Silly Billies Return to Roam

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 ...

Chris and Em go to Jukola Jukola has to be the biggest orienteering competition in the world. This year over 14,500 people took part in the competition - 1,500 men's teams in the Jukola relay and 1000 women's teams in the Venla relay. Chris and I decided it was an experience not to be missed, so we flocked to Kytäjä, Finland, with all the other thousands on the weekend of June 19/20. Chris was running for our local Trondheim Club WING OK, while I had managed to find myself a spot to run for the Trondheim university club NTNUI. The women's Venla relay takes place during the day on Saturday, then when the sun goes down and it begins to get the dark its time for the mens relay. We arrived at the arena at about midday and spent some time wandering through the massive encampment of green military tents with oreinteering club flags flapping colourfully in the wind - it could be the Quiddich World Cup! But no, it is a crazy orienteering competition instead. We wander past huge st...

The coolest little hut - Storlisetra! The Norwegian's have loads of holidays in May, so it is a very nice time for getting away! Last weekend we spent most of our time around Levanger for the Norwegian Craft Cup and Sprint Orienteering Nationals, after I did a rather long 140 km road ride to get there. You see a lot of these on May 17 - so I felt I had to include one in my post (-: Monday 17 May is the Norwegian National Day, so we came back to Trondheim to join the parade (Chris was the proud flag bearer at the head of my school's parade!). I did another big road ride that afternoon with Helen and Ally - across the Trondheim fjord on the free car ferry, cycled a 50km loop round the island, then hopped back on the ferry to get home. The trees have turned green and the buds have come out, but unfortunately the cold drizzly spring weather has continued. Despite a rather unappealing forecast Chris and I decided on a trip away to the mountains for the 'Pinse' (3 day weeke...

Skis on top of Vassfjellet On Sunday morning we slept in a little late (most unusual for us) so when we got up it was kind of brunch time. We have just acquired (thanks to the wonderful Laila) a waffle maker - consequently we sat down to a large steaming pile of freshly baked waffles. We are feeling most Norwegian with our waffles, rømme and jam. After our waffles and feeling like we had done too much orienteering of late, we embarked upon a most strange and excellent journey. We managed after some effort to secure our skis in a reasonably comfortable fashion to our backpacks, we loaded our boots inside and our poles too and we set off on our bikes towards Vassfjellet, Trondheim's most well known local ski field. Skis on wheels We got some strange looks as we cycled in the sun through the town (some people think the ski season is well and truly over and don't even believe that there is still snow in the hills). After just over an hour riding we reached the bottom of the ski f...

Landing in Trondheim Ten years after we said 'Goodbye' to each other in New Zealand my German exchange partner and I finally reunited in Trondheim - of all places! Julia is busy studying and working as a doctor in Germany, and since we did the exchange we have always kept in touch and promised that we would see each other again. It was Julia who finally put her foot down, found the time off work, booked the plane tickets and organised her visit. Of course, it was then that Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland erupted and it seemed as if nature was going to prevent us from seeing each other again..... Luckily Julia was able to take a flight the day later, and we met her down at the train station just after running Sprint Cup number 3 up in Dragvoll. It was great to see her, and amazing how little we had both changed really. We spent lots of time talking about New Zealand and all my friends and family she met there, and Germany and the people and places I saw when I visited her. Julia too...

Easter holidays arrived along with one Cris Lovely all the way from Germany where he has been hanging out on a ski field speaking German and hiring out ski boots for the last 3 months. The first couple of days we spent in Trondheim having fun at the climbing gym and going out for dinner, as well as inflicting some cross country skiing on Cris. Cris out for a taste of Norwegian langlauf We had a couple of very fine warm days, so the snow was slushy but still ok for skiing. Over the first weekend of the holidays we caught a bus to the Tydal area (about 2 hours from Trondheim) and skiied into the Græssli hytte, this being our third visit into that cozy little hut. The weather wasn't great so we just mucked around on Sunday and did some 'ski runs' up and down the hill making use of our skins and nice new randonee equipment. Blue berry pies were eaten at the Bare Blåbaer cafe, mmmmm Chris had to work until Wednesday, then we packed up our gears and piled it all into a renta...