Life Changing Trips and Not Showering

Tomorrow marks the start of a potentially life changing trip, involving not showering for up to 2 weeks! The trip will be chemically induced though, mileage next to nothing and the showering just being banned until I have some stitches out.

Being diagnosed with a neurotic left foot of the Morton's variety was a bit of a relief, representing light at the end of a tunnel that has gone on for over a year now. The pain has ranged from mild to severely debilitating, waking me in my sleep, being unable to walk properly at all at times (at times being, sometimes for several hours through the day, not a once a week type of thing), and has given me some appreciation for the struggles and frustration less able people may experience.

So tomorrow I will have a small op, the nerve to the insides of two toes being removed, and the calcareous cover the nerve has created to protect itself being 'pinged' out (that's a technical term, used by the very nice doctor). My toes will be numb but with an 80% chance of success I am hopeful that this will be a new lease of life, enabling me to start to engage with my environment more, rather than being stuck on the periphery, watching. I will be able to go hiking with Thomas again, to explore Oslo more, to meet friends for coffee, and be able to attend interviews without being distracted by horrendous pain.The prospect of being pain free is giving me renewed confidence and feelings of positivity generally; amazing the effect something like this has.

I don't know if I'll write up a trip report; the effects may continue for a few months to come as the foot starts to return to normal size and I can once again get normal footwear on, or maybe having to redefine what is the new normal for me. It may involve Crocs! But whatever, I shall be glad and thankful to move on. It feels as if life is starting for me in Norway, all over again.

Sunday Afternoon Sykkel and Sketch

In an effort to mitigate the painful foot, and for my recent birthday, Thomas bought me a bike!
This means that we've been out for short cycle rides in the locality, a new sense of freedom and of reach a bit farther than I've been able to recently. Last weekend we had a nice picnic in Ekeberg park, Thomas making an omelette on the Trangia, and this weekend we went out for a cycle around Østensjøvannet (east Ensjø lake), about 10km which is enough for me right now after all the set backs with my foot this year.

A nice ride, past the new bird hide / lookout on the edge of the lake, a walk up the hill past a heap of snow (sorry folks, the snow is just from the local ice rink!), brakes fully applied down the hill, weaving in and around people of all ages and abilities (ATV/mobility scooters in abundance) and around the eastern side to watch the ducks and geese before flopping down and drinking coffee via Thomas and a gram cracker...

It was great fun and another opportunity to get the sketch pad out and see what might happen. There was a nice line of birch trees with a dark area behind them, sun shining off the leaves closest to me and, with the sun being still relatively high, shadows under the trees themselves.

I did a bit of rough pencil work to start with but got impatient with that pretty quickly and instead started putting some watercolour down, cadmium yellow with some ultramarine to give a pale green band for the fresh grass, then different tones of the same in bands with a broader swipe of mostly ultramarine for sky, trying to keep the paper damp. Normally that wouldn't be a problem here in Oslo given the amount of rain we have, but today, wonderfully, we had brilliant, warm sunshine which means everything dries a lot faster and you (can) end up with backruns galore!

Trying to avoid this I started painting in darker foliage, turning the watercolour pad upside down which helped to free my mind from what it thought was there. It was good to let go and something I'll definitely try again in the early stages.

Unfortunately, control set in again and more and more indistinct watercolour ended up being put down until I looked properly at the scene again and got my watercolour pencils out, along with the Derwent Graphitint. This helped a lot, being more familiar now with how I can use each and having more control. I wanted to emphasise the bands of tone in the landscape in front, with the white of the birch trunks linking each layer.

I'm posting this as a record of any development in the future and for me to learn. I'm not especially happy with the end result, although I enjoyed how organic it felt to develop from watercolour washes to then use of pencil and how a pastel type effect can about, utilising the tooth of the paper. Trying to reframe what I had produced, shown in the first image, I tried different ways of cropping, looking at a more square format of the three trees on the left, and an alternate view of slicing a landscape through in the third image, because I liked the horizontal layers that had emerged and felt this could emphasise this.

In the last image I had thought about the pastel effect and wanted to see if I could reproduce what had developed in my minds eye. Not quite, but it was the first time I'd used pastels for many years, maybe 25 or 30, so I wasn't too disheartened.
I've just started to read Betty Edwards's "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" and am wondering how my drawing might change or develop - and hopefully improve!

Sommerferie

It's that time of year when most of Scandinavia goes on holiday and we were no different. A visit to the in-laws followed by 3 days with one of Thomas' - and now my - friends was a much needed break, and opportunity to visit Sørlandet, the southern country, in Aust-Agder and Telemark. I thought I'd share some of the photos of the area we stayed in so that people who haven't been here have opportunity to see another part of Norway, away from the huge mountains and vast fjords of the west, and to see how pretty this area is. I also thought it might be interesting to see some photos and sketches together; differences will be quite apparent in what I've chosen to focus on or leave out, or to add in something that might not be there!

Appropriately, having arrived by water taxi, I drew a sketch from a kart of the area. It was a chart for boats, but in Norway maps are called 'kart'. It reminded me very much of the maps in the books of The Swallows and Amazons, The Famous Five or even Narnia. I added in a couple of extras that you wouldn't find on the boating map...

This was really fun to do, adding in potential camp sites, wreck sites and the odd Viking ship!

The place we stayed in was lovely; our friend's family hytte with a view over the islets and twists of rocky coastlines. It'd be a sailing paradise here with plenty of anchorage points and sheltered spots, although it could get a little busy with sometimes 5 or 6 boats!

The view from there to the boathouse was irresistible to sketch. The red painted wooden building (the same tone seems to be used throughout the country which gives a sense of unity), with the contrasting white window frames made it seem very much like a fairy tale.

In my sketch there's a slightly conspicuous white area; I still haven't come back to finish the boat off! I took a bit of artistic liberty with my sketch and reduced the number of windows and length of the boat house which was now more suitable for a rowing dinghy rather than a motor cruiser!




The colours people use to decorate their homes with are often very sympathetic to nature and seem to echo those you'd find in the environment. A mustard yellow on a nearby property could be found in the lichens on the rocks.

I liked the angles the two buildings in this photo presented so I made a rough sketch of them. Seeing the photo and the sketch next to one another, my eyes fall to obvious errors, but one of the 'fun' aspects of sketching is educating your brain to see what actually is there, rather than what you think is there. That said, I'm not sure I'd change it because I like the shapes as they are!

For a totally different feel, I sat on the terrace and sketched a small bay across from us, noticing how the tide changed. Tides here only change by about 50 cm, totally different to the UK, and another different I was interested to read about was how the salinity of the sea here is much less than the UK waters too. People tend to just live here in the summer months, partly because the sea ices over in the winter and so it becomes difficult to live here year-round. (My own private dream is not put off by that!).

One afternoon, Thomas and our friend went out kayaking so I took a small rowing dinghy across the small passage of water and nestled it at low tide, wedging the oars against the boat in thick, dark green, muddy sand. A swan paddled its way gracefully towards me but started hissing, though not at me. I turned around in time to see the shiny dark mahogany back of an adult mink, scuttling over the bank. Our friend mentioned that she'd seen baby mink under her hytte so I was really pleased to see one, although like ferrets and stoats, they are pretty voracious predators.

One of the aspects I really like about being near the water, is realising the importance of it for travel and exploration. That feeling must have been experienced by all sorts of different cultures and civilisations (not least the Vikings). For me, it was really interesting to see where we were staying from a totally different perspective, to understand more the lie of the land, the flow of the water, and to gain that fantastic feeling of travelling in a totally different way. Rowing was fun too; it's been many long years since I've done any and the coordination and strength in my right compared to left side, made the boat tend to want to circle rather than go straight. Just thinking about it now makes me grin!

It was really pleasant to be wedged in my boat, looking back to the hytte and at Thomas getting the kayaks ready while I was already sketching. In the photo you can also see the Tarp Tent Double Rainbow, set up and ready for me to curse at as I seam sealed it the following day...

Back to the present, I started the sketch on the boat, enjoying the buffeting of waves against me as slightly larger motor boats went by, mostly just small ribs with outboards, taking their cap'ns to Kragerø or nearby hamlets for provisions. Trying to make sense of the mass of boulders and rocks, and background trees and foliage was challenging, but I really enjoyed trying to embed the hytte into its surroundings much as our friend's Dad had done as he extended it from it's original wash house status into a 3 bedroomed cabin with kitchen and stue (living area). I really liked using the bushes at the front, making them creep over the white palings, which they did in real life; we were surrounded by lilac and gooseberry bushes!

I finished the sketch later on that day, sat in the living room, creating foliage and boulders and lichen out of my imagination. It was meditative and generally speaking, the act of sketching so much in these few short days helped me feel as if I'd had a much longer break. The challenge for me remains though; to do more sketching when not in such sublime company or environments!

Rondane Sketching

In June we went to Rondane, a National Park in Norway. Although June, it wasn't quite summer up there, although the valleys were noticeably warmer than the mountains which still had a decent amount of snow when we first sighted them at the start of the week.

Thomas had a bad cold, donated by someone from work two days before we left, so it was a bit like being in the twilight zone, up on the side of a mountain in a hytte, without transport other than Shanks pony, and not really feeling much in the mood for that either!

However I did make a few sketches of the place which I thought I'd post up here.

It's interesting to make sketches as well as photographs when you go on holiday. I'm not decrying photos by any means, but the level of intimacy you might gain from spending up to 2 hours sketching something and trying to work out spacial relationships, does give a different feel for me, as I look back on the holiday while writing these few words.

This was an early sketch of the view from the hytte we stayed in, in the foothills just before where the official border of the National Park lay. It didn't turn out anything like the view I had in my minds eye, but looking at it now, the water marks at the bottom remind me very much of all the mist and rain in the valley...

This was just done in pencil on some really nice -and cheap! - cartridge paper. It's a view straight into the mouth of the Rondane, capturing only some of the broad sweep of the range that you can see from here. We'd gone on a little walk on the recommendation of a guy we met and the view was just fabulous, across lakes into the heart of the mountains, or at least the promise of them!

When we'd been to a similar point before to have a look we couldn't see the peaks, just white mist which blanketed  the views. We had, however, had the tease of a view on our journey up to the hytte, but it was about 3 or 4 days until it decided to show itself. It is a popular view with the local hotel having a version in paint, and actually now I recall, the hytte had it's own version too!

 Looking over the valley later in the week we determined that one of the hills across from us was called Svartkampen, and when we were lucky enough that the weather cleared we could see over to the Jotunheim range, which Andrew was to venture into the following weekend. Knowing this, we were watchful of the snow cover; when the cloud lifted we could see broad sweeps of snow all over the mountains beyond this ridge, all looking pretty arctic! Andrew related his story here; it's well worth a read!

Closer and closer to 'home', one of the views that captured me, and made me sign the theme tune to Heidi in my head for a good 5 days, was the view down the hill to an old barn. The hytte that we were staying in was part of a 200 year old farm; there was another hytte with two sheds between us and it, as well as this barn further down the hill in the middle of a field. The field was steep, surrounded by pines, but the spring grass was lush and flowers were waking up around the hedges / scrub. The barn stood out for me though and finally I sketched it. Thomas remarked that it reminded him of the wild west, and I can see what he means; it was very rustic, built in traditional log cabin style - which you still see much evidence of!

Curiously, the view along the road was especially seductive for me (I can imagine people saying, "What, you'd rather sketch a road than the mountains!"). I liked the mystery of the road curving, rising and then falling out of sight into the darkness of age old spruce and fur trees, making me daydream about other universes and worm holes and such (I watch too much sci-fi!). I loved sketching this and was completely enveloped for a couple of hours. The fence posts were more numerous than I've included, although they formed a lovely shape themselves, but including them could have foreshortened the view and 'stopped' the viewer's eyes from roaming. If I sketched it again I might leave them out altogether...

Finally, this was my last sketch from the holiday, done as we were waiting for the bus to take us on a long drive back to Oslo. We were at the 'Sinclair Hotel', the plaque illustrated below marking 400 years since a war with the Scots! It was just a quick, 20 minute sketch but I was happy enough with the result. Certainly all the sketches I did on holiday (I think) improved over time, and something of a style started to emerge; rather illustrative, but I quite like that; it reminds me of old paperbacks I used to read as a kid, with lovely line drawings.

One of the things I've taken from this is how portable a simple set of basic watercolour pencils and 2, 2B pencils are. A brush with a bit of water from a bottle or cup to smear the colour around if wanted, a sketch pad that fits in a small bag (I really like my Z-Packs Multipack!) and you're away. Plus, the memories of the place remain very vivid for me; the place itself and the feelings of exploration and discovery, in this case without so much use of my legs! Reviewing the sketches now, I definitely want to explore more pencil work of mountains; but until I'm back in the bigger hills I'm looking forward to sketching more around Oslo, maybe even the city itself, as well as the marka and surrounds.

Hanging with the boyfriend

Today was just a little wander into the local woods. We're really lucky here, to be able to scamper (I am dreaming about the scampering bit) into the local woods like little bambis (clearly, I AM dreaming) and find a lovely sun baked area to wallow in for a while. I mean hammock.

Gratuitous Sidewinder pic :)

We both also like to play with fire a little bit so he took his Bushbuddy and I took my ever faithful Sidewinder, my Evernew pot this time showing a great deal of tenacity in clinging to its pot cosy as a result of the tarring I gave it last time. Wrestling over, Thomas had a brew on of some super secret coffee (unless you're one of the masses now on Twitter having received Growers Cup, oops), while I was still messing with burning things before putting my pot on and Solbærtoddy quaffed. I did taste the Growers Cup. I wont say any more about that.

I'd brought along a mini library of books, which I enjoyed setting out on the rock face so I could pick relevant ones to variously spot trees, wild flowers, birds, butterflies, bees, birds, trees, and trees. I'd also taken the rudiments of a sketch kit with me. Rather than getting messy though (ignoring the tar and feathering from the Sidewinder) I just did a quick 10 minute pencil sketch of layers of light and shade and pattern in woodland.

This was hard!

As usual, the more you look the more complex it became as more details are noticed and hair goes more grey as more decisions need to be made about what to record, what to leave out, what tone each layer is and how to employ counterchange with the right approximate tonal values. Which is to say in a very basic sense, how grey to shade something so that it stands out against something else. Drawing (and much less painting) for me is a wrought affair of ambition in what I want to capture, against my waivering ability, which isn't helped by lack of consistent practice. However, Kolby Kirk (the Hike Guy), aka Condor on the PCT, and subsequently Russell Stutler and their work which I've linked to, have both gee-d up my enthusiasm to get cracking again. I think I need to ditch the colouring in bit for a while and get back to basics of drawing and getting an approximation down before I go deeper.

Pre-hanging boyfriend

Apart from then I get diverted by Thomas in his hammock and I want a go too, so I put up his Blackbird next to his Hennessy and get swinging, staring into the trees, noticing how it's as if the land - sky relationship is reversed, and actually, the dark blue-grey pine needles twinkling at me in the sky above are very like sunlight glinting off water, and the hopeful mossies / gnats / biting insect flying things which keep sticking their proboscis into me, are actually whining just above the waters surface ready for trout to snatch, and I'm on my back, floating just under the waters surface, looking up at the blue, blue sky and laying there, dreaming.

This is a view

Stars on the forest floor

Villmarksmessen

Yesterday I went with Thomas to Villmarksmessen, reputedly Norway's biggest outdoor exhibition, now in its 30th year. Norway has such a massive focus on the outdoors, with 700,000 of it's 5 million population being members of some sort of outdoors organisation. A big focus of the exhibition was on hunting and fishing although I'm not sure how hiking and backpacking for it's own sake could be represented other than gear stands. Instead it comes across as the means to an end (of an animals life).

Anyway, it was still exciting to enter the first of two large halls in the exhibition centre in Lillestrøm, the first stand I saw being Woolpower which has a decent following in Scandinavia, known for it's high quality ullfrotte wool - synthetic construction. I've been on the lookout for some Woolpower mittens, being a convert since using Thomas' on a walk months ago. Unfortunately they've been discontinued, which was quite a disappointment as they are super warm and the fit is so nice, so I guess I'll revert to eBay...
[Note that since I wrote this, Woolpower emailed me to say that their mittens are still being made and that the guys on the stand were wrong; happy days!]

After that we decided to just try to follow the grid system set up in the hall; next stop and bypassing the taxidermy stand (oops, a hunting stand) was the Bergans brand; rucksacks, clothing, rucksacks, a couple of sleeping bags and more rucksacks. We were interested to see how Bergans had adopted a few lightweight looking aspects to it's bag design, (reminiscent to me of the Osprey packs); looking at the Skarstind 40L, it felt reasonably light for an internal frame pack (1.25kg) and was quite a departure from the monster load luggers Bergans is known for. It's still not what I would prefer to carry, but a move in the right direction.


The next stand that made us stop was for Lånan, where a beautiful lady (Hildegunn I think) spoke with Thomas about how she continues a traditional practice of harvesting shed eiderdown by hand. The company is named after the island it all happens on, part of the Vega archipelago, 30km from the main Vega island and now part of UNESCO's World Heritage List. What had attracted me was first of all the lovely pine basket full of down, but then Thomas quickly pointed out a pair of Edderdunsvotter, or mittens with an eiderdown fill. Trying them on they were toasty and very light.

Almost next door though was the highlight for me; visiting one of the unassuming bushcraft stands towards the back of the hall. So unassuming in fact that I didn't get it's name and trying to trace it from the exhibitor plan equally successful. I admired the birch and pine crafted baskets, backpacks and cups when a lovely lady from the stand spoken to me in Norwegian - too fast for me to understand - and then asked her partner to show me how to make one. He very deftly showed how the sheet of birch was folded across the grain, then pinched on itself as a crease was made. Then snipping with an unbushcraftlike pair of scissors to round off the shape and lodging the cup into shape with a short twig. I was most impressed. I asked him in Norwegian (go, me) how long he had been making these, and of course, he'd been doing it since he was a boy. More than the bushcraft aspects, I was struck by how lovely and open these two people were, how willing to share information and to encourage people to learn. I'm not sure I would rely on my cup making skills if I found myself out in the woods tomorrow; but there is a glimmer of a spark of wanting to have a go that I think I will flame.

After crawling around the lightweight tents on the Helsport stand followed by an extortionately expensive hamburger but without the taste to match, we circled the hall and into the next one via a visit to the alpakkas (not the packrafting variety though). Inside there were a couple of representations from Sami people, in their traditional dress and examples of lavvo and their wonderful handcrafted knives and sheaths. There was also a working dog corner with representatives from the Norsk Retriever Klubb (with a lovely Nova Scotia Duck Tolling dog and lots of Flat Coated Retrievers), as well as different varieties of setters and spaniels. It was nice to see how the spaniels hadn't been docked.

A surprise was to see Matt Hayes, the English fisherman, giving a talk on fishing in Norway. He's recently completed a show about this which is on the Norwegian Discovery Channel this week at 11pm every night. I only know about him through my Dad's love of fishing, so I couldn't resist emailing a photo of Matt to Dad and my brother to let them know I'd seen him. No Dad, I wont be taking up fishing! (Have a look at Matt's blog though; his photos of the Norwegian landscape are stunning!).



Like Norwegian waffles, all too soon good things come to an end and we had to head back to Oslo. Unless I'm hiking this time next year I would love to come back, but would hope for a bit more representation from the DNT and similar organisations - and, dare I say it, bloggers - who are more focussed on the hiking and backpacking side. We shall see!

To go or not to go

I've debated with myself whether to post about my last trip or not, but not every trip is going to be a success or 'epic', 'awesome' or even just rosy, and there could be value to others in reading about my experiences and thoughts.

So, last Thursday afternoon, Thomas and I headed out on the T-bane from where we live to Jernbanetorget in Oslo. A diversion to the bussterminalen before remembering that actually we had to get a train to Lillestrøm first, proved to be our 'morning' backtrack. We didn't have more than about 10 minutes to wait for the train, which was good especially considering that this was the Thursday before Easter and a public holiday in Norway. The train journey was followed by a bus journey to Flateby on route 501. With our Ruter reisekort (travel card) it only cost an extra 20 Kroner for the train and bus combined which is great value (roughly 2 quid). It was nice for me to see the scenery on the bus as it made it's way on roads somewhat reminiscent of Scotland, twisting around above the side of Øyeren fjord, passing farms and small villages, the farm building usually wooden and painted in a deep red, pretty much standard here but very pretty.

Getting off a bus stop short (my fault), we set off through the rest of Flateby village and tracked back where Thomas had walked with his friend Glenn the previous weekend. The foot was already hurting back at the bus station in Lillestrøm, and, despite consumption of Ibuprofen, was unremitting in giving me pointed feedback. We walked past a small ski centre and out on a forest track, compacted ice and snow moulded to the bends where the sun had failed to penetrate. It was nice to be out and walking with Thomas; it is what had brought us together and is very much a shared passion. He had booked a couple of beds in the DNT hytte at Bøvelstad (scroll down for pics), renovated about a year ago; I found out about it last summer when I walked in Østmarka on my own and a kindly elder man had given me a 1:25000 map of the area. He had told me about it being renovated and I remember talking with Thomas. It looked cosy on the DNT website and from the photos and articles we'd seen in Østmarkas Venner magazines.

However the foot wasn't behaving and we stopped at a junction with Gjeddevann below us to have a drink, more painkillers and to review the situation. We had a reasonable amount of light left; it was about 5pm and doesn't get dark here until past 8 now. But if we were to turn back the buses were only running every two hours and we could be faced with a fairly long wait. Decisions. It was hard to make a well thought out decision because of the pain I was in. If the painkillers kicked in would we have enough time to get to Bøvelstad? If we backtracked would we have a 2 hour wait for the bus? Could we make it back for the next bus at 18:23? It was hard to say but even after sitting down, having a brew and putting my foot up for a while the pain had't gone.

We decided to head back for the bus.

Less than 1km later though the pain had lessened considerably. I could walk a lot more easily. I asked Thomas how he felt about having turned around. Disappointed naturally, although there was no bad feeling from him at all, no grudge, just wanting me to be alright. With the pain having diminished I put it to him that we might turn back around and try to head back to the hytte. We still had a couple of hours of daylight left, the route a mix of forest road and then trail - following the blue stripes painted on rocks and trees, so we decided to go for it. I was happy with that and felt pleased to resume our hike and to make Thomas happy, and at the prospect of seeing the hytte for real.

It wasn't too long before we got to the end of our section on the track and pulled off heading west. I think we had about 5km of forest trail to cover and was pretty confident of being able to make it before dark. Not being as active because of the foot, my fitness was (and is) pretty rubbish, and my body has accumulated some excess baggage partly as a a result of that and partly as a result of eating naughty food and drinking beer and wine - maybe something to do with moving in together akin to a Freshmen's 15? Anyway I had a bit more luggage to move than normal although my pack was pretty light with just a sleeping bag liner in it rather than a shelter, bag, mat and what have you that goes along with staying out under your own steam. It wasn't long before I felt tired, mentally and physically. Mentally was mostly to do with dealing with pain, not knowing if was going to reappear, being somewhat fearful that it would reappear because of knowing that it would a) hurt and b) we didn't have a margin of error; a limited amount of daylight was left.

Thomas navigated us through the forest, on trails he had recently walked before. I was behind him, pain starting to return, my head down, feeling sorry for myself, worrying about making it to the hytte, feeling a bit of a failure, feeling frustrated and angry with myself, with my foot, with deciding to try for the hytte. Progress was slow but I didn't see much of the land, I was too wrapped up in my head and my body.

Progress was so slow in fact that we started to run out of daylight. I didn't find it especially cold; it was overcast which helped a lot, compared to clear, dry skies that have been over Oslo for most of the last 3 weeks. In the dusky half light it was slightly worrying and thrilling at the same time, though the pain took the edge off the experience. It got darker as we wend our way through the forest, over rocks, down hillsides and across bogs. The bogs were a rare treat as being largely frozen you could walk over a lot of it rather than sinking through, although a couple of wet feet were later testament to occasional boggy revenge.

By now the moon was out behind the clouds, a soft, cold light in the dark of the forest. Thomas got his E-lite out, but when I came to look for mine I couldn't find it. I rummaged through my pack, took everything out but to no avail. More kicking myself ensued, more for being disorganised than for not having a light; my night vision was fine in these conditions, unless I looked at Thomas. The E-lite just left an oval blob of pale gold in my middle vision, but wasn't bright enough to leave me completely blind. Thomas led the way and I followed, sometimes a little distance behind as I felt my way over rocks and roots. We reached the shores of Børtervanna and clambered in the less than half light over large rocks and boulders on the lake shore. Thomas pointed out tricky bits to be wary of, and when we had to scramble up over roots or narrow earth ledges or where it was slippery. We reached a river, fed by Grinderen. Thomas crossed over and scouted around for the path. After a minute or so I walked in the darkness upstream to where I made out a bridge and a slightly luminous blue stripe on a tree, so yelled down to him that the path was up here. It was too much further of following the path to the hytte. Sometimes the path was really easy to make out, a channel through bordered with moss and rocks. Sometimes in particularly mossy areas it was less defined. Remarkably but probably a virtue of wearing trail runners rather than boots, I actually felt more sure footed over rocks and stones, because I could feel my way over them. Not that I was fast by any stretch of the imagination, but it lent a certain feeling of resilience that with partial vision I could still make way; even the paths themselves felt different enough that you could detect when you'd wandered off.

Much as I 'enjoyed' this section of night hiking, it was with a fair amount of relief that we emerged on the hillside above Bøvelstad and made out the hytte below us. We couldn't see any lights on, although I think it was only about 9:15 by this time. We knew from the online booking system that 8 other beds had been booked out already (of a capacity of 17 beds); maybe they'd gone to sleep? However, as with many hytta, there wasn't electricity and the candle light from the kitchen window didn't penetrate far.

The hytte was populated with a couple of Norwegian girls, a couple from Germany and a Brazilian guy there with his Norwegian girlfriend. A woman and her child and a man accompanying them 'of unknown relationship' had already gone to bed. A pretty friendly and warm environment was to be had, made more so by a good fire in the wood burning oven in the kitchen. I was relieved to have made it there, although at one point, and Thomas doesn't know this, I had even wondered if we would have to walk through the forest all night, out the other side towards home! I bagsied a bed with my pack, laid out my sleeping bag liner, found my E-lite (huh!) and swapped out my clothes for warm, dry ones. Food and surprise beer from Thomas helped things seem more rosy. I went to bed in the cold bedroom with my hood of my Smartwool on, with my merino beanie too, and still had a cold head so didn't sleep that well, but it was a bed and we planned to stay put in the morning and relax a bit.

Looking out the cabin windows the next morning down to the lake, we could see a fine dusting of snow over everything. Snow was still trying to fall but it gave up the ghost after not too long and during the rest of the morning it melted away. Breakfast was accompanied by DNT literature about the local area; a real treat that's been in every hytte I've been to so far. Books about the history of the place, folk tales, peoples' lives, turs to go on and more besides. The woman, child and unidentified man were already up, the 2 Norwegian girls who had been in the same room as us were playing the Easter quiz from a magazine; there was a really nice, warm vibe. Plus the fire was on! Porridge, multiple cups of coffee, both of us messing about with our cameras (Thomas is so much better than me); it was a nice way to pass time and to relax. We decided to have our lunch there before heading back off.

It often makes me chuckle how, setting off I want to stop only a few meters away to faff with my pack or get myself 'set'. It was lovely to be out again, a bit colder than the previous day, even with the night hiking, but no snow or rain; pretty nice conditions. I wore an extra layer under my windshirt though, and kept my merino long johns on this time. It wasn't long before I started to feel pain in my foot. Even writing this now I feel a bit of a resigned sigh, exasperation. Feeling a bit peed off! The landscape was lovely and normally I would rejoice in it, but instead my attention was just focussed on the locus of the pain. And the thought that there wasn't a choice other than to walk out - the hytte isn't linked by road (not that many are).

We stopped at an idyllic camp site, overlooking the lake, half a fire ring with loads of dead wood right next to it. Thomas had remembered it from his walk and without much fight from me we decided to stop there, have some painkillers and have a fire. Fire making is good in a sense for keeping your brain occupied, something different to focus on. I sat on a boulder looking out over the fjord, drinking Solbærtoddy and starting to feel better. The wind whipped around the promontory, bellowing the fire up. The ban on fires was only just over a week away and after so very little rain and such dry conditions underfoot it was understandable why this is needed. A place so much less populated than the UK, a fire could spread over a great area before the fire brigade could respond with helicoptering water to douse the flames.

After half an hour or so we put the fire out, Thomas collecting water from the fjord to douse the flames. On one of his trips to the shore I was joined by a man who basically said that it was pretty risky to have a fire, but I think once he realised that we weren't irresponsible people and had some amount of savvy, he seemed to relax. Plus we were united by having the same Ortleib mapcases and knowledge of the Kjentmann magazines which somehow reassured him! He had been up Grinderkollen, a hill further north at 315m high. He said it had taken him 45 minutes to bushwhack through to the top from the trail, and 5 minutes to get down! I would imagine this is pretty typical in a way thought the blue (summer) and red (winter) trails are well marked and maintained, but so far in my experience when you go off trail you're in back country.


Even after having had the break, after just a few meters I was in pain again. Most of the time it's a pain in the toe next to the pinkie on my left foot, a burning or sharp, stabbing pain as if someone is trying to cut my toe off (and the thought has crossed my mind to do just that!). Accompanying that is a pain on the ball of my foot where that toe joins, a bit like if you rammed your foot down hard on a thin metal object. Very occasionally the toe actually goes numb but of course that doesn't give me any grief. All this happens though when I bend my foot, so any striking off or landing movement, climbing up or going down hill results in pain. This means that every step on that foot is painful unless I try to walk with a flat foot; if you're hiking at all that's pretty much impossible! I had taken 1000mg Ibuprofen, Volterol and Paracetamol and none of it impacted the pain. We walked through some lovely areas, along a gorge with fallen pines and snow, through a narrow gap of rock 20m long, through mossy dingle dells and on Thomas' favourite pine needle paths, soft underfoot. These 4 areas stand out for me in an environment where if I'd not been in so much pain I would have appreciated all the more.

Thomas worked out we had about 1km to go before we hit the road from Rausjø to Fjell. All I had in my mind was to get through this, but on the road with growing pain levels I just broke down in tears, feeling frustration and letting myself and Thomas down. How the pain ebbs and flows with almost no regard for the synthetic chemicals I was feeding my body to rid it of the issue was (and is) incredibly frustrating. It makes planning difficult - whether that is planning what day to go on a hike, or even how long it will take to walk 1km.

Again we were servants to the bus time table and with 1 hour 45 to walk the 7km to the bus stop we thought it would be ample. But then when 2 minutes later I am hobbling along at barely 0.5kph every estimate is brought back into question.
Refusing to allow me to be a martyr, Thomas wisely flagged down a car who drove us to Fjell, saving me a few hours of torture. We parked ourselves in a windy, glass-less bus stop to wait out the hour or so left for the bus. I made a brew with the Questionable Mental Health stove while he used his Backcountry Boiler with meths. It kept us busy and passed the time until the bus driver swerved and slowed to a stop for us, smiling at how pleased we were to see him.

So, this isn't a rosy, "how great was this hike" kind of report, but considering it now, almost a week elapsed, I still question the decision whether on balance it was right to have continued to hike to Bøvelstad in the first place. In truth I think it's difficult to say.
Generally it was a pretty miserable experience, both for me and Thomas, although it was great to see the hytte and meet the people in it, and Thomas once again demonstrated how kind and patient he is (thank you Thomas!).
I need to resolve the issue with my foot; currently I am wondering if it's something like Morten's Neuroma but I need a proper diagnosis from a doctor I can communicate properly with.
My svelte-less-ness and fitness is somewhat dependent on my foot; I have to make the most of the pain free times, which is the majority of the time when I'm not using my foot, but then when I'm on it...
And thankfully, not finding my E-lite wasn't a massive problem on this occasion because of the moon (despite the cloud cover), but on another occasion could have been a nightmare. I had changed my approach to packing my rucksack before we went out, and clearly remembered showing it to Thomas, but not finding it when I needed it wasn't great. However I think with the light output from it, and reading the mighty Skurka's book, I might change my approach to that anyway.
So, over to you; hopefully someone else can benefit from some second hand experience and if any readers want to share their thoughts it would be much appreciated! Thanks.

Å gå på tur i Østmarka

Making the most of the warm Oslo weather this week, I headed off out on Thursday into Østmarka, just east of where I live.

A short bus ride, surrounded by school children of about age 7 and their barnehage assistants, we all disembarked at Skullerud, their laughter and giggles and shrieks waning as I put a little distance between us through the car park. A short distance later an elderly gentleman greeted me in Norwegian, remarking on the weather. We swapped over to English and had a short, welcome conversation, and parted at an intersection where he could head up to Noklevann, whereas I wanted to head off over the icy, groomed slush that passed for the end of the Skiforeningen course area, and to follow the Flyktningeruta south west.

I walked slowly up the hill, avoiding the treacherous ice patches that the sun never reaches, aware this was really my first attempt at a proper-ish hike this year after all the hassles I've been having with my foot.

A woman in her 70s crossed the trail ahead of me, wearing a red jacket, capri pants, trail runners and shortie gaiters. She had a purposeful stride and no map, just a bum bag, so I guessed she was one of the very fit locals from hereabouts. Her stride was at contrast with mine though as the pain in my toe resurfaced and every other step became a battle of wills not to focus on the pain and instead to try to look outside myself. It worked for only a short while before deciding that I didn't want my hiking to be about forcing my way through pain; where's the fun in that? I took myself off the trail and found a sheltered spot in the sun, next to a large boulder, and made a brew.

Solbærtoddy (a hot blackcurrant drink) has miraculous properties, especially when combined with painkillers, although I wasn't sure if they were paracetamol or ibuprofen after the Sharpie marker writing had rubbed off the plasic bag I'd repackaged them in. I contemplated my navel, well, the boulder next to me, waiting for the pain to subside, airing my foot in the sun.
The boulder was interesting and as usual for me, the more I looked the more I saw; different mosses, lichens and even small lingonberry bushes trying to make a living, growing from it. Norway has an abundance of different shrubby berry plants and this year I'd like to learn more about them. There are plenty of wild raspberry and strawberry plants, and the blåberry plants are just starting to form their buds so I'm looking forward to lots of pickings in the summer and autumn!

Pain? What pain? Hurray, I thought I'd have another go. I packed the Minibull Designs Questionable Mental Health stove up, along with the other odds and sods, and got back on the trail. I enjoy this part of Norway, the trails along the humpbacked boulders, swinging around or planking over bog (if you're lucky), climbing up what look like long past river beds with boulders strewn about.

Thinking that the red ski trails would be well past their use for walking (I had a near death experience on one with a bog back in the summer which makes me shudder), I stuck to the blue trails. It's an interesting process getting used to walking in my new adopted country. No OS maps (gosh we are spoiled in the UK); I had a "Turkart Over Østmarka", a comparitively rare 1:25000 scale, and a whole different set of features and legend to use.


The footpath markings are also quite different. More like a totem pole affair, they are really useful with distance markings on and clearly signed. This is an area criss crossed with trails, so some of the totem poles become quite ornate!


Happily, the foot pain had abated and it was with some relish that I felt my stride lengthening out from a hobble into something a bit more respectable that I could meet some oncoming, sprightly pensioners with! A man loped down towards me, tracksuited and agile, his white hair giving his age away. He smiled through his panting and said "Morgen". A group of half a dozen women were not far behind, too engrossed in their chat to take much notice. All were incredibly slim, healthy, fit and nimble over the rocks. A while later I heard panting and a squishing noise as a guy on a mountain bike tried to make his way over the boulders, through the mud and up the hill. He didn't catch me but I think that was more because our paths diverged rather than my new found legs.

Wiggling over another blue path I rounded a corner to see Rundvann through the trees. A cold, matt, ghostly blue colour showed that the ice hadn't yet melted on the lake, in fact as I descended I could feel the chill coming off.

I popped down to the edge and could see indentations in the snow where people had walked, and further out the snapped off stalks of bull rushes looking like stubble after harvesting.

I could see someone over on the other side of the lake, probably having their lunch. They were sat on a big rock outcrop, commanding a view of the whole, small lake. I decided to carry on with a minor detour up to look at the cabin up at Østmarkkapellet, which was closed but to be expected at this time of year. Foxed by the Norwegian habit of combining words together to make one longer one I had a Homer moment when I realised there was a chapel here: Østmark kapell et (The Østmark Chapel). A transcription had been hung outside the chapel, "I lift up my eyes to the hills".

Rejoining the path I continued along the Flyktningeruta to Småvann, to a place where I'd camped with Thomas in the Autumn. It was cold and there wasn't much sun but my attention was hooked by small ice plateau at equal distances. In contrast to Rundvann where the ice and snow hadn't melted much and footprints were still indentations, here, just 5 metres higher and more enclosed the ice seemed to have melted away from the condensed, packed snow and ice, leaving these little islands.

Pretty though it was, it was cold in this depression without the sun. I didn't want to linger so reversed back up and over a small, steep hillock to Rundvann and made my way along the east shore to where I'd seen the man on the rocks. He'd left and I had the place to myself. Rundvann is very accessible so there was a marked out fire pit (it's even marked on the map), but which was surrounded with a moat of ice, and just on the other side of the rock outcrop someone had wrestled a small Yogi Bear pic-er-nik table. I'd never seen one covered with so much carving, but it made a great place to stop in the sun and to rehydrate my potato lunch, with sausage!

It was very tasty, as I'm sure the local pair of mallards wished they could agree too. The female got busy hunting for food under water and waving her rear at me, while the flashy male just pontificated around, trying to scare off another male and otherwise looking a bit aimless unless he thought he could wrestle my sausage off me!

It was a pleasure to see them both so close. The female's feather markings were exquisite. Normally attention is focussed on the male, and being able to see the two curled feathers under his back was a treat, but being able to examine the female up close showed how intricate her patterning was too.

By this time I'd been gone ages, and to be honest, this is a pretty short walk. I'd let Thomas know where I was going and how long I expected to be, but I'd gone way past that. I packed up and picked up the blue trail heading along the fringe of the vann, then veering northwards where I gained height such that I had a view out through the tree tops and over Oslofjord to the far bank. That's quite a distance and because of the trees, not a view you get very often, in fact you can't see it in this photo, but *I* know it's there ;).

I thoroughly enjoyed myself and made good time on a broad trail, joined by a red ski trail from the right. Turning left and west at a cross roads of trail I started downwards, past emerging Liverleaf flowers (Blåveis or Blåmyr in Norwegian, Hepatica nobilis; Thomas has a lovely photo here of one), remaining ice pockets and around upturned spruce trees, victims of recent winds, their mid air roots swathed in a carpet roll of moss.

At a crossroads I saw a pair of brilliantly blushing Bullfinches (Dompap in Norwegian), their colour startling in the subdued green of the conifers. Further down I also saw what I think must be a Yellow Wagtail (Gulerle, Motacilla flava); I can't think what else it could be that was such a vivid yellow green and of that size. Wood anemones (Hvitveis or Kvitsymre, Anemone nemorosa) were unfurling their buds into early white flowers, making the woodland floor lower down sparkle.

How is it that return journeys along previously trodden paths seem to take half the time? In no time at all I was back at the point where I'd seen the woman in red. Instead of being diverted by pain I was now in tune with myself again, and noticed the abundance of Coltsfoot (Hestehov, Leirfivel, Tussilago farfara) on the ground along the trail and track side. It's image has been used by Ruter to advertise the Easter timetable for public transport. Their image has these yellow daisies pushing up out of crinkled ice, but mine are slightly less pretty in dun scrub.

I felt contented to finish this walk. A test of my foot; not great but can be managed. Some overnighters are needed I think!