This time we didn’t have that much time for planning, so it was very spontaneous. Simon sent a text with a suggestion of a hike and everybody who wanted to join could do so. We were a group of six, what I think is a good number.

The plan: take the bus to Vennesla (ca. 30 minutes), walk as far as we want, camp in the forest in shelters and walk back to Kristiansand at the second day. (https://www.ut.no/tur/2.9671/)

We knew, that the wetter will gets worse during the weekend, that’s why we started Friday afternoon and wanted to be back early afternoon on Saturday. After we started our hike, we realized that the way is very swampy and it was hard to find a way where we didn’t sink in to the water. Our group experienced skiing with the heavy back packs, but I didn’t expect that it is as hard to walk with it too. A big mistake I made, was to go to the gym the evening before. My legs were very sore and I had some problems on the way. All the way was up and down, like another lesson of squats. We were in an agreement, that the aim was, to find a dry spot for the night before it gets to dark. After a while we found one under some trees. We made two groups, one boult the shelter and the other searched fire wood. I was in the shelter building team and my role was the helping hand. It is still difficult for me to know what to do. But we had a good team work and I could help and took part in the discussion what is best and what we should review. The other group found good fire wood, so that we could make a nice fire right before our shelter. We were sitting in our shelter, near to the fire and had dinner and good conversations. We also played games before we all went in our sleeping bags. My night was very bad, because I had cramps in my legs the whole night. I started to sleep in the morning and suddenly it was 11.00h. It was raining and snowing and we all didn’t want to get up. Slowly we begun to pack our stuff and eat breakfast. We didn’t know, that it will take us 6 hours back to Kristiansand, otherwise we would have get up earlier. We started our way back around 13.00h and wanted to go up to Slettehei. Simon had the map and said that we are close, what he said the day before already and it was not true. I had a map on my phone and I knew, that we were walking very slowly and even if we are close, it would take us very much time and it was a long way to go to Kristiansand. It was much better for me this trip. I had the orientation, because I had the map on my phone and I knew how far we have to go and where we are. So, it was no problem for me to take over the lead some time. All of us were some time in the front. We had to chance our plans about the hill, because it took us so long for just a few km and the way was very bad because of the swamp. Even if our trip was planned, we didn’t consider that it goes that much up and down and that it is so swampy. It makes tired, to concentrate that much on the way and in addition to that the back pack pulls you down and makes you slower. We were all very tired and just wanted to be back before it gets dark. So, we didn’t make any longer brakes than 5 minutes. This was for sure not a good idea. As well as that, not all of us had enough food for such a long day. I think it’s very important to have more food than you think you will need for situations like that. During the day, I had some good conversations and we motivated each other and had a good time. So, we all were proud that we made it and also glad when we arrived at home.