Day 7 - Bugger!
Having packed our bags very carefully last night in readiness for an early start today we woke at 6am. I was raring to go. David on the other hand had been awake some time already. He had been looking at the weather for the next few days and staring at the handily placed windsock outside his window as it slowly moved from vertical to horizontal. He said the final nail in the coffin was when the snowplough turned up and it’s lights showed just how much snow was falling and being blown around.
The storm is building already. Around 20cm of snow has fallen overnight and it continues to fall heavily. Even here in a relatively sheltered part of the village the recently fallen snow is billowing off buildings and reducing visibility.
The weather is set to deteriorate further over the next 6 or 7 days with winds in excess of 70 kmph, very heavy snowfall, high risk of avalanche and…
…we go back to bed. We are clearly going nowhere today.
Later that morning, somewhat disconsolate, we discuss our options. Weather reports indicate extremely high snowfall, in excess of 20-25 cm in 24 hours, high avalanche risk, with snow turning to rain, winds increasing and all this continuing until the weekend at best. No matter how we look at it we are kind of stuck here in Ljosland.
David consults the weather for the umpteenth time while my socks slowly fester.
Whilst this looks quite nice, and it is very comfortable (and expensive) the last thing we want to be doing is sitting around making no progress.
We revisit our options regularly throughout the day. We consult with our contacts in Oslo, experts in Norwegian winter conditions, and we always come back to the same sad conclusion. We must sit it out.
I’m too grumpy to write (yes, okay I seem to be over that now), or even take photos (sorry). In fact we barely move all day.
We make a brief visit to see the lovely Tatinka (that’s her name not a Norwegian job description) in the small, ill supplied., shop to tell her we will be staying for quite a while. She is not surprised that we did not leave this morning.
We do our best to come up with an appetising evening meal from the shelves. We fail miserably…
Lovely, nutritious Sodd. Mmmmm!
Tomorrow is my birthday. I had hoped to be spending it skiing between idyllic huts under clear blue Nordic skies. Instead I get to share it with a hairy Scotsman in a tiny village, in a cabin at the end of the road. Hey Ho.
Tomorrow, to celebrate my big day we will don our skis and, regardless of the weather, head out into the storm. We will spend the morning practicing skiing in bloody awful conditions safe in the knowledge that we will be returning to a nice warm cabin and a delicious tin of Sodd.
You never know, I may even remember to take some photos.
