn’t work out how to fill a gap and on some lovely old buildings in the past (now there’s a Dragons Den product - "conservation" expanding foam) it just made me chuckle that expanding foam had even reached the wilds of northern Sweden….i’m guessing it’s probably better than stuffing lichen and moss in the gaps (or is it?) …..

Now surprisingly (despite the expanding foam faux pas), I thought …."these guys are amazing - what an adventure", even to the point of making their own clothes from reindeer skins, or only having a fridge under the house and having to hike for 30 minutes for a shower, or to Skype his children from his car abandoned in a car park ( i assume within range of a free wifi….done that before, but don’t tell anyone ;)…). I particularly liked his external ablution block consisting of shower and sauna that he made, and that he went starkers whilst Kevin retained his modesty with a pair of boardshorts whilst they went for a snow dunk outside (although i like a good sauna I’m yet to be brave enough to throw myself into the snow afterwards (butt naked or otherwise)).

We are back at "Litj Stuggu Vollen” (the name i’m told our house used to be called many years ago and I think means "small house on the hill/valley" but probably means "knackered house falling down the hillside”) in 4 weeks time. The usual bizzare pre trip lists and purchases (see previous posts ref the Dyson and the Khazi ;) )are well underway, as are preparations with the builders with the work we have already(at least i think we have) booked in for this year and what we might be able to achieve next year (funds allowing). The packing this year time has taken a slight twist in events and I quite fancy taking a musical instrument to make the most of the beautiful summer (apparently there has been 3 days of summer so far…. ;/)  evenings and evening daylight. During the summer solstice, sunrise was at about 3.05 am and sunset at 23.50 according to my weather app, but i suspect in reality it probably felt like it never set. For the trip in a few weeks I’m therefore anticipating very light nights and  as such been trying to source some cheap blackout material to take so at least the kids might sleep a little and not wake me up at 3.30!  

We will of course get proper blinds at some point, but stick on blackout seems the way forward at present. Anyhow……the cheapest place i could find blackout material wasn’t from a child friendly mums type internet shop, but actually from a marijuana growing emporium i found on line in birmingham! I believe its all legal but i did have to chuckle when then advert said that all deliveries come in discreet packaging! Suffice to say it tuned up this week, all 8 linear metres of it (enough to do our and the guest bedroom) and as far i can tell its doesn’t smell like its been stocked next to a collection of seedlings…..i guess the sniffer dog at Gatwick might tell me otherwise though. (apparently they have internet access in prison so hopefully i’ll be fine…..)

Right, back to light evenings and things to take……well if you read one of my earlier posts then i thought i might see if i can squirrel my banjo away for the trip (see Shalkletons banjo story), in this way i can actually practice without annoying anyone (apart from everyone in the valley when the sound resinates) but more importantly i can sit on my porch doing my bad version of duelling banjos. Its also gives me an great excuse to use this photo i found on a Norwegian photo archive website (verdalsbilder.no)  entitled “med pipe, trekkspil go banjo” depicting 2 young woman (girls) playing a banjo ukulele, accordion, but also bizarrely smoking a pipe ………..now i’m sure I saw a pipe on that blackout material website….

Oh yes and crockery……..well like i said, its been a very busy month and we often talk about life being like spinning plates, trying to keep them all going at once, well sometimes they fall off, but the trick is when the do break to shout ‘opa’ in a greek stylee, pick up another one, get it spinning and carry on……... or alternatively not pay your taxes and then leave the EU….(in a greek stylee).

Horsepower....

I have this romantic notion that one day we will be self sufficient, but of course in reality it's highly unlikely we'll ever pull it off. I've collected and read (ok so for some I've just looked at the pictures) a great collection of books ranging from living off grid by Nick Rosen to an absolute 'good life' classic called the 'the complete book of self sufficiency' by John Seymour which includes everything from how to plan out your land and clear the tree stumps, through to how to butcher a pig! It also has a great matrix (not that I'm sure matrices were around in the 70's) comparing the pros and cons of tractor ownership against a horse or indeed an Ox! 

Now, who wouldn't want to own a tractor ?........ But.......reading between the lines I think owning a horse could be the way forward....

They don't require diesal, don't need taxing and more importantly their waste can be used to help grow more crops. 

Of course the downside is I'm actually not that fond of horses and have almost got less of a clue how to look after a horse then fix a steering box on a tractor (which I have no idea on either in case you were wandering .....), however, we are already partly kitted out for horse ownership though and when I find Norways version of Mole Valley Farmers,  imagine the fun I can have finally buying a horse coat! ......for those who aren't devon folk, mole valley farmers is the most fantastic country outlet, selling products that allow you to delouse your chickens or inseminate your cows (I'll draw a sketch next time) through to a pair of tweeds or a tractor linkage. .......Fabulous place.  

As I mentioned in an earlier post, when we bought the house we acquired a huge amount of stuff, which included old farm equipment. So aside from finding a 4 legged companion to actually do the work and figuring out how the all the tack actually fits,  we're good to go. We even have 2 stables in the barn. The entrance and floor into the big barn is worn away through years of horses coming and going and the stable divides have the signs of having been used to satisfy a good set of knawing knashers. It's these old objects, features and patina in the fabric that make the story and heritage of the place.

 I had originally thought when we'd bought the house that the seller was the grandson of the original owner/builder, but it has since emerged he was actually more of a distant relative.  We still however have a great selection of photos of the original owner and his descendants, including one of who we think is his son, stood outside the house with his horse! 

Of particular note are 2 things.....firstly that the wall he's stood in front off is still the original stone foundation wall, now replaced with blocks ( and needing repair) and secondly (and for most people) more interesting, I think we still have the hat in the house!

So watch this space ......at some point you might see a similar photo in years to come, I might however be sat on a quad bike...... ;)  

Backdraft..........

So as you might have gathered we are back from our easter (påske) expedition to norway via lots of trips to ikea ( well 3 in total, with 1 self inflicted due to buying the wrong fridge and freezer!) but it's been an amazing trip. 

We had the now routine meeting with the builder who very kindly gave up a morning of his holiday to see us ( thank you Magnus and Ivan). I managed to build a bench for the dining table from old bits of wood I found including old barn timbers, reassemble the beautiful tall woodburner, survey the barn (låve) and more importantly install a kitchen! ...as well as go skiing, dog sledding, attend a few easter parties (more on those another time ;) )

Now you might be thinking when did we get water installed, but you'd be wrong.....we still have no water! Well we do but it's about 100 m up the side of the mountain in the well, buried under snow......

So it was our first time all sleeping in the house as a family ( which was great and made better by the purchase of a new sofa bed from ikea......for the record one of neighbours pointed out that other furniture shops are available in scandanavia .lol ) 

2 weeks without mains water or drainage has its challenges. We of course bought water for drinking, but it's not cheap, so  you don't want to be doing the washing up in it (or washing the kids in it) so we had to get water from other sources.  

We started for the first couple of days constantly melting snow in an old pot on the woodburner, but you have to melt a lot of snow for not much water. What we found much more successful was collecting already melted snow (ie water ) from the roof during the day when the overnight snow melted for a few hours. We easily collected about 25 -50 litres a day with this method, which would have taken a huge amount of snow melting.

It's amazing when you have to collect your own water how careful you are using it! But also it gives you a real indication of much water you actually waste during the day in our normal tap turning on luxury! 

Once we nailed the water collection ( took about 3 days) then we finally bathed the kids in a washing up bowl in front of the fire (lots of fun) and managed to indulge in our strip washes (which I haven't done since I was about 5 and used to stay at my great grandparents house with my folks at the weekends!)

At the end of the first week most of the kitchen was in, including installing the sink with a tap ( looked nice anyway) and waste that went into a bucket! It sounds mad, but a sink at a decent height is so much easier for washing dishes and yourself in! 

You might recall that on our first trip last October I flew over with a toilet in my hold baggage ( well camping kharzi, ie a bucket with seat) and this proved to be a great indoor companion which was emptied into our composting loo in the barn on regular occasion.  I personally ( is this too much information.....) quite enjoyed using the outhouse ( even at -11...it focuses the mind) but after 2 weeks it was getting a little whiffy. The science of a good composting loo is worthy of a blog post on its own, but one of the things you do need is a good sawdust flush! So I found a good source of sawdust which was is now neatly bucketed with a spade for ease of use. 

I did however find you need to be careful of one particular aspect though....backdraft.....different to the American 90s classic firefighting film but with similar devastating, albeit non life threatening  effects...... So when you utilise the sawdust flush make sure you don't lean over the pan if it's windy outside, otherwise you get an upwind of saw dust in your face......never good.....

By the way, I should mention our toilet is a 2 person affair ( if you feel that way inclined) amazingly one of our friends said he remembers his grandmas outhouse  which was a seven seater! Now that's being sociable :).  

What a difference a day makes

For the last 2 weeks we've both been reading the weather forecast with mounting excitement and/or worry about the state of the road to our house.

It didn't really come as much of a surprise that there wasn't any snow in Trondheim, but it did when we got here to see very little snow.

Still the kids got to play in what little we had.

But then later in the day it snowed, and it snowed a bit more, then we had a massive dumping of snow, then we went to bed.

And we woke up to this:

And as I'm sat in my comfy kitchen chair this evening, it is snowing again.

No, I didn't get lost

Those of you who know me, know that I rarely go wrong with my sense of direction - my dad always said I had an inbuilt compass, but when I do go wrong it tends to be Very Well Done.

Please if any of you are planning to come to and visit (and we hope that you are!), take note. I will say this only once.

When driving around Trondheim, always stay in the outside lane.

In my defence I was very tired and was following Jim without really paying attention to my surroundings (shan't be doing that again!) so it came as a bit of a shock when suddenly he indicated he was moving into the outside lane without much warning. Now I couldn't. There was a ruddy Great Big Lorry on my outside, leaving no where to go, but down the slip road and off to who knows where......(actually I did know as we'd taken that junction earlier when collecting the hire van and eventually you get to Trondheim city centre and drive past Nidaros Cathedral).

I had a few minutes to think about what to do, but coupled with Ned asking where daddy and Mimi were, and me trying to find a sign for Oslo (southbound) it was a bit tricky. 

Thankfully my sensible self kicked into gear (although occasionally my idiot self could be heard shouting shit, fuck inside my head), and we got back on the E6. Going North though, as there was no other south bound slip road. 2 junctions back up the motorway, turned round, a bit of ferreting around in my bag to find my phone in case Jim had called and we were back on track In The Outside Lane, you know just in case.

Norway might have strict laws about parking on street corners (ask Jim) and speeding, but they don't mind you texting or phoning whilst driving which was useful.

Quick phone call from Jim to ascertain that we were okay and where to meet him, and we were off again. 

Finally making it home for tea time.

So you see I was right, I didn't get lost, and my dad was right - keep turning left and you'll always find your way back.