Taking another quick break from moving house (despite not having much furniture it's no wonder it took us almost a week to actually move!) we went for a wee jaunt up the stunning Hausdalen valley, just 20 minutes outside Bergen city. Norway is enjoying a lazy high pressure that has loitered for a week or so. The temperature on the dashboard of the car read 29.5C when we climbed out into the sunshine.
The tree lined grassy meadows at the bottom of the valley were buzzing with birds and insects. Hundreds of little black sun-bathing spiders fled in terror as the inov-8 shod Godzilla marched upwards through their 'city'. The streams that a few months ago would have been raging with snow-melt were conspicuously quiet, now just a swathe of silent rocks. Rickety bridges stitched back and forth across the rocky scar as it cut through the valley's green belly. Thankfully as we climbed the gradual gradient the trees petered out and the breeze increased. Damn, it was hot. Sweat dripped off my nose. M glowed.
The valley closes in right at the top as the path steepens up to the 'headwall'. It seemed like a precipice or another world awaited us but the path instead plonked us out at the foot of the Redingshytte crossroads where several valleys and numerous footpaths converge and a manned hyyte does a roaring trade in coffee, ice creams and waffles for those who get out of bed and get up there before 15.00 (i.e. not us). We took a quick break and drank in the views as well as water. Walking back down the valley we passed the family of sheep that had brazenly pushed us off the path on the way up. The heat began to build again and despite the valley deepening and broadening it conversely felt more claustrophobic the further descended. The thought of cool ice lollies had a dramatic effect on our ability to trot down the rocks and we were back to car in an hour and a half. The car was nicely baked after it's four hour roasting in the car park but open windows and an open throttle soon had a cool breeze blowing through our sweat drenched clothes. Ahhhhhhh...
2 comments:
I'm impressed moving house and a walk all in the same day. For us it is more likely to be moving house and then moving house and then ... and then maybe a hike. We have a lot of stuff and yes I have a lot of hiking gear. When is your trip? I am going next week as the the rain starts to fall and the bushfire risk is reduced.
Nielsen - we had a whole week or so to actually do the moving so it was pretty relaxed to be honest, right up until the last few hours anyway!
I should be away on my trip on Wednesday afternoon (necessitating an extra night, possibly in a hut) or Thursday morning. The imminent change in weather has not gone unnoticed (see next blog post).
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