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Walk to Indre Arna
Aug. 2nd, 2023 08:35 pm"Bring your outdoorsy clothes we might get lucky with the weather," Matryoshka said in one of her emails before this trip.
I therefore packed my walking boots. I considered packing my walking sticks but wasn't convinced they were worth the trouble of trying to get into the carry on luggage. Once here, we consulted the weather and decided that Tuesday was the best day for a walk. Matryoshka then picked us a 13km (allegedly) walk to the next town, past a Vikinghytten where she promised there would be waffles. I murmured a bit about the lack of walking sticks but she insisted we would take the funicular railway up to the plateau and, once up there, "it's very flat". It was only later it occurred to me that, being nearly 10 years younger than I am, she might not have realised I value my sticks more on the down than on the up.
Anyway we got up onto the plateau where the walking was pleasant and easy albeit with a bit more up than Matryoshka had anticipated.
However we continued onwards and upwards a bit following a nicely visible line of cairns. Then we took a turn off this path and things became a bit more complicated. It's a long time since I've been on a walk without the combination of solid GPS and an ordnance survey map. I had managed to persuade Matryoshka to load the route to Indre Arna, on her phone and we relied on this quite heavily in what followed as the path repeatedly disappeared leaving us to strike out in roughly the right direction across the bog until we picked it up again.
Then we hit the down which was both muddy and steep and variably pathless, sufficiently so that when we came out on the road and then missed the turning back onto the path we decided to stick with the road which only took us a little out of our way. Shortcuts make long delays, we reassured ourselves, and we were certainly travelling about twice as fast on the road as we had been on the path.
This is the Strava analysis of the walk showing elevation against our pace. The point where we hit the road is fairly obvious.
We ended the walk in a very empty but very clean train station with a very space age toilet but no bar. We waited 30 minutes for a train and 10 minutes later we were back in Bergen, where we went our separate ways, showered and then met up again for burgers and beer. We were both clearly a bit dehydrated when we compared notes this morning, but neither was too stiff though Matryoshka had sore ankles and I have slight numbness in one big toe.
Allegedly this was a research meeting and, to be fair, we did plan out a textbook though we got side-tracked today into writing a paper so the textbook plan hasn't even made it as far as an outline document.
I therefore packed my walking boots. I considered packing my walking sticks but wasn't convinced they were worth the trouble of trying to get into the carry on luggage. Once here, we consulted the weather and decided that Tuesday was the best day for a walk. Matryoshka then picked us a 13km (allegedly) walk to the next town, past a Vikinghytten where she promised there would be waffles. I murmured a bit about the lack of walking sticks but she insisted we would take the funicular railway up to the plateau and, once up there, "it's very flat". It was only later it occurred to me that, being nearly 10 years younger than I am, she might not have realised I value my sticks more on the down than on the up.
Anyway we got up onto the plateau where the walking was pleasant and easy albeit with a bit more up than Matryoshka had anticipated.
However we continued onwards and upwards a bit following a nicely visible line of cairns. Then we took a turn off this path and things became a bit more complicated. It's a long time since I've been on a walk without the combination of solid GPS and an ordnance survey map. I had managed to persuade Matryoshka to load the route to Indre Arna, on her phone and we relied on this quite heavily in what followed as the path repeatedly disappeared leaving us to strike out in roughly the right direction across the bog until we picked it up again.
Then we hit the down which was both muddy and steep and variably pathless, sufficiently so that when we came out on the road and then missed the turning back onto the path we decided to stick with the road which only took us a little out of our way. Shortcuts make long delays, we reassured ourselves, and we were certainly travelling about twice as fast on the road as we had been on the path.
This is the Strava analysis of the walk showing elevation against our pace. The point where we hit the road is fairly obvious.
We ended the walk in a very empty but very clean train station with a very space age toilet but no bar. We waited 30 minutes for a train and 10 minutes later we were back in Bergen, where we went our separate ways, showered and then met up again for burgers and beer. We were both clearly a bit dehydrated when we compared notes this morning, but neither was too stiff though Matryoshka had sore ankles and I have slight numbness in one big toe.
Allegedly this was a research meeting and, to be fair, we did plan out a textbook though we got side-tracked today into writing a paper so the textbook plan hasn't even made it as far as an outline document.