Frafjord and Flekkefjord
Planning
When planning for this trip we began as one large group of 10 people each with different ideas of what they wanted to get from this trip. We decided it would be too complicated to work as one large group so broke down into one group of 2 and 2 groups of 4 depending on where you wanted to go on this trip.
In my group was Flo, Eliska, Emma and myself our plan was to visit the area of frafjord to hike as well as doing the hike to Kjerag, then visit flekkefjord on our way back to Kristiansand.
DAY 1 – Tuesday 25th April
We planned to pick up our hire car at 9am this morning. When we all met Emma informed us she wouldn’t be able to come on the trip as she was unwell. This could have had a huge effect on our trip as she was to be the main driver. However Flo said she was willing to drive instead. We said goodbye to Emma and drove to our accommodation to collect our equipment. We had a leisurely start really and left Kristiansand just before 10am.
We first drove to Lindesnse Light House at the most southern point of Norway. We spent a while here looking around the museum and the lighthouse its self. This was an enjoyable morning and was a good start to our trip. 
We then drove towards Frafjord and stopped at the Månafossen waterfall, we decided to do this hike today as it was meant to be quite short, it actually took even less time than we expected. We had a group snack of apples and took some pictures at the top of the hike. This was good fun and even something as simple as laughing at Eliska’s selfie skills created a good group dynamic.
After this we had to look for somewhere to stay. We found that while the car was very useful to have it was also a hindrance as it was difficult to find a nice camping spot with somewhere nearby to park the car. After making camp we cooked dinner. This trip we decided to cook all meals as a group, I enjoyed this very much we all helped out and it meant we could all eat at the same time. I enjoyed cooking on this trip and we made some good meals, it was also nice to have the car as we could take fresh vegetables and fruits, which I wouldn’t normally do on a backpacking trip.
DAY 2 – Wednesday 26th April
Today we had a later start and began walking at 10am. Our hike today took us to the west side of Frafjord (more information at: https://www.ut.no/tur/2.1821/). This was a demanding hike especially at the beginning where it was very steep and uneven terrain. This first part of the hike took us longer than expected due to the path being very unclear and having to navigate along the way. We also spent some time finding the best was to cross a large waterfall. This area of the path was very icy and slippery we found a flat part of the waterfall and decided it would be best to remove our shoes to avoid getting them wet for the rest of the trip. Eli crossed first and helped myself and Flo across. Eli was a very strong member of our team, always offering assistance and having boundless energy.
Nearer the top of the incline it was much snowier than we had anticipated, at first we thought it would not be too deep but in the end we had to put on our waterproofs and gaiters. The snow made it difficult to locate the route and we had to use the lakes and contours to help us navigate. The path actually followed a lot of uneven terrain again and we often found our legs disappearing between rocks or down holes hidden under the snow; this made it hard work and more time consuming than expected. 
This hike was a beautiful one but took us over 8 hours to complete. We decided as it was early evening when we finished we would drive part way to Kjerag, cook dinner and then drive the rest of the way and find a suitable camping spot. As we were driving on small roads there was not many place to stop to cook so we ended up in a campsite car park cooking a curry! During the drive we had gained some height and it was a lot colder here than it had been during the day so we made our dinner spot a short one so we could get back out of the cold.
We soon discovered that the road to Kjerag was closed. We came across a barrier and a sign which we translated, in hind sight we should have done more research into hiking the Kjerag route as we may have discovered in advance that it was closed during the winter months. However ‘during the winter months’ is very vague and as we were almost in May we thought it would be open, as it hasn’t been a particularly cold and snowy winter.
Strangely this unexpected event gave us a boost of energy and we were surprisingly, in very high spirits after this. Because of our set back at Kjerag we had to change our plan for the next day, we decided to keep driving back the way we had come to find somewhere warmer to camp for the night. Again we had trouble finding a suitable camping spot and ended up in a car park off the main road, we decided to have an early start the next day and just pack up and find somewhere else for breakfast.
DAY 3 – Thursday 27th April
Today we drove to Flekkefjord and cooked breakfast on a wooden pontoon alongside the fjord. The weather was much worse today than previous days and we spent some of the morning in a coffee shop researching what we could do in Flekkefjord. We decided to go a small place called Roligheten where there were some hikes and a harder route down to the sea where you could see some potholes in the rock.
When we arrived the information post said it wasn’t advisable to make the climb down to the potholes in wet weather conditions. As it had been raining earlier in the day we thought we could still do the hike to the start of the descent to the potholes and see what it looked like when we got there. We took our time on this hike which was nice as we were tired from the day before. We often took a route that wasn’t the marked path which involved some scrambling, this was good fun and I think more interesting than sticking to the marked and very muddy path. We ended up climbing down to the potholes; I went down first followed by Eli and Flo. Some of the gaps between the staples in the rock where very big which made it slightly harder than expected but it was easier on the climb back up. At points Flo was unsure of her foot placements and Eli was very good in this instance and assisted her by supporting her feet and pushing them onto the rock. We were all glad we made the climb down as it was an interesting place to visit and we also had good fun taking some photos!
From this trip we learnt that we should maybe have spent more time planning and researching the places we planned to visit, and maybe we should’ve looked up some good places to camp before setting off. However I have had a great time and feel we worked together well as a group when making decisions and that our group dynamics were good throughout the trip, which could be to do with it being such a small group of like-minded people there was not much opportunity for conflicts to arise.