Friday

We set off at 0930 after Len packed out stuff in the van, the journey took five hours roughly with a 15-minute break. I drove with Chris, Stella, Michael and Dom and it was pleasant enough, the views and music made up for the early morning.

We arrived in Oslo around 1400 after finding the camp site tucked away near the Holmekollen, it was really impressive to watch all of Oslo turn out in their national colours, along with many Germans and a few other nationalities.

Before finding the camp site we visited the Maritime Museum, which was really interesting to look at, unfortunately we didn’t go to the Viking Museum, which would have been very exciting to look at.

We got the tents up as soon as possible and had the fire going too, we sat around the camp fire and waited for the rest of the group to turn up as some decided to go to town for a look about before coming to the camp site.

On the evening I discovered that some of the class had bought their hand sleds from a previous trip, and we luckily had some decent size hills next to us that were perfect, this became our evening entertainment up until it got too dark to see so we played cards against humanity instead, a questionable game, but nevertheless got the group talking. I slept really well that night, only waking a few times to roll over or adjust some clothing.

Saturday

I stayed in bed for some time in the morning, as I was very comfortable and warm, but after deciding to get up and make breakfast, me and a few people decided to head to town to do some sightseeing and find somewhere to watch the men’s Biathlon rather than spending so much money for one hour.

Royal Palace in Oslo

We ended up watching it outside the University of Oslo, which is a lovely building, we also decided to watch the medal ceremony at the same place, the Norwegian people became very patriotic and excited to see the medal winners, and of course, Norway were the winners.

The podium winners; German, Norwegian and Canadian

We headed back to the camp site around 2100 and had dinner, we came just in time to see some daredevil tricks from some group members which kept us entertained for some time. Two of the group made an improvised shelter in the woods to sleep in that night which must have worked well because they didn’t come back into the tent.

Sunday

Saturday night gave way to an awful night sleep, after seeing 0700 I decided to get up and get packed quietly as possible, not long afterwards, everyone else was up and eager to get home. Soon after getting up, the only tent next to us, which was a small family, gave us home made caramel to eat which was delicious and totally unexpected.

Amy with free caramel

All weekend they had supplied us with free food and good honest talk, it really opened our eyes to how kind the Norwegians were as a nation. By lunch time we were packed and ready to go, and on the road back to Kristiansand.