Day 2: Olavsgaard to Fjellheim Gard

The Sun is shinning and my wet clothes have dried out, all is right with the world.  A hearty hotel breakfast set me up for the day.  I followed the lead of the locals and made my self a packed lunch.  This was always my intention but I thought I would have to be quite discreet.  No one else had such qualms, plonking their Tupperware sandwich boxes on the serving counter and making mountains of sandwiches to take with them.  I contented myself with a cheese roll and a banana!

The hotel was about a mile from the trail, as I set out I spotted a couple of e-scooters near an underpass and considered hiring one to get me back on track.  Then I remembered how useless I am on wheeled things that require balance and decided that the ignominy of having to come home because I’d fallen off a scooter was too much of a risk to take. 

Today’s walk was a combination of fields, forests and small towns.  The fields and forests would have been a nightmare in yesterday’s downpours and the hilly bits were still a bit challenging today.  It was a fun walk, and I was grateful for my walking poles on several occasions when the ground beneath me proved unreliable.  

The scenery is stunning. So many vivid greens, punctuated with red and white buildings and churches that have been silhouetted against the sky. 

I wrote to a friend yesterday that I hadn’t had a conversation all day, given my failure to learn any useful Norwegian that is hardly surprising. I can recognise the sign for a dentist’s office (thanks Duolingo) but I’m hoping I won’t need one.  Today I stopped for coffee and had a chat with the waiter but I am mainly on my own.  A guest book at Frogner shows how uncrowded this trail is.  Just three people yesterday! And none for a couple of days before that.

Towards the end of today’s walk my phone started making a hell of a racket.  At first I thought it was an alarm in a nearby building.  I looked and saw this screen:

I’m grateful for Google translate for helping me work out what was going on! And for a bit of shade so that I could read the screen. Today was a relatively short day, only about 18km.  Accommodation is not as easy to find as on the Spanish Caminos so that dictates the length of my ‘working day.’  Today was a short one, which means I arrived at my destination just after noon.  It is a working farm, and it appears everyone is off working.  I’ve emailed my host and a happily sitting in the sunshine, eating my lunch and enjoying the view. We are in the middle of nowhere, which is ideal as I don’t feel compelled to rush around and do anything!

Lunch view