Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Up North, first stop

@brittarnhild

After a couple of days at home to unpack and pack again, and visit the St.Olav Festival, we are on the road again. This time together with my parents. Goal and adventures will be revealed in the blog as we go.

Our first stop was my special surprise for my prents, a coffee and fresh pastry stop at Høie garden and atelier, if you read my blog you remember the place from a few weeks ago. My parents had never been there, neither did they know that theplace, which is situated a couple of hours north of Norway, excisted.

 

During my last visit at Høie I scooped up a million idea and brought them back to my own garden. This time I scooped up a million more.

 Any my mother took as many photos as I did......almost.

 

We had sun while we were in the garden. An hour later we drove right into a heavy thunder and hail storm.

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More tomorrow.
Let me know if you want a postcard.

 

Sognefjellet, a mountain pass between west and east

@brittarnhild

There are several possibilities to travel from west to east in Norway and we have tried them all.....almost. This time we decided to drive over Sognefjellet, where I have not been in many, many years.

On top of the drive we saw over to the highest mountain in Norway, Galdhøpiggen, 2469meters above sea level.

Terje had a lot to tell about a hike he did up to the top, almost, with his father and brother, when he was a boy.

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My crazy husband loves the mountains and he loves snow, and with this combination, everything can happen:

 

 

 

Well, while he was busy cooling down, I found a charming flower on the snow edge.

 

Olsok, or St.Olav´s Day

@brittarnhild

Today, July 29th is St.Olav´s Day, or olsok as we say here in Norway. Nidaros cathedral was built on St.Olav´s grave, and the St.Olav Festival is celebrated each year in honor of the saint why was killed in the battle north of Trondheim almost 1000 years ago.

Olsok is celebrated here in Trondheim, but also in the rest of Norway, in Sweden and Denmark and even beyond. On our drive up along the western coast we met the St.Olav tradition several places. First in the old stone church at Avaldsnes, which I have already posted about, then in the wooden church in Balestrand, near Kvikne´s hotel.

I know this St.Olav´s church has its special tale, but as I read only a few lines on a sign outside the church, I need to search more for the real story.

After Kvikne´s  and Balestrand we though we were done with the celebrations until we arrived home for the festival, but to our surprise we passed a St.Olav market on our way up to Sognefjellet.

It was just time for coffee, it always is just time for coffee, so we stopped, had coffee and svele, and I bought a real treasure,

an old wooden "something", I have no idea what to call it, but the "something" knew perfectly well how to call me :-)

 

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We are about to go downtown for the St.Olav´s festival now, and tonight we have tickets for Bach´s H-Moll Messe in the cathedral, with René Jacobs, Norsk Barokkorkester, soloists and Purchell Choir.

 

A day in between

@brittarnhild

It is a day in between. We came home last night, we are leaving again soon to continue of travels of Norway. Unpacking, washing clothes, packing, but most of all it is the garden that gets our attention.

Ingrid is here working on the house painting, discussing the project with her dad.

A young man sent by the municipality is here making the garden look like a proper garden again after the water leak.

Terje is picking berries,

and making black currant marmelade and red currant jelly.

The birds are enjoying a full feeder and fresh water in the bird baths.

And I am weeding and watering and weeding and watering and weeding and.......

Our neighbour Hanne has looked after the garden while we´ve been away. No rain and heath wave temperatures mean that she has been watering for at least one hour every night. By this she has saved everything and the garden looks gorgeous right now.

Especially after my six hours of weeding.

 

Kvikne´s Hotel, like a fairytale

@brittarnhild

Every summer we treat ourselves with a visit to one of the historical hotels in Norway (or other special places to stay). We have a couple of books about wooden hotels, and we also use internet when we start to make our plans. We start early, and as soon as I know the date of our stay, I send an email to the chosen hotel, asking for the best, most charming room they have. This year the email was sent to Kvikne´s Hotel in Balestrand, and not much later I got an email back from Kari Kvikne with an offer. A few more emails back and forth and the stay was set, with a demi-suite,a table for dinner and everything. We arrived in the afternoon, but when we wanted the check in our reservation could not be found, and the hotel was FULL!

I almost started to cry. What were we to do?

 

Soon three young people behind the desk were helping us, and soon we found out what had happened, I had booked a wrong date! And as I already said, the hotel was full!

I almost cried again!!

Then the desk person in charged smiled, we seem to have one room left for you, in the new part of our hotel. Not the historical part like you had booked, not a demi-suite, but still a nice room, a room with a fjord view.

I stopped crying, well, I had never actually cried but I stopped wanting to cry. And soon I smiled. We would not have our romantic demi-suite, but we had a room at "The Jewel of Sognefjorden", we could have dinner in the historical part of the hotel, we could swim from the pier, I was there with the man I love. What more could I ask for?

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By the way:
we swam in the fjord before dinner, and we swam again before breakfast in the morning
we had an excellent four course dinner served by the charming young Polish Przemek
we had a morning walk in the village
we slept well
we toured the rooms on the ground floor of the huge historical part of the hotel
we LOVED our stay!

 

and, even though we (so far) visit each hotel only once, there are so many to visit and we don´t have money for more than one of these nights a year, I think we need to do an exception. We must come back to Kvikne, because now we MUST try one of the historical suites.

 

 

 

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You can read more about this amazing place here

 

 Big thanks to the staff at Kvikne´s for making our stay so lovely.

 

What happens when…...

@brittarnhild

 

.......you arrive at the old, wooden hotel where you have booked a room weeks ago and have been dreaming of a romantic stay in one of the suites with the one you love, and you arrive at the hotel and it turns out you have mixed up the dates and the hotel is full........

 

....to be continued.

 

Postcards along the south western coast of Norway

@brittarnhild

With us living in Trondheim, Terje´s father south west in Norway at Moi, we drive the 1000kms at least once a year. One way we do it the "fast" way, 12-14 hours on the road starting  in the morning, arriving late at night, the other way we make a tour out of it, exploring the scenic, pictyuresque nature of western Norway. Every year we try to take a different route, every year we seek out charming places to stay the night. Usually we do the tour in two days with one night at a hotel, some years we spend a week. This year we will use three days on the road, which means two places for over night stays.

Starting from Moi after breakfast we could have taken the main E39 to Stavanger, but we chose a detour down to Egersund and along the area of Jæren, farmer´s country dotted with a million of boulders.

First stop was Hå Gamle Prestegård, Hå Old Vicarage, where we strolled the exhibitions, had coffee with a view and bought a book about lighthouses along the coast of Norway. When we get enough of the historical wodden hotels along the coast, we will start exploting the lighthouses, and stay overnight in them.

  

The area reminded me of The Holy Island, Lindisfarne.

Next stop was Skudeneshavn, and old seafarer village from the time of the many sailships from Norway on the oceans of the world. Today old Skudeneshavn has 225 traditional wooden houses and is regarded as one of the best perserved towns in Europe.

We walked around for a long time, and found new treasures everywhere.

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We have stayed the night in Haugesund, but before coming there we stopped at an old church dedicated to St.Olav, Avaldsnes church.

On the north side of the church with stumbled upan a stone with a legend, Virgin Mary´s Needle.......

.....but that´s a tale for another day.

 

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Today there will be postcards to ARR and Daena.

 

Looking for Travel Tales

@brittarnhild

Being a blogger has enriched my life in so many ways. Like yesterday, when we took my father in law on a day trip to places I have never been before. Making plans the last few days have been a lot of fun, and in the backseat of the car I was ready to take mental notes to use in blogging. In my mind I had imagined the old mining village we were to visit as such a charming place, I knew it would made a perfect blog. 

Well, after a one and a half drive we arrived, only to find a ghost village. Empty houses, many of them with "for sale"-signs, a few houses inhabited, a shop which was open for a few hours six days a week, closed on Thursdays. Why Thursdays?

"Luckily we have coffee and cakes in the car" Terje said. "I saw a place along the road where we can stop and eat."  We strted to drive back, only to find the little place along the road occupied by bikers. 

Well, it WAS time for coffee, it really WAS. So our romantic outing ended up being outside a petrol station, in the burning sun.

When lunchtime came we had much better luck though. By chance we found a place which used to be an old, hitorical wooden hotel. It closed a few years ago, but was bought by the local church. Now they run it as a combination of church center, motel and cafeteria, serving warm lunch once a week, on Thursdays! 

The food was great, traditional Norwegian, the only worker on a salary was the chef, an old man, and together with him he had a lot of church ladies working for free, to get money for the church. All of them eager to talk.

My Travel Tale ended up quite different from what I had thought, but I hope the day gave all of us a tinly little glimpse into a hidden corner of Norway.

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Yesterday´s postcard goes to UP/Philip.
Today´s postcard to Claudia

What about tomorrow´s?

 

On the hottest day

@brittarnhild

It was one of the hottest days this summer. On our list of plans we had written "hike to the Gursli mines", so we filled a backpack with water bottles and went along. 

I have heard about these old mines for years, but never been there. Now I could read the signs about the active mining period a hundred years ago. when at the most, 120 men worked here. The molybdenum was important for steel, and used during WWI especially. 

The mines was our goal for the day, and to come there we had to walk through the heaths. The nature here in this part of Norway, heia as we say in Norway, the heaths in English, is among the most beautiful nature I know. And at its very best now with the heather in full bloom.

When we hiked the Pulpit Rock the other day we were walking almost in a queue. Up to the mines we were alone. For the hours we were hiking we saw no other people.

 There were hundreds thousands of butterflies though. I wanted to take photos of them, but they were too fast for me, always busy living their lives as they are meant to life, to sparkle the nature with beauty.

Yes, we reached the mines in the end, we sat down and had our lunch, bread, eggs and water, and when we arrived home on this hottest day of summer, father in law had pork rib ready for dinner. Oh my, heavy Christmas dinner in July! We managed to postpone dinner for a few hours, and when we finally sat down the sun had set (behind the hills) and actually the meal tasted great.

 

 

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By the way, if you want a postc ard I need your address. Please email me at brittarnhild att gmail dot com

 

Ready for new adventures

@brittarnhild

The young ones have left now. Marta and Martin flew back to Trondheim, Ingrid went to Stavanger to visit a friend. Five days all of us together (well, Torgeir is in Dublin, Øystein in Las Vegas and Marius in Trondheim, working), five days passing like a blink of an eye. Nothing stops 91 years old grandpa to go with us, wherever we go, his special vehicle can climb mountains.....almost. Of course he could not go with us to Pulpit Rock, but when we take our afternoon coffee with us steep up to the hills behind the house, he "walks" along.

 

Ingrid, Marta and Martin have gone, and a lot of laughter, fun and noise went along with them.

Our summer vacation of 2014 is still a toddler though and last night we sat out on the veranda making plans for days to come.

 

How do you spend your summer?
Do you write any postcards?
Do you want a postcard from Norway?