Fjord to Sea Trip
03.05. – 05.05.2021 from Byglandsfjord to Kristiansand
As the title of this post suggests, this is a trip from the fjord back to the sea. We first went to Bygland, which was our starting point, with the aim of arriving back in Kristiansand at the sea.
rowers in crime
After a short warm-up session, we went straight into the canoes. At the beginning, Thomas showed us the different techniques of how to handle the paddle. First, he explained that the front person is the motor of the canoe and is purely responsible for moving the canoe. The person in the back serves as the helmsman, he has the task of steering the canoe using different paddling techniques. At first, Thomas just let us try it out and we quickly realised that it is most skilful when both people paddle on different sides. We also quickly realised that if we paddled on the right side of the canoe, the canoe would move to the left. Another task was to turn the canoe 360° on the spot, which works best when both paddle on different sides and the front man paddles in the opposite direction. Furthermore, Thomas explained to us how the helmsman can steer the canoe with two different techniques. For this, one uses the so-called J-stroke or C-stroke. With the C-Stroke, the paddle is pulled through the water like a C and towards the canoe at the end, whereas with the J-Stroke, the paddle is pushed away from the canoe at the end of the pull.
Canoeing on Byglandsfjor
Afterwards we went on a small canoe trip in the Byglandsfjord in quite good weather and only little wind. We always took turns within our group as to which boat was the leader for the next part and this team then had the say, so to speak, and decided on the route and the breaks. We reached the small island of Storøyi after 3 hours and 11.6 km. On this island we set up camp for the night. As the weather forecast had predicted rain for the next few days, we all slept mostly in tents, but we still enjoyed the evening sun together with a view of the fjord.
Rainy day
As the weather forecast had predicted, it rained on our second day and in addition the temperatures dropped rapidly to around 4-5°. After we had packed all our things and put away the wet tents, we went back into the canoes. We quickly noticed that the wind had also increased. Fortunately, it was a tailwind, but it was a freezing wind. The mood within the group adapted to the weather, but I had a lot of fun paddling even in this weather. Since almost everyone was freezing cold, our goal for the day was to arrive at TrollAktiv as quickly as possible in order to quickly have a solid roof over our heads again. After just under 3 hours and 13.3 km we reached our destination, a dam just before Syrveit. Here we went ashore again, packed the canoes back onto the trailer and walked back to TrollAktive. We spent the afternoon together as a group in the common room, talking and laughing a lot together. The mood also improved considerably as a result. However, there was still a decision to be made about climbing, which was planned for the next day. As the weather forecast did not predict any real improvement and the rock is also very wet due to the rain, we decided as a group not to go climbing and to return to Kristiansand a day earlier by bike from TrallAktiv. Fortunately, we were allowed to spend the night in small houses and did not have to sleep in the wet tipis.
Before the bike tour
Early the next morning we got our mountain bikes from TrollAktive, which unfortunately were no longer in the very best condition. As a large group we set off together for the upcoming tour to Kristiansand. The tour went along cycle route no. 3 and led along the Kilefjord, via Vennesla, along the river Otra back to Kristiansand. Fortunately, it didn’t rain that day after all, but it was relatively cool with a chilly wind. We chose a comfortable pace so that everyone could cycle along without too much effort, took frequent breaks and rarely had to look at the map. Our lunch break was also of quite short duration, as everyone started to cool down due to the wind and we wanted to get back on our bikes quickly. We took another short break in Vennesla at the Tømmerrenna water slide. After 82.3km and 6.5h we reached the garage of the university as a group, where Wydse and Antje were waiting for us with hot chocolate! Just what we needed at that moment!
In the end, it was an exciting trip that was a lot of fun despite the bad weather conditions! For me personally, canoeing was a completely new way of getting around and I would love to do it again, hopefully with better weather.
After the bike tour back in Kristiansand