doings

October-November 2010

2 October. A lot of tradition around in this, Matt's first weekend back home with us.

Although we've only been here for a year and three months, it's become tradition that at the beginning of October we begin to complain about the dark mornings. It's still black when we get up at 5.45am. At our most optimistic moments we can say that it's only three months until the shortest day - but if feeling a little pessimistic we can say that for the next half a year it will be at least as dark as now.

It's also tradition that the first weekend in October is "Marken" - the region's agricultural show, which is held in Vikes�. It's a big event, with displays of animals, animal foods, farm supplies and machinery, tractors, 4-wheel drives and what not, but also local crafts, political parties competing to give away coffee and cakes to passers by and an assortment of activities. Tradition says that it pours down that weekend. Tradition has obliged. Tradition dictates that the children desperately want to go and the adults express some reluctance to squelch around fields for a couple of hours in bucketing rain. The children obliged. Tracy and Tim were rescued at the gate this year by a neighbour who was being towed inside by her two and who took Katie along as well. So no photos, I'm afraid.

3 October. "No, it can't be!" was the reaction of the fire-station chief in Volda (near where Beth lives) when he was rung up over the weekend with the message that his fire station was burning down (picture, right).

4 October. Free travel to �rsdalen. Just over a week ago (27 September) we wrote: "Our next visitor is due in a week, so (on past experience) the rain will probably return about then." As promised, about five yards of rain has fallen overnight and this morning the mountains are just one big waterfall. The farmers in the valley have said that if there's another drought next summer they'll club together and pay the tickets for anyone who wants to come and visit us - as this is the one way of ensuring rain. But they also want warning of any visitors planned around harvest time, as they'll need to get the hay in before they arrive.

6 October. Wet, wet, wet. Today's forecast was for six inches of rain, and they've duly arrived (Picnic anyone? Photo, left - click for picture sequence). Forecast is good for tomorrow, though - we'll see.

This evening the undersea road tunnel north from Stavanger is under water (photo, above right) (a problem for Matthew who is supposed to be going that way tomorrow) and the main Oslo-Stavanger railway line is closed at Moi i Lund (the next stop south of Egersund) because the ground has been washed away leaving the track hanging unsupported. The main road into Egersund is under water (photo, below right) and quite a few houses have been evacuated because there's a danger of a dam bursting. The town is effectively cut off. The electricity company were worried that the town of Egersund could lose its electricity supply. But we're all fine here and on our high ground well out of the reach of any possible flood waters!

7 October. Late last night the clouds rolled away and the stars came out, and this morning it's a fine dry Autumn day again. Egersund didn't loose its power supply but the road into the town is still under water and closed. The news has been going rounding up elderly people who all say that they've not seen so much water since the great flood of (1973/1829/Genesis, depending on their age).

7 October. It's only here in the west it's been so wet. In eastern Norway it's been a normal Autumn week. "Let me in" said the bear, knocking on the front door of the sheep barn. When the sheep quite properly refused it tried to make its own back door (photo, right). The story should of course have ended with the bear climbing down the chimney and falling into a pot of water the sheep had put on to boil, but if so, then this was not reported. What was reported, however, is that the town hall in Aremark is closed for a few days because everyone's gone off Moose hunting. A reporter managed to get hold of the mayor, who'd come back for the day. The mayor was just trying to talk to the policeman, but "he's out in some forest area without mobile coverage. But we know where he is and we can always find him in the forest if we need him. And after all, it's not every day we need the policeman", said the mayor.

7 October. Fine autumnal day (photo, left - click for enlargement), but the rivers are still very high after yesterday (click photo, right, for a short sequence). That picnic table photographed yesterday has vanished altogether.

8 October. I normally only put a very few selected pictures into the "news", but today, driving home from Sandnes, the Autumn colours were so wonderful that I couldn't resist being self-indulgent and putting a series of 15 snaps here, all taken during the last 10 miles before reaching home.

9 October. Thomas Andrew was just leaving this morning for his class trip to Poland, but his departure was delayed a few minutes by a visitor in the garden (photo, right - click for larger picture).

10 October. Heavy frost this morning, but it's still hot and sunny during the day. Harvest festival service in church this morning (photo, right - click for enlargement). Arriving home we found the deer family in the garden (photo, left - click for enlargement)

12 October. The last of this year's visitors has just left. We've thoroughly enjoyed our visitors and will now thoroughly enjoy some quiet family evenings. The sun is just setting spectacularly after yet another glorious day.

Matt has enjoyed the first week at his new job, and Thomas Andrew seems to be having a good time in Poland.

Now that we've been running the webcam for a full year we've slightly improved the "webcam round the year" feature so that it shows the changing seasons.

Tim's busy with a Bach recording project - there are a few tasters here.

14 October. It's clouded over a little, and without the sunshine it feels colder. There was a queue of birds on the balcony yesterday, pointing at the calendar and asking when we were putting the bird table back up. So now it's back in place for the winter and the first customer arrived within minutes (photo, left - click for enlargement).

15 October. Just 12 days later than last year, we have snow again on the mountains, visible from the house (photo, right - click for enlargement. Only a few flecks, but more will come!

17 October. Harvest Festival in �rsdalen - with a difference. Rather than sitting in church singing hymns, we decided that this year's harvest festival should take the form of the entire congregation (i.e. in this instance nearly everybody in the valley) going from farm to farm to give thanks for everything that is produced there. It was a great success, despite (or perhaps partly because of) probable and improbable problems - animals reluctant to participate, a congregation having to scatter to let the slaughter van through ... It's set fair to become an annual tradition. (Click photo, left, for sequence of 8 pictures).

18 October. The moped band strikes again. Back on 2 July we wrote that the police in the neighbouring district (evidently more criminally inclined than our own) failed to stop a motorist, who made a high-speed getaway on his moped. Yesterday, in the same place, a young man on a moped took two trays of eggs from a roadside stall, ignoring the "honesty box" payment system. The thief was however traced by following the trail of broken eggs along the road. The high-speed getaway just isn't the thing with eggs on the back.

20 October. The follow-up to our first snow five days ago. Woke up this morning to see snow well down the mountainsides (photo, right - click for enlargement) - enough for there to be snow on the road for the first time when leaving the valley.

Click image, left, to see film of the entire district, starting at nearest town Egersund, coming into Bjerkreim and Vikes� (timing 1.16), flying over our lake (1.29 - upper half of small picture, left) and into �rsdalen (1.41 - lower half of picture).

21 October. Breakfast (picture, right, click for enlargement). See today's webcam.

21 October. Not often Vikes� gets a mention in the national news, but today it even got a photo (left, click for enlargement). The main E39 road past Vikes� has been closed due to heavy snow. Normally this amount of snow wouldn't be any sort of problem, but it's arrived before the legal date for changing over to winter tyres, which means that all motorists are still driving on ordinary (summer) tyres. Or rather, not driving. Tracy and Matt are both stuck on the wrong side of the closure, and are currently eating pizza in a cafe whilst waiting for a garage to fit four new winter tyres so that they can get home this evening.

But some had fun in the snow (click picture, right, for sequence of 6 pictures).

Later ... Tracy and Matt safely home, with new tyres.

23 October. Friday night was the annual party for "4H" - an organisation that offers interesting activities for youth and which Katie started this last year. The weather meant that we couldn't stay all evening, but long enough to add Katie's contribution to the display of activities and to get it judged. Round midnight Andrew and friend Kjell Arne were out in our garden (we had no idea!) and saw a Lynx trotting up the drive. Saturday morning the local music school was doing a concert at the old people's home in Vikes�, at which Katie played a piano piece. After a trip to Egersund we've been out in the forest, enjoying the crisp snow and sunshine and cutting down more trees in preparation for what is predicted to be another cold winter. And Matt has had his first solo drive in the snow, over the mountain to Vikes�. The garden is presently full of visitors (photo, left). A busy and fun day.

Apropos visiting wildlife, I forgot to mention at the time that Tracy came home one day and complained that there was a hair on the drive. Offered to go and vacuum it up, but it turned out she meant a long-eared creature. It hopped off and we hope it didn't get into a stew.

Thinking about it, it's been quite a month so far. Floods, fantastic autumn sunshine and snowstorms, along with a huge variety of visitors (see composite picture of visitors, right: click for enlargement).

31 October. A leisurely afternoon on the beach. Click photo, right, for sequence of 6 pictures (article and photos © Andrew).

What's this about? Click photo, left, to see.

Tracy's been plotting this for a while, and today went with a trailer to Sandnes to collect her loom, which is now in our cellar. Now for some serious threading!

7 November. Matthew's belongings have been safely transported here from England, to his great relief.

This weekend, Andrew and Kjell Arne have been up in the mountains at the top end of our valley, looking for lost sheep (very biblical). It always happens that when they go up the mountain and stay overnight in the cabin there, it snows. This time was no exception. They are now discussing whether going up during the summer would be tempting fate too much. But whilst up there they saw wolf tracks in the snow.

Would you like to see our staff? (knock on door, right).

8 November. It happens all the time in the winter. Lorry drivers from further south in Europe try to drive up Norway with inappropriate tyres and end up blocking roads. The national news headline that accompanied this picture today (photo, left - click for enlargement) was "poor tyres divided Norway in two". The story described how the E6 - the (only) road that connects northern and southern Norway - was closed for some hours due to complications in recovering the lorry. We've driven that road many times and it's a lot wider and better than it used to be. But the picture shows that Norway's answer to the M1 or M6 still lacks a certain something. (What's on the picture is the entire road in both directions).

On the run in Brusand. (That's where the beach is - see 31 October). Today's news reports that the police in Brusand have taken into custody two pigs, both of which found were sitting on different doorsteps in the village. The owner is invited to come and collect them.

15 November. The sun rises on a new week (sunrise, left - a detail from the webcam view). The past week has been normal but busyish and nothing in particular to write on this page. Tracy went to a conference, Tim played a concert together with a panpipes player (you can hear some brief extracts from the concert here, of music by H�ndel, Piazzolla and Dinicu), Andrew's in the middle of his driving-test theory course, and life has generally been as normal. Matthew's comment from work one day: "yes, today's meeting was fine ... not quite as good as yesterday's: they didn't have that smoked salmon". Not been anything interesting in the Norwegian news either. A few avalanches here and there, the entire computer system for a nearby local authority (including schools and hospitals) out of action because a mouse had eaten the fibre-optic cable; but nothing worth writing about.

There's now constant snow on higher ground, which looks set to stay for the winter. We'll soon need to dust down our skis and get practicing, so here (right: click image to watch film) is a short instructional video clip filmed in familiar places in Norway - Stranda (very close to where Beth lives), Sokndal (on the road between Bergen and Stranda), �ksfjord (Tim gives concerts there sometimes) and the city scenes were filmed in Oslo. It might take a week or two's practice before we're all back up to this level (that twiddly bit on the hillside looks a bit awkward).

19 November. Freedom! The road out of here, which has been closed for avalanche-prevention work since 15 September except for a couple of brief opportunities each day to get past, re-opened yesterday afternoon. They've let us out!
What they've been doing is clearing loose stones from the rock face, chiselling off a few bits that looked unsafe and covering the rest in wire mesh. This contains any rock falls and also forms a framework for ice to form around and subsequently melt along (so that it doesn't turn into big icicles that drop off onto passers by). We'll have to see whether it all works (photo, left: click for enlargement).

We should have plenty of chance to try out ice formation. It was -6°C here today and according to the newspaper we're expecting the weather to be much colder for at least the next week. It was -25°C today a little further inland (Geilo). Asked why the weather was so cold this November the Met Office offered the classic explanation that it is "a natural consequence of falling temperatures". They've got style.

20 November. As has Matt, who for some reason decided that because it was snowing, today was a good day for a swim in the lake (click photo, right).

The weather forecast is predicting even colder weather from the middle of next week and for the forseable future. They're talking of -15° C or colder. Cut down a few extra trees today.

20 November. Other people have been having problems with their roads, too (picture from west Norway a few miles further north than here). NRK's main news site reports here that an 8-year-old girl had invited 14 people to her birthday party, but only three were able to come because of the road. This is perhaps not a story that would have been headlined on the BBC's main news site? Well done NRK!

Nothing at all to do with life in �rsdalen, really, but since you're reading this on a computer we wondered whether you've experienced any of these Windows notifications or error messages (Click picture, right).

21 November. Happy 16^th birthday to Thomas Andrew! (Click cake).

26 November.Getting towards the end of a cold, cold week. It's -12°C here today; warm in comparison with Bjorli (just outside Åndalsnes where we used to live) where it was over 30 degrees below freezing last night. We're just piling more logs on the fire and not wasting too much time outdoors (unless fingers have frozen to the doorhandles on the way in!). Forecast for the coming week is just a little colder ...

Film and pizza for the children of the valley this evening, in the old school.

What to do on a winter's night in Norway (click picture, right).

28 November. Still bitterly cold (reports of record-low November temperatures coming in from all over Norway) but unlike in the UK it's not been snowing (much too dry and cold for that). There are however great pools of thick ice over the roads, and icycles hanging almost right down to the road inside the tunnels. Almost all the rivers and streams are now frozen solid (click photo, left), as is the water supply in our barn.

There was a concert in the lounge at the old people's home, but someone's grandma was bedbound and unable to get to it. So grandson sorted it - Norwegian style - so that she could go (photo, right).