Finland - Sweden - Norway

After our exciting time in Finland we headed to Stockholm and stayed in the newly built 'castle' in the forest belinging to Alistair and Juliette. Todd and Lizzie were also going to compete in the World Cup sprint race in the old town of Stockholm.

We had a fun day out in the sun enjoying spectating the orienteering - unfortunatly all the Kiwis missed out in qualifying - Lizzie by only a matter of seconds. The next day we parted ways and Chris and I headed off to spend several relaxing days in Gothenberg at Aaron and Sara's house. Sadly they were not there though - they had already headed away on their summer holiday.

We enjoyed exploring the forest with some orienteering maps and swimming and kayaking in the lakes in their racing kayaks - thanks guys! Then we headed to Gjorvik back in Norway for the O Festivalen and the last round of the world cup.

We arrived at an old house in Gjorvik filled with the friendly Irish team and Lizzie and Todd. On Saturday a middle distance race concluded the World Cup - I ran an open course in the morning as part of the O Festivalen, then watched the middle afterwards. It was a super warm day to spend out in the sun. On Sunday Chris and I both ran in the relay - he ran for the Wing men's team and me for the Wing men's 50+ team, hmmm? (we were not official).

On Sunday night Henning and Susha drove us back to Oslo, their parents provided us with a delicious dinner and then we slept over at Susha and Hennings nice place near Oslo - more nice people (-: In the morning we went into Oslo central and Chris caught the train back to Trondheim while I headed off on the next part of my summer adventure - off to Austria!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Journey Through the Baltic

Image
After the Rogaine we spent another fun night at the local farm stay with the other Kiwis, then headed away in the morning with Julian, Jana and Sylvia in a large silver hire van. Most of us were pretty hobbly (with the annoying exception of Chris and Julian) so we drove back to the nice wee town of Otepa and spent the day hanging out in a pizzeria and visiting the 'Canyon' the largest in Estonia apparently... This photo is actually from before the Rogaine in Tallinn when Viv had the brilliant idea of hiring the terrifying 'Octibike', it proofed a highly entertaining and attention seeking way of zooming round Tallinn. We camped in a deserted campground and it was truly freezing, so the following morning all feeling chilled to the bone we decided to find a nice cabin for that night. We drove to the town of Tartu and wandered through its pretty cobbled streets. We took a visit to the KGB museum and saw grim pictures of Ghettos in Siberia – after which we definitely n
Read more

Lofoten Return

Image
Reine - a classic Lofoten view I visited Lofoten last July with Mum and Dad - it is an amazing place in north Norway, and we decided that it was worth the expense for Al and Amber to see it too - I was certainly excited to go back there again. So Al, Amber and I took the plane up to Bodø from Trondheim on Sunday evening. The 10 hour drive takes a mere 60 minutes by plane. We were hoping for some exciting views from the plane but unfortunately it was pretty cloudy. Chris had had to stay behind in Trondheim because this was his last week of preparation for the World Orienteering Championships (WOC) which would start in Trondheim the following week. We arrived in Bodø at 8pm and trudged down to the same campground that Mum, Dad, Chris and I had stayed at last year. We had to muck around sorting out a hire car in the morning, but eventually got one sorted and drove up toward the ferry crossing from Tyssfjorden to Lødingen. It was cloudy, but we still enjoyed the craggy scenery and raw roc
Read more

Good Godzone Prep! The Takahe Traverse

Image
An exploratory adventure in Fiordland with its remoteness, steepness and dense bush holds a definite allure for those of us who enjoy that sort of thing. Since back in 2004, when we bush bashed down the Neale Burn, swimming at times up to our necks in the meandering river to avoid the near impenetrable bush on either side, packrafting seemed like the answer to Fiordland travel to me. So, with this thought in mind (and knowing that in a few months we would be racing Godzone in this exact territory), a group of trampers (myself, Chris, Nick, Dan, Georgia, Patrick) jumped aboard a watertaxi and hooned across North West Fiord in late December with a mission in mind. Our Route Earlier in the day, after frantic packing in Queenstown, we had received our certificate of 'didymo checked' from the DOC office in Te Anau. The water taxi man eyed the certificate suspiciously. He looked at us sternly, clearly unconvinced by our humongous packs, running shoes and light hearte
Read more