Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Everything has an end

 

Winter break is over and I am back to work. Long workdays and a mind filled with sweet memories of snow, skiing and cabin life. On our way back home yesterday, we stopped to have dinner with good friends. Marta is still there, and will come back home tonight by boat - her first travel alone. A short one, but she is excited. Is this her first step to become a world traveller?

I had a funny experience in the car on our way home yesterday. I have been away from the office for two weeks. Two wonderful weeks, in Oslo, in London and at the cabin. Colleagues and work have been far from my mind. Then, there in the car, with Marta and Terje, I started to thing of work, and suddenly I missed it so terribe and I missed my colleagues so terrible, I couldn't wait to be back. My solution - I phoned a couple of colleages asking "how do you manage without me????? - I mean, how do I manage without you???????".........

I am enjoying your hundreds of comments from the past two weeks. And slowly, slowly I am reading them over again, and commenting. I am sorry that I can't write you all back individualy. I am sorry that it might take some time before I visit your blog. But be sure that each and every one of the comments are appreciated. Give me time, and I will reply in the comment section.

--------------------------------------------------

Don't forget the sock giveaway. The winner will be announced on Sunday.

Cabin Days

 

 

 

Usually Marta brings a friend for our cabin days. This time there were no one to bring, and while I was in London I got an sms "Mamma, I will be alone at the cabin. It will be so boring!"

Boring is actually an unknown word at the cabin, and so it is also this time. Every minute from daybreak till night is filled with activities. Knitting with mamma, having fun with maths with pappa. Playing cards with mamma and pappa, playing out in the snow alone. reading, dancing, singing. Marta is smiling, singing and dancing all day. All by herself.

Every child should have the opportunity to live with nature, without televisions and computers, even without friends around for a few days. It is food for the soul in our busy world.

--------------------------------

Note: it is a challenge to be able to blog every day during our no-electricity cabin days. Yesterday we drove south to the small town of Kristiansund, 50 kilometers to drive and a 20 minutes ferry ride. Torgeir is working in Kristiansund during the month of February, and we visited him. I managed to blog during the ferry ride, with Marta hanging over me wanting to use my computer to msn her friends :-)

Living the simple cabin life

 

Cabin life for us is simple. Without electricity, an outdoor (almost) toilet, walking a couple of hundred meters to get water in two plastic buckets. Life for us is The Best Life. Though cold in winter. I am always an early riser, but here I stay under my warm and comfortable eider duvet untill terje is away and have started the fire in our old iron stove.

 

While making the fire, Terje leaves the bedroom door open, from under my duvet I can enjoy the kitchen windiw view, to the back side of the cabin.

   

 

While Marta still sleeps, I make pancakes, and while eating breakfast we all enjoy the amazing Mother Nature. though our huge livingroom windows

 

Later in the day it is time for skiing. I wish I could take you all with me, to enjoy snow and to enjoy sausages directly from the fire.......

 

----------------------------------------

This is a totally in a hurry post, from the cafe at Aure where I managed to get my computer hooked. I promise to make a proper skiing at cabin post later.......

Don't forget the sock giveaway!

The almost forgotten art of travel letters.......

 

Female travellers and their books have charmed me for many years. I have read about the great explorers and mapmakers since I was a small girl, but it was Frances Mayes and her Tuscany books which really hit a nerve in me. The way she writes about and shares her love for travels, for being on the road, for litterature and poetry, for the people she meets, for landscapes, art, sun, olives.......I have all her travel books here at the cabin (we are enjoying our winterbreak in the snow, cabinlife), and read then over and over again.

It must have been after "meeting" Frances that I started to search for books written by other female travellers. First Carol Drinkwater, then older books by Alexandra David-Neel, Dervla Murphy, Margaret Fountaine, Marianne North, Jan Morris, Isabella Bird, and my "newest find", Freya Stark.

It is easy today to send impressions home. When I was in India I wrote long travel tales several times a week, both in Norwegian and English, emailed them to friends and family, and I updated my blog with photos and words daily. I sent loads of postcards, knowing that people would get them in a week or two, and since I had long, lovely evenings in Carolyn and Hossy's home,I had time to write letters. handwritten on Indian handmade paper.

The early traveller depended on their handwritten letters. Dervla wrote page up and page down and sent them home to a friend. Later the letters were what she used when she wrote her travel books. Isabella Bird sent letters home to her sister, and some of her books are a collection of these. I love the way she takes us through Japan only through letters. Margaret Fountaine probably sent letters as well, but she also kept a diary on the go, and once a year she gathered her notes and wrote down her previous year in her main diary. Her life all she was a teenager, can be found on these pages, and today I can open my book and travel with Margaret, collecting butterflies with her around the globe.

Freya mastered the art of travel letters. During her life, she reached the age of 100, she wrote 30 books on her adventures, including four volumes of autobiography and eight of published letters.

What a blessing for us today that the early travellers developed the art of writing travel letters. Their travels often meant spending days, weeks, even months on the road, on a ship, on a camel, bicycling. Life was slower and they found the time their needed for writing. And they used it. I want to learn from these women. I want to be adventurous like them, I want to spend time reflecting and sharing life like they did.

I have found that one can nearly always do what one sets out for, if it is only one thing at a time. Freya Stark

------------------------------------------

Don't forget to leav a comment for the sock giveaway.

Crazy about socks, is this a Camelia?, and a giveaway!

 

I packed three pairs of socks in my suitcase. And yarn for more sock. The first pair was given away already in Oslo, the second pair was meant for Roz, the third pair was for my friend Carol whom I met at Leicester Square Thursday afternoon, and with whom I spent a wonderful afternoon and evening browsing Covent Garden market, eating at Bella Italia, enjoying Phantom of the Opera.

I never met Roz, and I didn't want to bring the pair of socks with me back to Norway, so what to do? I knitted during the conference. One day one of the ladies came over to my table. "Your socks are so beautiful. I wish I had a pair. Then I could keep my feet warm when I work." "So please tell me, what do you do for working?" "I sell sausages outdoors, and it is so cold now with the snow we've had this winter." The second pair of socks got a new owner there and then.

   

I wanted to photograph the socks I knitted in London while I still was in London, but I kept on forgetting. All untill the last day, on my way to Paddington Station and the Heathrow Express. Struggling with a heavy suitcase, again I bought too many books, I passed a small square, Sussex Garden, and I knew it was my last possibility to photograph the socks. Businessmen on their way to work almost forgot to swallow their coffee on the go - a crazy woman in Sussex Gardens photographing socks! But nobody knew me, so I just kept on with my task......

Leaving the garden I saw a blooming rose bush near the gate. Roses in February? I took a closer look and relaised it wasn't roses at all. So what could it be? Can it be a Camelia? Debbie, please help me, is this a camelia?

I had to stop and find the socks once more. Socks in the camelia bush!

   

   

We are at the cabin, my very best sockknittingplace. And I am knitting a pair of giveaway socks. Next week-end I will chose one name from the comments, and the winner will get a pair of handknitted socks.

Happy Blooming Valentines

 

   

 

 

 

Kew Garden is celebrating 250 years this year. With their sweet giftwrapped flower boxes I am wishing you a Happy Valentine.

Thank you for reading my blog and for letting me know that you do - through emails and comments. Tomorrow I plan a very special giveaway, see you then.......

--------------------------

Blog of the week: Take a look at Jane Brocklet's blog. She went to Kew when I did :-)

Like an old English landscape painting

 

Morning view from my bedroom window at the convent.

I am on my way back to Norway, back to my family, back to winter break and cabin life! And I have alot more stories to tell........

 

-----UPDATE------

I am almost on my way out to Heatrow, just had to stop at an internet cafe first :-) Thanks for all your comments yesterday. I have read though them all, and commented to some.

A full day in Kew Garden

 

If you come here to see the ordinary London photos, Big Ben, Westminster Cathedral, Tower Bridge and so on, sorry, you've come to the wrong place. But if you want to walk with me to new places (well, at least new to me), I am pleased to take you along. I do not want to talk all the time though. I need space for quiet, for solitude, for reflections. I need to hear the leaves drinking water, the leaves to drop. I will be more than happy to do it together with you though. And from time to time we can share thoughts, chat, smile together, talk together.

 

But you will need good walking shoes. When I start I can keep on for hours. Especially in a place like Kew Gardens where there were new rooms of paradise around every corner.

   

I have wanted to visit Kew Gardens for years. I always tend to find the botanical gardens in the cities I visit, Prague, Rome, Copenhagen, Padova, Trondhaim always Trondheim, but somehow I've never made it to Kew Gardens.

 

Saturday night I decided Sunday would be The Day, and I went to bed hoping that the weather would be good enough for my hours of walking. So when I woke up Sunday morning to a winter sun shining, my whole soul smiled. Yes, Kew Gardens, here I come!

   

I wanted to see it all, starting with the Palm House and the nursery where a special orchid exhibition was taking place to celebrate Kew's 250th birthday. Orchids showing of their beauty in a water mirror!

 

I kept on walking, and some time during the day I found myself in the remote end of the garden where Queen Charlotte's cottage is situated. Closed in winter and most of summer as well, but surrounded by thousands of snowdrops.

 

Why is it that I like snowdrops so much more than snowflakes?

 

When I was in India last autumn, Carolyn opened her rich bookshelves for me, and the first book I read during my stay, was a biograpy about Marianne North, the artist and worldtraveller who painted these amazing flowers and plants from her trips, and who built a special gallery at Kew for her paintings. Visiting the gallery was on top of my list, but fate had more lemons ready for me. The gallery is closed this winter due to renovation. I was able the see a few of Marianne's paintings in another gallery, but...... Well, I did not let it destroy my day. There were too much to see and enjoy.

 

Leaving the Gardens, late in the afternoon, just before closing time, I had afternoon tea in this charming restaurant, The Kew Greenhouse. A perfect place for eating. A perfect place for writing my diary.

 

The tube back to London, with tired, oh so tired feet, rich oh so rich with memories.

Because what they were doing lovers do in our country too.......

 

The conference, the main reason that I came to London, has started. I am at a convent somewhere on the edge of Richmond Park, discussing the asylum issues and how to work with refugees in Europe. Knowing me, you will not be surprised to hear that I skipped a meeting after lunch yesterday (the conference program is tight, from early morning till late night) and did a walk in the park.

 

I had read about the deers in the park, and even saw them from my bedroom window the first night. No there were no deers in sight.

 

"Please God, let me meet the dears!" I prayed. I am used to deers in Norway, both outside the House in the Woods sometimes, and at our cabin. But only one or two, may be three at a time. Then I rounded a corner, and there the deers of Richmond Park were. Hundreds of them! And oh so beautiful. God's own creation!

 

 

 

I always travel with books. In Richmond Park I walked with Carel Kapek and his Letters from England. Carel also visited the park and saw almost what I saw:

However, since I wasn't able to draw a stag from memory last time, I ran into Richmond Park where there are whole herds of them. They approach people without ceremony, prefering vegetarians. Although it is quite a hard task to hit a stag, I managed to draw a whole herd. Behind them a couple of lovers were lingering in the grass. I didn't include them in my picture because what they were doing lovers do in our country too, only not so publicly.

Well, I didn't draw, lik e Carel, but my camera was quite busy hitting deers :-)

 

All photos were taken in Richmond Park yesterday.

Saturday morning in Portobello Market

 

Waking up early Saturday morinng, alone in a big city, I knew at once what I wanted to do. Visit Portobello Market. I had been there twice before, on our honeymoon back in 1980, then again nine years later, a few months before Ingrid was born, when Terje and I had a week in London together, without two active, high and low boys. Sweet memories, both the travels with Terje, the active boys and the upcoming birth of our first daughter. But that was a long time ago. The leaves in the trees have grown alot since then, the two boys and the first girl have grown up, this morning it is Marta's messages coming to my cell phone which follows me. She is together with her three cousins though, and is not missing me too much.

 

A musician is greeting me when I arrive at the market. he is playing only for me, he must have known that the snow had prevented me from visiting Roz, now he wanted to make my unexpected London week-end a colourful one.

   

I soon found the stands with old china, and I was in heaven. My mother has promised to give me some money for my upcoming birthday, and I sent her a message, letting her know that I would use the money to buy a treasure at Portobello Market. She wrote me back; "do you know how much money you will get?" "Well, I think so........."........well, I didn't, and all of a sudden I had a little pre-birthday party, all by myself :-) I knew I would buy china and lace, but first I wanted to explore.

 

What about a walking stick, after all I am a 50+.....

 

Or a stamp? I bought a B and a BA......

   

May be an antique camera? I was not the only one dreaming, photographing.......

   

Cutlery, silverware, isn't this bone colour just beautiful? I could need some silverware for the new dinner china we bought last week, for our big family party.

 

I enjoyed walking around, dreaming. Knowing that my suitcase didn't have much extra space, and the extra space which actually is there, is needed for books (after Portobello Market I planned a visit to Charing Cross Road and Foyles). I walked back to my first china lady, and ended up with this 1860 cup and saucer, further down the road I found an amazing laced table cloth from around 1920, and as an extra treat I bought a blue hardcovered antique travel book from Italy. With all colour maps to unfold. Will be perfect for our upcoming travel to Italy in May/June.

My Saturday morning at Portobello Market was over, I sat down to enjoy a hot chocolate, and walked back to the hotel to leave my purchases there before I kept on with my day. The musician knew my visit was over, and let his instrument have a well deserved break.

 

Photos from my Saturday morning visit in Portobello. Have you ever ben there? What story can you tell?