My old school friend Alan came across to visit at the weekend with Megan, his 10 year old daughter. He had been over in the summer, she had never been to Norway before. I had last seen her when she was about 2 and her parents were still married.
Picked them up from the airport on Thursday eve. They spent Friday visiting the sights in Bergen. This is autumn in western Norway at its worst, pouring rain, dark, overcast and windy. They managed the usual stops and ended up at the aquarium looking at bedraggled penguines before they called for rescue. They both seemed to have had a good day and were not bothered by the shitty weather.
I was in work trying to help the guys finish the applications for the 21st licensing round which were due at the printers on Monday. As with any big project, the last couple of weeks are always hectic and 3 key folk had been working til midnight and beyond to get it all done. I felt a bit bad when I bailed out on them a 5.30 pm.
Quiet evening at home on Friday night. Megan was more interested in watching Ripping Yarns and an extreme kayak DVD than Wallace and Gromit or Chicken Run (it has to be said that my dvd collection does not include much that is suitable for 10 year olds), but I thought it was interesting to see what young people gravitate towards. They just do what they are genuinly interested in, there is no pretention there.
Next day we visited the excellent Vil Vite centre in Bergen for a dose of science. It's a great way to spend a wet saturday morning. Saturday afternoon Megan was pretty insitant that she wanted to go camping so, never one to disappoint a small girl, we packed up the kit and headed over the Liefjell. It had at least stopped raining by this point.
We hiked into the hills before we found a spot that was almost flat and almost dry. Set the tents up and lit a fire. The rain held off as we cooked some tea and sat around the fire keeping warm. We even got to see an almost clear sky, with the plough, cassiopia and the milky way. Not something you get to see everyday in Croydon, or in Norway in November.
Headed to bed and although it was windy the rain held off until about 5 am. Got up about 9, had some breakfast and then packed up in the rain before heading back to the car. I would not normally go camping just for fun in November, but Megan was so excited about the whole thing it made it all worth while. Once again it is great to see the World through someone else's eyes. Someone who is doing this stuff, what ever it is, for the first time. It was also nice to just spend time with them both. She's a tough little cookie, which having known her mother is pretty odd, but she is. I am sure there will be more adventures to come. 
Happy Campers
Spent the afternoon getting the boat out the water for winter. Enlisted help from Sandy and after a few false starts looking for a boat ramp that was not locked, we took it to Grimstad and hauled it out. Lots of crap and enough mussles for a ten person dinner party attached to the bottom, will be good to get it cleaned.Then dropped Al and Megan off at the airport and headed back to dive into editing the 21st Round documents.
Playing with boats
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