A morning walk in Eggum to reach a nice old hydro plan where I ate another apple and nuts.

Before I finished packing for Norway (i.e the night we left) I had a list of journal entry titles which I thought I would hit along the way. A lot of them were puns. One title was this one.

In January, days after purchasing flights for an outdoor adventuring trip on the other side of the globe, my left ankle pain flared up so badly I could barely walk. I had been having occasional bouts of ankle pain for some reason, but despite making it painful to walk and squat they'd never persisted more than a day. Now, as the days passed and the pain didn't, I was faced with another chronic inflammation issue to go with the back pain, the wrist pain, the shoulder issues, the hamstring origin tendinopathy, and the ITB impingement all of which have marred my adult life.

The flights were not refundable, so back then I knew I was going to write this entry with one of two subjects. 1) How my stupid body ruined a great holiday. Or, 2) How I told my body to go fuck itself to overcome the pain and walk around the fjords and mountains and cities and archipelagos of one of the most scenic countries that glaciers have ever given us.

So, as with every other injury, I started rehab, and physiotherapy, and lifestyle changes. And every day, often multiple times a day, I did the stretching and the strengthening and the mobility exercises. And I pushed my joint and backed off and pushed and backed off again. I paid for MRIs and strain-counterstrain physiotherapy and I took drugs and I lay down when the pain was too much and I got back up again after I was ready.

By the time I landed in Oslo, my mobility in the joint was good, the pain was manageable, I knew which shoes to wear. We walked 30,000 steps on the first day. It didn't feel perfect, but my ankle didn't stop me. We drove to Aurland and we walked around Flåm and then in Kinsarvik we hiked up a rocky, slippery path that followed a waterfall. Every stroll or hike I was waiting for the pain to return, for the flare up. There were occasional twinges, but the swelling and instability of that day back in January never came back to me. I traversed over rocky terrain, up Sherpa steps and along trails carpeted with criss-crossing tree roots and soft with mud. I climbed mountains, and descended them.

Back in Adelaide, the weekend before we flew out, I was still having issues. We did Lofty and I remember spending the first stretch of that walk dictating in my head the discomfort I was experiencing and how I would soon describe it to my physio. And I remember thinking that I might spend the whole time in Norway doing the same thing, so I decided not to any more and just breathe. It still hurt, but it helped.

In our final week in Norway we spent five nights in Lofoten which included walks on sandy beaches, rocky hills and sodden tracks. It was a majestic place with amazing sights and walks. My ankle was behaving very well.

The weather forecast for our last night was for clear skies and sunshine from the afternoon into the next morning. There was a final walk - Reinebringen - that I knew I couldn't leave without attempting. A mountain which loomed over the town of Reine and the little islands and peninsulas which made up this extraordinary village of Norwegian architecture and stunning nature. The midnight sun. Over 2000 rough, uneven steps that rose up 450 metres in less than 1.2km of walking. I wanted to do this walk and prove that I was capable of overcoming yet another injury. Or I was going to die trying.

I drove to Reine under nice sunshine and arrived around 10pm. The village was picturesque and the light was perfect.

Vareid

Stop at Skreda

Vikten beach

Reine

More Reine.

I found the start of the walk and immediately started climbing. Almost immediately my ankle started to send signals of displeasure. Nothing different to other walks, but a bit more persistent. I carried on. When you're trying to get up 2,000 steps as quickly as possible it doesn't leave much energy to think with. I activated my glutes. I pushed through my foot. I tried to keep my hips working evenly. Ironically, it was actually my right ankle that was giving me the most pain. Something about the combination of my hiking boots and the pedals in a BZ4X seem to have given me an RSI that I'm hoping goes away once I'm back in a right hand drive car and country.

The moment on the ascent that I started getting concerned about the fog.

A few layers of clothing later, I reached the end of the stairs and the start of a muddy track that continued up to the summit. I wasn't actually sure I had reached the top because at the same time a thick fog had enveloped the mountain. I had reached my fucking goal and the reward of the view was hidden from me. It was 11:30pm.

A small crowd was with me at the top of the mountain, and no one seemed keen to immediately return down the stairs if there was a chance the fog would lift. So I waited in the crook of a rock to see what would happen. Occasionally the fog would lighten, then darken again. You could see the tendrils of it skimming the surface of the peak. I started a round of Balatro on my phone, which was good because not only is that game good for pissing away time with a fire-hose, but it can be played with heated gloves on.

After a while I heard excited gasps from nearby strangers. Looking down, far below, the line of the road could be made out through the fog. It was shit, but it brought hope. We all persisted. And then, the fog began to lift. Not like a curtain, but like a dance. A swirl here, a window there. The horizon of jagged peaks visible, but not the town. Slices of ocean and buildings, then the veil would lift up again. It teased us all over and over giving glimpses of everything but never the entirety. What we could see was beautiful. The still water, the tiny buildings, the mountains. The colours, so amazing. I took a lot of photos. My fingers were so cold I thought my camera had broken because I couldn't press the shutter down fast enough.

I did not actually get a clear photo from the top, but the experience was ethereal.

Eventually I had to descend. My ankle had survived the up, but there was still 2000 steps down to go and that was after an hour of cooling down to the extreme definition of literally. In fact my whole body was shaking and it took a lot of steps until I warmed up again.

I made it to the bottom. I'd made it through. It was about half past midnight. The sun was up, somewhere behind the mountains over Reine. The colours were vivid. The air was cool and crisp. My heartrate was pretty high. I'd had an anticlimax and I'd powered through. If I had to describe how I felt in one word, I couldn't. I felt like "Take that, you stupid fucking body. Whatever you give me I will fight. I won't win everytime. I still can't sit on most couches. But I will not give up. Not when there is experiences in the world like light spectrums from nearby stars to glow on intricate geography and calm waters. Fuck you, me. Fuck you and your stupid fucking body. I am a brain. I am bradism. One day you will finally get me, but you will not get me easily."

Reine on the way back to the car.

I drove back to Eggum from Reine between 1 and 2:45 AM. At sea level, there was no fog. The colours on the mountains and in the sky were unreal. I never want to forget that drive home. Windows down, tunes, every twist and turn bringing new sights. The hues in the valley. The silhouettes across the waters. The texture of a mountain that loomed up and up over the road. The mist lifting off the lakes and mulch piles as the temperature dropped to 5°. Occasionally, being blinded by the sun. I did not feel tired. I felt victorious. I had told my body to go fuck itself.

Kåkernbrua

View of Ramberg just after Flakstadbruene.

On the Eggumsveien towards Eggum.

Eggum Beach, 3:15 AM.

Edit: The next day my ankle was pretty sore.

Lofoten is an incredibly photogenic place that has exposed how average I am at photography.

While I like some of the photos I've taken so far, I feel like I have failed to capture some of the dramatic scenery. Especially when driving around, where every mountain looms and the water shimmers when the sun is out. The photos look flat. And sometimes the photos are taken just by stopping on the road and sticking the camera out the window. So they're the same angle. (This typically happens on the back roads, which are one way to find the secret places, but like the first of many layers of secret tracks). For example, one of my favourite photos here was only taken because I saw some locals taking photos a few metres off the road right before a tunnel. When we returned that way and got out of the car and went through a gate it revealed this amazing view.

A lot of the hiking is also challenging, even without the rain that rolls in, and the problems finding a place to park.

The one trick I have learned to far is to get in the car and drive when it's raining, in order to get to walk in the sunshine. The rain does come in waves, so unless the walk is right next to your shelter, getting to the start point with the wipers on has had good results.

The colours here are fantastic. And the sun is always somewhere, behind you, in front of you, to the side. You can never run out of light.

Mo I Rana is just south of the Arctic circle. It's still pretty chilly there, even at the end of May. I tried to jinx it into not raining by wearing my raincoat, which worked until I mentioned to Vanessa about the jinxing which then jinxed me and it started raining. We visited Havmannen who was not wearing a rain jacket and had a gull shitting on his head.

The Highlight of our Visit

The sun also technically set at 11:57pm. There were limited forms of twilight between then and about 3am when the sun came through the curtains and into my eyeballs again.

After breakfast we drove on North. During a break in the rain I ate an apple and nuts at a rest stop. Not the most atmospheric apple I've eaten on this trip, but in Norway even a dumpster at a highway rest stop can look scenic.

Shortly after that the battery indicator on the dashboard was draining fast and I realised we were ascending (himmelfarting) again. Sure enough, the landscape changed to snow and I was forced to pull over to go for a jolly down to a river cutting through snowfield. I caught sight of the back half of a freight train as it cruised down the hill back the way we'd come; familiar Norwegian supermarket brands with their brightly coloured shipping containers contrasting the black and white into which they disappeared.

It was as we kept driving through the snowscape where we appropriately entered the Arctic Circle.

After that, ironically it got sunnier (after a lot more rain). I ate a beef kebab in a place called Røkland. When the rain stopped we took another jolly along a rocky beach.

Some thing on the beach.

In the afternoon we reached the metropolis of Bodø where we filled in some time at the mall until our ferry to Lofoten.

Bodø (From the ferry)

We boarded the ferry around 18:15 and sailed for about four hours in relative comfort until we reached Moskenes at 22:00. The sun was still out although a blanket of clouds was hovering over the chain of islands that we were approaching, in the otherwise clear and slightly purple yet still bright sky. Plenty of other people were outdoors on the ship with me as we closed in on the silhouettes of jagged rocks emerging from the ocean. There was a shared sense of trepidation that we were close to reaching one of the most beautiful and remote places on Earth. A 24 hour flight, followed by 2 weeks of driving, and then an elusive reservation on the long ferry crossing. The ship blasted its horn and it was time to return to the cars in the hull and make land.

The initial stretch of driving from Moskenes to Ramberg, particularly around Reine, was top tier life shit for sure. On the south side of the islands, the northern sun was obscured by the mountains other than where the gaps were between peaks, at which points the light flowed through the cloud cover and cast an absolutely beautiful hue over the rocks, ocean, the houses nestled up the cliffs, the roads and bridges braving their way into nature. I would have stopped to take a thousand photos, but I'd promised Vanessa I'd have her in bed by midnight and as it was her birthday I did not renege on this. So I was forced to live in the moment, to take in every beach, snow capped mountain, vista, shimmer. Sometimes the sun was behind me and the whole scene was an atmospheric haze. Other times I drove directly into it and I had to fish out my sunglasses despite the clock ticking closer to midnight.

We arrived in Eggum just before midnight. Eggum faces east-north-east, under the watch of a large mountain, so there was no direct sunshine when I turned in around 12:45am. Out the window, over the sea, the clouds glowed softly like a sunset had just passed. Beyond the water, another mountain. The name of the WiFi in the Airbnb was "midnightsun" and as I fell asleep I pondered if they change it in September to "northernlights".

I have never been to Disneyland, I don't think I'd like it if I did. But for some reason Disneyland is the word that occurs to me when I visit certain places with certain lighting. Venice. Olympic National Park. Lofoten.

I have no photos from that drive. Only memories. And it was unforgettable.

I can now add Mosjøen and Mo I Rana to the places in Norway where I have been rained on. Despite that, there were plenty of dry moments on the road trip north today.

We started in Brønnøysund and during a good breakfast I realised today was actually a public holiday in Norway for some reason. That reason is Kristi Himmelfartsdag, which translates to "the supermarkets are closed or in some cases open in smaller configurations".

The Brønnøysund Bridge

This is one of the different things Norway does, along with not believing in bath mats and adding bacon to condensed milk. (I tried some Bacon Ost on bread this morning and I was left with only more questions.)

The drive was shorter today so I cruised a lot more and we stopped at various rest stops which often had little walks attached.

A lake with little islands by the road.

A large, long lake ringed by mountains, just after a tunnel. With a nice toilet.

Another way up in the last of the snow with a board walk to a small lake.

Another was next to a fast flowing, glacial river and a track rest area. And a toilet. No pictures.

Where we stopped for lunch - Mosjøen - was along a river facing a wide mountain range where instead of waterfalls running down the face it was still snow packs filling the vertical gaps in the rocks at higher altitudes. Lucky it took me twenty minutes to find a working car charger because after I did it stopped raining long enough to reach the river and assemble some tuna sandwiches with stolen breakfast rolls. It rained on us on the way back to the car.

We reached Mo I Rana, and without many options for dinner, I tried the double chicken burger with chips at Circle K. That was still nearly $30 but it fed both of us so not a bad result. Circle K also has chicken salt in 1 kilogram shakers.

After dinner I tried another walk to the town's only open supermarket, which I did not realise was downhill. It rained on me several more times, but I did see a few neat things on the way back up the hill.

Yes - it's a FJORD

Yesterday's drive slash controlled descent through the winter wonderland of snow haunted me as a missed opportunity for more pulling over the car to take photos of Norway. So, after some very cold hikes in the morning up the top of the Ørnevegen's switchbacks, we used the afternoon to backtrack up the mountain. This time with a bit more electricity in the battery. Which was good. I'm developing an appreciation for the heated steering wheel feature after I initially dismissed it back in Oslo as unnecessary.

One of the most important lessons I've learnt as Photography-Brad is that the absolute best time to take photos of a place is the first time you see it. Novelty fades really quickly in a new locations as your mind adjusts to the terrain and architecture and light and it's not until you get back to Adelaide and look at photos you took that you realise how different things really were and how you could have just pointed your camera anywhere and taken additional memorable photos. Another important lesson I've learnt is that just because an environment is novel doesn't mean it will translate well to a flat, digital photograph.

So we drove up the snow and fortunately the weather was similar to our previous drive, with plenty of atmospheric mist, but also just enough sunlight to diffuse the clouds and spread light in the different places. It was a tranquil place. Beautiful. The photos don't do it justice.

After the drive yesterday, it was nice just to take our time up in the snow - and then back into the cold car with the steering wheel warming my fingers through the gloves.

The Stryn river.

The drive from the Stryn Kiwi Mini Pris to the cabins at the Geirangerfjorden Feriesenter is only 77 kilometres. Far shorter than other drives I've done so far on this trip. But not many have been this memorable.

We finished loading up with food; Salad, bread, sausages, tuna, yoghurt, corn chips and salsa. We left town, passing the cafe we'd had our first real coffee at, and following the meandering Stryneelva river which is not much of a sight from the ground, but in the air the curves look pretty cool. (I saw a picture of it in the window of a house on Bruagrenda (Bridge Alley) on the walk to go get that coffee.) I tried to take a similar photo myself earlier in the morning, but couldn't find a track up the hill. I did take this one from as high as I got.

We kept driving through the valley towards some not so distant mountains. A little bridge moves the Rv15 from the north to the south of the river, right as the waters open up into the long and wide Oppstrynsvatnet, whose dark surface reflect dark skies and ripples in the wind. Clouds hang just above the tops of the snowy mountains.

There are lots of good rest areas on the side of the road to stop at and admire this, but all the ones with benches were taken. We stopped briefly at a glacier museum with a small garden out the back, but they wanted to charge us to eat there and we didn't want to look at the garden when the mountains were so spectacular and visible from everywhere on the road, so we kept driving.

The distant mountains became so close that we were suddenly driving on switchbacks and the urge to pull over for more photos hit me. Around the next bend was a rocky outlook over a dark valley with just a few streaks of light piercing the clouds. And of course it had a picnic table, which was empty and waiting for us.

Hjelledalen utsiktspunkt

After food, the road continued to climb with another switchback, followed by a long tunnel. It was obvious we were on an incline, but I did not expect to emerge into rocky snow land, submerged in the clouds, with smattering of houses because of course people live there.

It was at this point I started having concerns about the amount of charge in the car's battery. I had not topped up in Stryn because I was paying for a charger that night and the rate was the same no matter how drained the battery was. When I had started driving we'd had range of over 200km, so this wasn't totally motivated by thriftiness. But I hadn't expected the steepness.

We entered a second tunnel, with more incline, and came out even higher - right among the snowy peaks. It was a winter wonderland. Absolutely pure white and amazingly beautiful and unfortunately not a very good place to run out of car battery. It was hard to enjoy the scenery because the battery kept dropping lower and lower and the friendly message to "plug into a charger soon" distracted me from the frozen lakes and icy mountains.

Somehow, despite feeling like we were on the peak of the alps, the road kept rising and the battery kept dropping. We turned off all the systems and just drove and hoped.

Finally, at last, there was a sign warning of a decent length decline and the little blue charge line on the dash switched to the good side. As we descended, the battery went up, and up again, and finally after a long way down without stopping for any photos I felt comfortable enough to stop for a look-see. There was a little, flat spot with some huts beneath a mountain. What made this sight so particularly surreal other than its picturesque beauty was that it was evident that we were still quite high up a mountain.

There was also a bus stop there.

After that, the decent resumed along with the recharging and we left behind mountain fantasy land and hit more switchbacks and the descent into Geiranger. A cruise ship was in port at the time, and the winding roads were packed with tourists in big groups which gave me an excuse to drive quite slowly and enjoy the way the town had been built up the mountainside.

We finally reached the cabins, by that point with over 10% of the battery now available again. We checked in to another place to sleep with an amazing view of nature. After some downtime, and staring at the fjord, I cooked some sausages and we had enough energy in both our bodies and the car to do the waterfall hike.

View from the shores by the cabin. Hard to convey in a static image how enormous the landscape is.

Goats on the way to the waterfall. Later saw a dog that reminded me of Nash devouring goat poops.

Finally, after that, the cabin staff helped me get the charger working and I put myself to bed for the same purpose - to have enough energy for another day of getting up and down this spectacular landscape.

The most enduring impression I have of the Briksdal glacier is that of total immersion, like I was inside a snow globe of natural beauty, right in the centre. In this analogy, the dome was inverted and instead of snow it was sun that spilled around the tops of the mountains and highlighted the rocks and fronds and the splash of water.

There was of course still snow, up on the top of the rock as the glacier hung onto the grey rock that we had been walking towards since our meal of sausages, corn, vegetable sticks and hummus at the carpark.

From there we travelled a gravel path that followed a river of the clearest, bluest water. It wound past waterfalls, mossy stone, pottholes, and other geological nooks. We saw the signs - figuratively and literally - of the glacier's historical spread. The retreated ice was now high up the mountains, and trickling via another waterfall into a lake where the trail ended. The late spring sunlight made it all glow.

It was another beautiful place to see and take in after a simple dinner and a fjord-side drive.

The morning was a chilly one. Vanessa walked to Skei (Icelandic man taught me to pronounce it - shkeh. I picked her up from the Circle K. We returned to the lake for breakfast and another visit to the church.

Then we drove back to Skei to buy picnic supplies and drove under the blue sky following the Stardalselva waters that led us through the green valley towards a little lake with a nice view of the mountain Eggenipa. Technically it was too early for lunch, but we still ate after I finished my coffee

Then we drove on over some more mountains with a brief stop to climb up some rocks to look over the valley. Before we descended we reached the Skjørbakkane Utsiktspunkt. Another impressive vantage point at which to eat food, probe for any kind of short trail to stretch the legs, take some photos, and then drive onwards.

The rest of the way to Stryn was also nice. We drove through Olden and Loen and stopped briefly to check out the jacket sales. One advantage of visiting Scandinavia at the end of spring is the large discounts on the heavy duty winter-wear. Good timing for me who will have to return to Adelaide for actual winter in only a couple more weeks. The arctic circle may also be chilly...

We found Stryn, did a food shop at the local Coop which included two half litre craft beers named after Loen and Olden, and another ice-cream log cake. Then we checked into the Air BNB which was a beautiful, old apartment with two bedrooms, a full kitchen, and a balcony overlooking the fjord. Yes we did have to carry a suitcase up a few flights of stairs, but it was worth it.

We drove back, passed some cows chilling in splendour, then did some damage to the ice-cream log cake.

After a morning stroll in Bergen, and another big breakfast, we returned to the roads of Norway and the scenic fjords.

It was a long day of driving, not helped by the fact that my Google maps compass seemed to be using the wrong pole. It did get me to a Circle K north of Bergen pretty well. On the roundabout at the exit to the motorway an Ikea van had hit an electric car - it felt kind of Scandinavian. I also may have paid to use the same toll road four times in my attempt to reach a certain Flatøy trailhead, and eventually gave up and drove to Ytre Oppedal for the first ferry of the morning and a bit of a break to eat an apple and nuts (and some surprise granola pieces).

From Lavik we drove East towards Balestrand. Driving on the right hand side of the road meant a long stretch of crystal clear water reflecting the still cloudless, blue sky. We stopped for lunch at a random rest stop that appeared on the map, which turned out to be a beautiful beach with clean public toilets and a nice rock on which to enjoy some additional hotel breakfast sandwiches and fit in another little stroll.

The next ferry took us to Hella, across a waterfall bridge, and the picturesque scenery then continued all the way to Sogndalsfjøra which is where I intended to recharge the car.

Despite having another Circle K, this was not a good place to charge. Again, I felt personally slighted by Google Maps as I tried to locate the entrance to the chargers in the car park. It was also by far the least nature-y town on the road that day, by which I mean there were a decent amount of buildings in the lee of the mountains and the fjord. The walk along the water towards coffee was also so shadow-less that we only found two square metres of shade in which to eat a bolle before getting back on the road.

At this point it truly felt like Norway was one of the sunniest places on Earth, and I was ready for the driving to end. We continued on, exiting a tunnel to reach the view of Fjaerlands Fjord which - in the higher altitude's cooler air - was spectacular and revived the spirits somewhat.

Leaving that panorama behind us, we drove further and were compelled to park again at another valley where a large rock slide in the past year or so had created another dynamic landscape of rock, snow, greenery, sky and sun.

Then, inevitably, more tunnelen, before the lakeside road towards Skei led further onward to our accommodation in Jølster. And then back again as we realised the footpath next to the road was actually the road we needed to reach the guest house.

Another amazing choice of accommodation, was this. A view out the window of the massive lake, the hillsides, the glacier in the distance. We were the only ones staying. We drove back to Skei to buy dinner from the Coop Extra and had another serve of Norwegian Taco Chicken. While cooking, I spoke briefly to the tradesman who was living there to maintain and improve the property. I asked him if he ever got sick of the scenery. He said no. He also told me how to pronounced Skei. He asked where we'd come from that morning, and after some thinking, I told him, "Bergen". It seemed so long ago at that point. I told him a bit more about our trip and plans and he commented that it sounded very arranged.

After dinner of course it was still not dark so we walked along the lake a little way to a church and Vanessa again put her feet in the waters.

In the evening, I unpacked the tripod for some sunset photos - a rare moment without glare - then climbed into bed.