Ski and Paddle Norway 2009

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I woke at 0630 after a good sleep in the tent. However there was the sound of drizzle on the tent. When I looked outside I realized it was a very light hail, a kind of frozen drizzle. It was perhaps zero degrees and the wind was still a good force 3 from the north east, exactly the direction I wanted to go. It did not invite me out of the tent and I went back for what turned out to be another 2 hours sleep.

At 0830 the situation was the same. It was bitterly cold in the wind. I checked the weather forecast and it pretty much said it would remain like this for the day. I could easily have paddled in it but it would not have been pleasant and the coast would have gone by very slowly indeed. In a hard 6 hours I would have probably made it to Kiberg and 9 to Vardo itself. I was not keen to paddle, but to stay in the tent would have felt like I was taking a “sickie”.

I waited until midday and it was still the same so I decided to take that “sickie”. It would give me the opportunity to try and figure out how to use the basic functions on the GPS and rest my shoulders which had not been too taxed since Skogoyvaer.

In the afternoon I went for a walk around the village. There were perhaps 40 houses here but only 20 seemed to be lived in. the remainder were either now just holiday homes used for the weekends and holidays in the summer or simply abandoned, a couple were even derelict. Indeed the village had a feel of decline to it.

The estuary which was on the south of the village carried the ice cold water down from the interior to the coast here. It must have brought huge amounts of sand in its time as there were extensive beaches on both sides of its mouth. There were lots of old sheds along the bank but many were derelict. There were also large chunks of ice still from the very recent winter.

There were some interesting things in the village. In one garden I spotted a whale skull. I think it was from a minke whale sized whale. The blowhole was clearly visible in the top of the skull.

The sea was scattered with the occasional white capped wave, but most of all it still felt chilly in the north east wind. I was glad I was on land and reasonably well wrapped up as I made my way back to the tent.

Passing the church I had a look inside. It was very Spartan with simple painted benches as pews and very little other adornments. A vestibule was stacked with a jumble of chairs. It gave the impression that the remainder of the congregation here had come to accept that this community was moving to the larger towns and it was only the old who were left.

Back at the tent I got a phone call from the helpful Bjorn of Bjornkayaks and he had dispatched an entire footrest and peddles assembly to Vardo by express post, together with a couple of tools I needed. It would get there tomorrow before me. What service! In addition the nomadic smoke flares had now been retrieved off the Bugoynes bus and are on the Hurtigruten ferry to Vardo also, and they too will be there before me.

I wrote the blog and then had an early supper and bed time. Hopefully I will be able to sleep after the lazy day today. Naturally tomorrow I intend an early start as the weather forecast is good for Thursday when I hope to set off north from Vardo to travel along the exposed Osthavet coast.

It had been a lazy day. Perhaps I needed one but had not really earnt one.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 5:57 pm and is filed under Update. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.