All good things have to come to an end. As 2020 draws to its close, so too does this story. Some eleven-and-a-half years after we eccentrically bought a mountain, a forest and a large farmhouse and barn and came here to revel in the absolute silence, the pitch-black nights when even the starlight casts tree-shaped shadows in the snow, our resident eagles, the owl in the garage, the hares, deer, stoat, red squirrels, foxes and even the lynx that occasionally deposits half-eaten deer on the back doorstep — and ended up with all the other experiences that you've shared along the way — and now we're preparing to leave it.

The reason is not that we're fed up of life in the mountains, but that it will not be possible to commute to a new job, far away in the city. Finding a solution has been occupying us for a while, not least because property prices increase exponentially as you get closer to the city and because — well, can you imagine moving from Ørsdalen in amidst noisy traffic and dirty concrete? We’ve ended up with a respectable bungalow (picture below), at the end of a road in Ålgård – the commuter suburb that we described as the “town of mini roundabouts”, forming the first landmark in the old “directions to Ørsdalen” from Stavanger airport. The house needs a lot of doing up, but that's keeping us occupied in Covid times!

Obviously things will be a bit different. For instance, while almost a couple of hundred people live within a 10-mile radius of our home in Ørsdalen there are almost a couple of hundred thousand within the same radius of the Ålgård house, so we’ll have to learn to lock doors and cars. There are some advantages, of course: while we currently have no shop or petrol station within our 10-mile radius, there are several big shopping centres in and near Ålgård, as well as every possible variety of supermarket and petrol station. Not only will courier drivers no longer ring with creative excuses for leaving deliveries on the petrol-station counter in Vikeså, but we would even be able to ring out for a delivery pizza, if we should want such a thing. The house opens straight on to the road, so there will be no more snow clearing or trouble getting out. Even so, if we’re honest, neither of us would choose to live in Ålgård, so there will probably be another move at some point in the future. And in the meantime, we’ll still have the flat in Germany to escape to.

This process is the real reason that the blog has suffered recently — and has now reached its final page — as the Ørsdalen adventure is drawing to an end. But who knows what the future will hold? It reminds me rather of the closing sentences of our children’s favourite bedtime story book, The dragon of an ordinary family:

“Who knows,” said Mrs Belsaki, a little wistfully, “I suppose we'll just have to settle down and be just nice, ordinary people. Perhaps no other magic will ever happen to us again." Just then the little black kitten woke up and sat up tall in Orlando's lap. "I wouldn't be too sure of that," he murmured, and went back to sleep.