Mountain Passes

Fredag 16. August

After an 8am wake-up call from Matt, my first task of the day was to wake the slumbering Joycey. He finally awoke after nearly 30 minutes of me poking him in the kidneys. By the time he had finally risen from his lair, we had just 15 minutes to pack all our belongings, have breakfast and begin the 7km walk to Dombås, where we were to catch the 10.55am coach to Lom.

Leaving the campsite 20 minutes late, myself and Gavin decided to exercise our 'so-called' marketing bodies by challenging Pete (or the 'Terminator' as we later nick-named him) to reaching Dombås first. Our determination and sheer passion to beat the 'Terminator' paid off as we were the first to reach the centre and instantly went to the Co-op for a refreshing drink and chocolate bar.

We all eventually made it to the coach in time, after Phil helped certain members of the group by giving them a quick ride in the minibus.

The coach journey to Lom was long and tedious, amusing ourselves by singing(??) along to Gav's minidisc.

In Lom we met up with the minibus crew having a quick lunch followed by free time in the town. Lom is a highly interesting town ... but only for rock lovers and geologists. For those who don't share the same interests, like ourselves, we decided to work on our tan lines down by the riverside. When our time was up, we once again caught a bus, which was supposed to be local, but took hours to get to our destination.

Having got there, the Sognefjellstasjon on one of the highest main roads in Europe, we, the bus group, (myself, Gavin, Elly, Joycey, Rob, Jon, Alasdair and Pete) had time to spare; without hesitation the majority of us raced to the snow. The transformation was complete .... from sunbathing in Lom to snow-ball fights not 3 hours later!

After 30 minutes or so in the snow, we were doubting that we had got off at the right stop. However just 5 minutes later Phil dismissed all doubts by driving passed us in the minibus. A short journey to our sleeping area for the night and already assembled tents meant the coach group had little to do, so we ended up once again in the snow!

After another snow-ball fight, myself and Gavin decided to explore the area, encountering more snow, lots of rocks and a few streams. Back at camp we were handed a big black bag in which our rations for the evening and morning were stored. Thanks for the Mars bars!


After dinner the group split, with the 'elders' going to the nearby fjellstasjon (mountain hotel) for coffees, whereas the younger members stayed at basecamp. I was set up for a good night's sleep, however a 'disagreement' between myself and Gavin over Mars bar allocations found us rolling down the hill. After half an hour of this larking around, we still did not feel remotely tired, so we decided to watch the sky. We clambered up onto a large boulder above our tent and laid back drinking in the spectacular mountain sky as it darkened towards night. We saw 2 shooting stars and made up our own constellations. We fell asleep on the rock and it wasn't until some rain woke us up that we went back to the tent.

ANDY

Pete and Adam in the snow



Fanaraken and the mountain road

Lørdag 17. August

I was awoken this morning by the sound of Pete screaming. At 8.15 it transpired that swimming was the order of the morning to '... separate the men from the boys ...' as Pete 'screaming' Lloyd later described it. Those who were brave enough were: Pete, Phil, Matt, Rich's galore, Joyce and yours truly.

The 9am deadline for tents to be down came and went and the group catching the mountain bus to Gaupne had to make smartish tracks to get to the fjellstasjon pick-up point, leaving the minibus filled with kit to limp its way to our campsite for the evening. Whilst waiting for the bus it was discovered that the 'free coffee' at the fjellstasjon enjoyed by certain individuals the evening before wasn't in fact free at all and that Alasdair's morning cup had to be paid for by an unsuspecting Andy.

We finally arrived in Gaupne to be greeted with what seemed to be a commercially flourishing town with a Co-op, Spar and shopping centre. Upon closer inspection by our advance party it turned out that the "town" consisted of a police station - closed (as were all other police stations encountered) - town hall and a petrol station. Half an hour passed during which time we successfully made an 'enemy' without even trying ("Comedy Jones") and encountered 'the youth of today' with their slot machines, scratch cards and lottery tickets at the age of six - before Phil arrived to reveal that the campsite was a meagre 5 minutes walk from 'town'.

A day of lounging around - at last! - then ensued. Lunch was lentil soup and then we returned to 'town' where we discovered that all the shops (except the newsagents with 'top shelf' computing mag - spotted by a certain quartermaster) were closed. We then sat and ate ice creams from another supermarket (which we found open) while sat on some benches near the post office where we encountered drive/cycle-by abuse from "Comedy Jones".

There then followed a general period of lounging and lolling around before our stir-fry tea, cooked to the accompaniment of piano accordians - here for the music fayre - which Matt the Philistine surprisingly hated. During the day it was noted that the second cubicle of the toilets bore an inscription - "Operation Village Bombing - AG '99" - of which Adam absolutely denied any prior knowledge!!

JON

Tales of a Hot Night in Gaupne

After a generous meal of 'stir-fry' comprising of pork, beef, pepper, onion, cabbage and lots of spice(!), served on a bed of noodles, the "Attack of the Hormones" began.

The group seemed very excited at the prospect of meeting some of the local young ladies, due to the fact that there was a lot of people in town for the music festival and annual squeeze-box fayre and any such event seems to draw in the local populace.

The evening air was balmy and warm as we trooped into town - however after looking in at the music festival we decided it wasn't really our scene, nor worth the 70 Kroner entrance fee. Making a roundabout return to the campsite we stumbled across or rather two girls stumbled across us. As they later confided, they were getting a bit bored of the squeeze-box folk music and had decided to go and see the English lads at the campsite - news travels around these parts fast!!

As Sandra and Tonje walked towards the bench where we had parked ourselves, Sandra decided to give Rob a big hug as a way of starting the conversation. Rob immediately took a shine to her and went around with a big grin on his face for the rest of the evening!

After some general converstaion about who we were, where we come from, what we are doing here, our names, ages, etc. I decided to take the liberty of asking them to join us back at the camp for some Venture hospitality. They agreed and off we went. On the way there, they jabbered on in Norwegian about us but wouldn't tell us what they were saying.

At the campsite we set up a couple of lamps, sat round in a big circle and started to tell each other our 'life stories'. We took some photos and exchanged details (as one does). It was mentioned that it was my birthday and as a result I received some hugs and kisses from the the girls which earned a few envious glances!

By now it was well past midnight, although the squeeze-box fest sounded to be still in full swing and a lot of people were still up and about the campsite. Unfortunately Sandra had to leave to go and meet her friends - Matt also decided that nice young ladies ought not to be out and about in the early hours and he too retired from the circle. Pete and Phil (a little anxiously it must be said) had already retired as they needed to be fresh for tomorrow's long haul back to Eidsvoll in the south).

At this point Sam asked about swimming in the fjord and was it safe to do so? Tonje replied yes it was and then promptly decided that she wanted to go for a midnight swim in the fjord because all her friends had and she hadn't. (Personally I think she was playing the tease a bit!) This resulted in the question "What are you going to wear?" The answer "My underwear". These two words caused the chins of 12 lads to drop to the floor. "It's only 5 minutes walk up the road," said Tonje and off we went; Jon, ever the gentleman, stopping to collect his beach towel.

We shortly arrived at a small wooden jetty and without further ado Tonje had quickly slipped off her dress and jumped in. She swam around for a few moments, decided that it was too cold and seeing as no-one else was moving to join her but just standing around like dummies, she started climbing out. With everyone rooted to the spot just gawping, I quickly grabbed Jon's towel to use as a screen while she reclothed her fine young form. We then returned in procession back to the campsite.

Someone mentioned photos and to our amazement a whole photo album of pictures came out of Tonje's wallet. They just seemed to go on and on and Tonje chatted on and on about each one. It was now getting towards 1 o'clock and Tonje had to go to meet her mum in Gaupne centre. She wanted us all to go and meet her mum too so we all escorted her there. We had a while to wait - during which time a few youths a bit worse the wear for drink gave us some unwanted attention, so we had to keep our wits about us and our running shoes handy. It didn't help, but it amused Tonje, that Stubby kept cowering behind me saying "Uncle Adam save us! Save us!"

Her mum eventually turned up from the farm in her pick-up truck. We all were introduced to mum and had a brief converstation with her before we hugged Tonje good-bye, and they drove off into the night.

ADAM

Ice Cool Glaciers

Sondag 18. August

After the excitement of the previous night, nobody enjoyed a 7.30am wake up call. After a short muesli and bread-and-spreads breakfast we were off to the Nigardsbreen glacier which was promised to be good.

After a relatively short minibus journey we arrived at the Breheimsenteret museum car park. Adam and Phil told us that we now had to walk up to the glacier, about 7km to its face - just follow Matt who had already set off along the road and they'd catch us up. It wasn't long before we had split into smaller groups; Matt, Sam & Chris at the front, Andy & me behind Rich & Pete, Joyce, Alasdair and Jon at the back. After a long walk Andy and I ended up a cliff taking a break. We had tracked round a big glacial lake and the glacier was now out of sight and there seemed to be no way on as the shoreline had petered out against some smooth steep side rock faces. Pete had climbed a-top a large boulder and gone to sleep while some heated discussion ensued about the next plan of action.

At this point Sam's mobile rang and he received a call from Adam who was on the other side of the lake. Apparently we should have stayed on the road and not followed Matt, who didn't know where he was going (obviously) and had just taken a small insignificant path because he felt that a road up to a glacier wasn't right - it ought to be a backwoods path and trek. He didn't even think he was leading!

We began retracing our steps - fortunately the local ferry boat came to our rescue. It had a group of hopeful glacier climbers in it. The kind ferryman dropped us off and charged us half the normal price; he saw the funny side of it all!

After another short walk, we arrived at the amazing glacier and were soon joined by Adam and Phil, who related their side of the 'adventure' - they had left the van 5 minutes after us, had yomped up the road expecting to catch us up, posed as a couple of Irish men to get a lift with a German couple in a VW camper up to the glacier carpark and ferry jetty, still not finding us had started scrambling at breakneck pace over the rocky sided shoreline that led the final 2km to the glacier face; quickly realising that we could never have travelled that far so quickly they stopped and scanned through Phil's telephoto lense the far side of the lake soon spotting Pete stretched out on top of a huge rock sunning himself and Matthew trying some dangerous looking traversing manoeuvre along towards the edge of a large boulder which led only to an abrupt 30m drop into the blue glacier melt water lake. A call in time!

Sunbathing by a huge ice flow is one of the weirdest experiences possible. We spent about 3 hours there playing with icy water, taking photos and just drinking the cool grandeur and blue majesty of the glacier. We then returned the correct way to the glacier car park! An interesting walk - more a scramble in places - across 3 rivers and ice-smoothed rocky terrain.

When we got to the glacier ferry car park, which was quite full of cars, Adam, Pete and Rich decided on a freezing swim in the lake by jumping off the jetty. Adam brought back an iceberg as a souvenir. Then we had another 4km walk, this time along the road we should have stayed on (Matthew!) back to the Breheimsenteret museum car park. We tucked into Wasa and spreads for a belated lunch, followed by some free time to visit the information centre and cafe. The cafe waffles with strawberry jam and sour cream are to be especially recommended!!

At about 5pm we headed back to Gaupne, once again I slept missing a good 'contest' between Dales and Rich H. At Sandvik camping we had a lot of spare time and passed it with wrestling competitions and reading. We took a tour of Gaupne 'town', arriving back to find Chef Lloyd waiting to serve up his "Hibro'noo" Celtic speciality - it started life as shepherd's pie - an interesting offering!!

The post prandial talk as we sat around that evening was not so much of glaciers, however, rather of the events of the previous night and a girl called Tonje. It was noted that Jon had his bathers and towel at the ready '... just in case!'

GAVIN

More Photographs of the Spectacular Nigardsbreen

Taken from Daily Log Book Entries