Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

A Hike on Boxing Day

@brittarnhild

After a busy period we've had a lovely, relaxing day today. Reading books, hiking, eating leftovers for dinner.
For the third year in a row now we have set ourselves a goal to do at least 100 hikes together,  á 5 kilometers, during the year. Today was our hike 98 for 2024, just two more and we've made it.

We are in the deep winter, still, with quite a lot of ice along the paths. But with the correct shoes we could hike without problems.

I am not a winter person, preferring spring, summer and autumn, but every season has its beauty, and today was a lovely day.

Short days, which makes it even more essential to get out while we have some daylight.

 

 

All the way to the top

@brittarnhild

We've been hiking again today. We met our relatives down on the farm yesterday and they told us about a route we've never hiked before. Starting from our cabin, along the road for about one kilometer, then following a small tractor road up, up, up.......all the way to the top of the mountain.

On the picture above we've reached the top and reward ourselves with the most delicious sweet pastries filled with vanilla cream, bought at the village bakery

It started easily. Slow hiking in the spring forest with the ground filled with wood anemones.

But soon all this hiking up, up, up started.
Somewhere up there was a bench where we could sit down for a rest. With a view directly over to where our cabin is.

The hike felt hard (for me, not at all for Terje), but I can be quite stubborn when I want to, and today I was determined to reach the top.

Which I did!

Oh, the view up there was amazing.

I am tired tonight,
and a wee bit proud of myself.

 

We love it when we find new places to hike

@brittarnhild

Like last year and the year before that, we have a goal to do 100 hikes together, Terje and I, also this year. We had a great start the first two weeks of the year, on Tenerife, with hikes every day. Then, after we came home, we've had more challenges with snow and ice everywhere. Still a few hikes, with spiked shoes, but finally, it looks like spring is here, at least here on the coast where our cabin is situated, and I feel this overwhelming, amazing joy of spring.

A couple of weeks ago our daughter Ingrid and her family found a new place for perfect hiking out here, and today we went to the same place.

The snow has only recently melted, so no wild flowers up yet, but we could walk with our sneakers, still with dry feet, and we could smell spring everywhere.

I know I said there were no wild flowers, but we could see hundreds of snow drops in a garden we passed.

 

 

A hike filled with autumn colours

@brittarnhild

We have spent a couple of days over on the other side of the Trondheim Fjord. Before going home we had a lovely walk in the middle of sun, blue sky and autumn colours.

Nature, rowan berries and old wooden houses played on the same team.

As many of you know, I have a YouTube-channel. Most of the videos are in Norwegian, but for a couple of years I manage to do every second video in English. Last summer I realised it was too much work (at that time) and I went back to doing only Norwegian episodes. More than one year later, I am very happy to tell you that I am back to doing episodes in both Norwegian and English again,

I did quite a lot of  filming during our hike, and this morning I added it to the episode I posted today. With my mother playing the piano in the background. But the hike is only the end of the episode. What I talk about is where I find inspiration for what I create.

Welcome over to listen and to have a look;

50 shades of spring green

@brittarnhild

All the snow has melted, the sun is shining, birds are singing, flowers are blooming and we are out hiking in the spring woods.

Never has green sparkled as it did today.
Never have the birds sung more beautiful.

We hiked where we have never been before,

and met some challenges along the way. The path was really not as simple to fight as we hoped.

Every new obstacle were met with our smiles though, and there were always flowers to enjoy.

Two hikes a week, or something like that

@brittarnhild

We did a hike in the neighbourhood today, a bit more than 5 kms.
I have told you about our goal, haven't I? To do at least 100 5kms(+) hikes this year. This means around 2 hikes every week, and so far we are following the goal.

Today we followed paths we know quite well, still there is always something new to discover.

Here is our church, with the cemetery in front.

 

Easter Day and a hike

@brittarnhild

After a long, cold and snowfilled winter, it feels absolutely lovely to greet spring this Easter week. And the weather has really been lovely. There is still more than enough snow up in the hills, and Terje is out cross country skiing every day (I have been once), but today we decided to go for a hike near the Atlantic. Øystein, Vida and Marta left yesterday, but Ingrid, Marius, Leander and Milian were still here (they left after today's hike)

As so often before, we went out on the island Skardsøya, and as I told my two grandsons, I believe this is my most beautiful place on earth, with sky, mountains and ocean meeting.

Skardsøya also played an important role during WWII and there are some fatal memories from WWI, so during our hike today, on the day 83 years after the Germans invaded Norway, we gave the boys a history lesson.

   

Here we are standing by a memorial stone set up to remember a mine accident in 1919, where 4 people died while deactivating a mine, a mine expert, a local farmer and two of his sons.

Easter break is almost over. Tomorrow (on my 65th birthday) we are heading back home.

 

Out hiking again

@brittarnhild

We have been out hiking again.
I have already, in a previous post, told you about our goal to do at least 100 hikes of 5kilometers or more during the year. We did not quite catch the goal last year, but we are trying again this year. Today was our 17th 5km+ hike of 2023, so we are really doing great progress.

We hiked from our house today, over to the arena where the World Championship of Nordic Skiing will be held in 2025. Yes, it will be quite close to where we live, so we are sure we will get a full house with friends and family during the games, lol.

Still deep winter here with us, and today was a lovely day with sun and blue sky.

A lot of restoration work is being done at the ski arena for the moment, so it is always interesting to walk over to watch the progress. A week ago the ski jump was tested for the first time after its rebuilding and next winter there will be a "test world championship", so remaining work must be done fast now.

Our son in law Marius was a ski jumper, just like his father was. And now our two grandsons, Leander aged 7 and Milian aged 4 have started to jump as well....... They are both too young for the championship in two years of course, but one day.......

 

100 hikes, almost.......

@brittarnhild

January 1st last year we started something that turned out to become a wonderful adventure. We started to hike together. Well, we have hiked together ever since we met and fell in love back in 1978, but the special thing about this new adventure is that we set a goal to do at least 100 different hikes, each of them at least 5 kilometers (5000 meters) during 2022.

And all the hikes had to be done together.

We both do other walks and hikes and cross country skiing an so on  individually, but the 100 ones of 2022 had to be done together. We took photos along every hike, always a selfie and always a screenshot of the map from the hike.

I shared them all on. Facebook, but since I lost my old Facebook account all the updates disappeared of course. Luckily I have it all safe on my phone (and in the Cloud), and I do have a goal to save them further in a special blog I have made for the purpose.

I got covid for the second time in December, and did not have the energy to hike at all for several weeks, so we did not reach our goal. But we hade 96 of them, and we both feel happy about that.

And of course we will continue in 2023.
4 hikes and counting, so far.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Do not forget to follow the Britt-Arnhild´s House in the Woods group on Facebook, where I will update you and all what is going on here, and you will also find links to all my posts on my webpage brittarnhild.no

 

Two days "in the wild"

@brittarnhild

When I was a child we used to say that Norwegians were born with skis on their feet. Well, I can't tell if I was born with them, but as soon as I could walk, my parents took me out in the countryside, hiking in summer, cross country skiing in winter, so skiing has been part of my life for let's say 60 years. Not so much the last years though, and last winter I was out skiing one of the last days in December, but then no more during the year 2021.

But now we have 2022, and today I have been skiing. Yes!

The weather has been amazing for many days no, and when the ski tracks are like this.......well, even I wanted to be out there, with skis on my feet.

Terje is skiing almost every day for the moment, even when the two of us go for a hike in the woods, he makes sure to go skiing before or after. But for me this was this year's first. It was great and I feel so proud of myself.

Skis or no skis, we continue to hike together.
Yesterday, Sunday, we hiked up to an old farm in the woods some 5-6 kms from our house. The farm is open to public and have a café with the best pastries you can imagine.......no, the next best. When our son Torgeir, who lives in Sweden, came home for Christmas, he baked two batches of cinnamon pastries, and no other pastries in the world taste better than his :-)

Terje and I sat outdoors, outside the farm, with coffee and the next best pastries, and as always I had my knitting.

Rain is expected in a couple of days.
A lot of rain. They call it an atmospheric river.

But so far we continue to enjoy the blue sky, the low sin, the snow
and each other.