41 – Close but not quite the answer*

Woke up a day older today – I guess by this stage it doesn’t make a lot of difference especially since the party was at the weekend anyway. First present of the day was from Florence who brought in a just-dead bird at 4.30 am – meow! Things got better at 7 am when I got a geotagging device for my camera and a dvd from K; Rome-2 from my bro and some smellies from Katharine’s mums.

Boat arrived in the evening – had some fun and games with the guy who was delivering it. He didn’t speak any English (well this is Norway so I guess that's fair enough) so I tried to tell him to meet me at Ikea, “Ikea Store Svensk butikken uten byen” (Ikea the large Swedish shop outside of town!) he said "ja" (yes) then flashed straight past it and ended up driving a small car with a very large trailer through the centre of Bergen in the rush hour! Eventually tracked him down and got it in the water. Then went out for a play – its fast, very fast.

Then home for pizza and champagne in the hot tub! It’s a good birthday when you get to use all your new toys!

*Courtesy of Mike “Baldrick” Klym – if you don’t understand then you need to go back and re-read your Douglas Adams

KarmaSotra Summer Party at the Evil Lair 2008

Busy week with lots going on in both jobs. Friday was Party Girl’s master exam which went well, she gave a great presentation and came away with a well deserved B. The examiner was Simon Knight who I haven’t seen for a long time. He came up on Thursday night and we had a great evening catching up.

Culmination of the week was my birthday/summer party on Saturday – lots of folks were away and the weather forecast was pretty dire so it didn’t look like it was going to be one of my better parties. As it turned out it stopped raining on Saturday and had a pretty good turn out. Very pleasant evening on the terrace, no dancing but the drinking went on until 2.30 and there was some hot tub action. So thanks to the guys that turned up and thanks for the presi’s.

Next morning woke up with a moderate hangover and it was raining again – summer in Norway!

Life in Norway IV - Sacred Cows

Norway is one of only two countries in Europe where the responsibility at a pedestrian crossing lies solely with the driver. Consequently pedestrians can and do wander blindly into the streets while cars screech to a halt to avoid them. These people go to significant effort to launch themselves, from the pavement into the road without establishing eye contact with drivers and ignoring the fact that someone has just stopped for them. In fact it is exceedingly uncool to even acknowledge that the 1.5 tonnes of metal that has just been brought to a halt for your benefit even exists.

Scott pointed out that it was very similar to the "sacred cows" in India who drift amongst the traffic.

And now its official - at least its in the paper, Norway is the most dangerous place in Europe to use a zebra crossing. In fact more people die on crossings than anywhere else on the road. But don't worry, you and I are safe, we will instinctively look before we cross the road. Its that special breed of norwegain scared cow that is taking a hammering and bumping up the stats. And thats in a country where drivers are aware, driving slow and trying very hard to avoid them. God only knows what happens when they go abroad - it must be carnage

Anyway next time you drive through a Norwegian town and a "sacred cow" launches randomly into the road and avoids eye contact - just mooow at them, they have a short life expectancy

New Toy

After 5 years of talking about it I have finally got a boat - well I haven’t actually got it yet but I have parted with the cash and should get it soon.

Surrounded by water, in fact living in an Evil-Lair that overlooks a fjord, it seemed rude not to really. I would love to own a sail boat, and hopefully one day I will. However, everyone I know who owns one seems to spend all their spare time fixing it, so I decided that was not for me. Nope, I was looking for something fast, with good hooligan potential and was not to bothered about comfort. Subsequently a RIB seemed to fit the bill.

After much searching I found this one - 18 foot, 150HP, top speed 45 knots and only just over my self prescribed budget. It was down in Kragerø which is on the south coast of Norway, half way between Oslo and Christiansand, just a short hop on the map. Plan was to drive down Saturday and have a look then drive back.

We left later than planned on Saturday and drove, and drove. Then we drove some more and realised that we were less than half way, so we drove so more again. One thing you can say about Norway - its f*ckin big! And, two things, the roads are crap. Add to that the shit, very slow driving, mixed in with the convoys of german camper vans (summer here is like 1940 all over again) and it takes a very long time to get anywhere. We spent about 8 hours just to get to the south coast and we already live in the southern half of the country.

The plus side of this tour was that it is very pretty! We had never really thought about exploring that part of the country beyond driving through in the winter to go to Rjukan. But it is actually really beautiful, we crossed the Hardanger and dropped down into steep rolling valleys with trees and lakes and trees and more trees, very pretty and very empty (apart from trees).

We arrived in Kragerø which was bizarrely covered in snow and meet Henning, the man with the boat. He explained that the snow was trucked in from the Hardanger for a ski race - yes a ski race on the longest day of the year when the temperature on the coast was 15 degs - only in Norway! He took us to see the boat.

The boat "did what it said on the tin", looked good, was fast and stable. Fiddled with the engine long enough to conclude that it was sound (at least I think it is - fingers crossed) and then agreed a price.

Celebrated with a meal by the water side in Kragerø - very nice spot, highly recommend a visit in the summer. Then we drove half way back, camped on top of Halkuli Fjell where it actually did snow on Sunday morning. Then back to Bergen.

Now I just have to figure how to get it to Bergen in time for my birthday party next weekend...

Summer is over...

After 6 weeks of near constant sunshine summer appears to be over.

As we approach the longest day of the year its raining and looks set to stay wet

Even ended up climbing in doors on Thursday eve!

This place - when its good its great - when its bad its....

Climbing - Shock horror!

Actually made it out climbing last weekend! K was back in the UK for a girlie shopping weekend so I got some school work done on saturday and headed out to Øygarden with Jamie and a couple of his friends on Sunday afternoon.

We went up to Utevegan, which was fairly busy but the tide was right out which meant that we could get to some of the routes I have not tried before. We climbed non stop, route after route until my somewhat pathetic arms gave up the ghost... Jamie then did a couple more, just to further illustrate that I am unfit!

Felt great to be out climbing - note to self: must get out more!

Life on the Rift Margin

The island of Sotra lies on the coast of Norway just west of Bergen. Sotra is a magically place, it has a real island feel, similar to the Outer Hebrides or Lofoten but is within 15 minutes of the country's second city. I moved there because its close to the climbing, there is great kayaking on the west side of the island and because it reminded me of mid-Wales (its a sheep thing). I also ended up there because the evil-lear cost less than a very small flat in town, has tons of space and a great view.

Geologically the islands are made up of granite which is pretty old, very hard and great for climbing on. The landscape results from glacial erosion of a series of tilted fault blocks that represent the rift-margin of the North Sea - we are literally living on the last North Sea fault block.

The image below is from google-earth and unfortuantly the resolution is pretty crappy, but you can see the eastward (towards left) dipping footwall dip-slopes and the much steeper cliffs in the west that are the faults.



These faults and the scarp retreat cliffs associated with them form the climbing crags which therefore also face west, meaning that all the crags get the evening sun. Know if I were going to design a perfect island it would have west facing crags that got the sun in the evening....

It would also get a bit less rain!