Randøya-is an island-fort, which it was very secret germans military headquarters base in the IIWW and during the cold war Norwegians overtake the island. At 1990 it became recreational area. Fort area is quite large, and there are good opportunities for hiking and exploring the old military installations


This trip was based to learn us a lot of stuff  you can find more information in this file.
Our international group was mixed with Norwegians friluftsliv students. I was in one group with Sven, Jolinda, Adele, Jurgen, Mads, Nikolay, Kirby, Joch, Stian. All these days we have 4 instructors, whose will teach us outdoor activities.

2015/05/18
Day 1

The trip started early Janis (my groupmate) picked me, Jochen and Tadas  from K4G and then we went to the place where we took a boat and went to the island which calls Randøya. We left most of our stuff and went to the Island where we need to survive one night without sleeping bag, sleeping mat, bivy bag, food and other stuff. It was rainy day so all our group was soaked up. We set up the tarp(it was allowed to have a tarp), collected some fir tree branches and put on the ground to avoid sleeping on the cold wet ground, set up the fire. Then I, Sven, Nikolay  and Stian went to fish. I caught my first fish, but I let it go because it was too small to keep it.
Later I went to sleep.
I think I was the only one, whose doesn’t cheated because I was sleeping only with my clothes when most of the guys had a bivybags. It was hard to sleep because it was very cold and all night it was heavy rain and strong wind.

 

Day 2

 

At 6 o’clock we woke up and then we packed our stuff and went by boat to took our fishing nets, which we set up yesterday before we went to the island. We set up 3 fishing nets, and when we took out them we saw a lot of nice fishes.

 

 

Later, one of our instructor teach us how to make a fillet of the fish, and give us a try to do that.

 

 

After that it was very boring because about 4 hours we was cleaning fishing nets.

 

Later we were at motor boat learning: more water navigation, knots, how to steer motor boat and how to choose the safe direction- what is the main factors in the sea? (ans.wind direction and waves). It was the first time when I was steering the motor boat. I really liked it.

At 6 we came back I ate a little bit and went to  fish. I cought my second fish- this fish was big enough so I didn’t throw it back to the sea and later we made a fish soup from more fishes including mine also.

Later we went to the bunkers of Randøya, as I said earlier it was german secret military base during IIWW and Cold war. One of the instructor Kjertel was like a guide, he shows the bunker headquarters, told about the history of this place and etc. It was very interesting to me. I was impressed of this enourmous size bunkers .

Day 3

Our group began with rowing boat task, we was learning how to control rowing boat how to row and etc.

Our second activity was Kayaking we were kayaking in the sea we was doing water navigation, learning different techniques of kayaking, also what we need to do if we capsize, how we can avoid capsize?(using a paddle and splashing into the side of the water we going to capsized) , what we need to do if somebody capsized?

 

Answer- make a raft of kayaks as fast as possible and take the person on the raft and give to him warm clothes) And during the learning process one of our groupmate capsized so it was good experience to do it what we was learning before.

Day 4

Today first activity was kayaking so we continued our learning, we was doing water navigation in more wavy area. The lecture divided us into 4 persons into 2 teams and we was doing a lot of games based race. Our group cohesion was growing every moment. Also today one more person capsized, so it wasn’t first time so today we made a raft very fast.

Second activity shallow water biology was with Norwegian friluftsliv lecturer Svein, but the most of the time the main person who thought us was one of our group member name Mads, He told what we will do today,  shows us on the kart how to define the water plants and animals.
We were divided into the groups and each group had different task- each group should found different things in the water.

Day 5

In the last day was only one activity- deep water biology, but I think it was the best activity- we were snorkeling, actually we were doing the same as yesterday, but today we were in the deeper water and with wading suits. It was my first time when I was snorkeling. I really enjoyed this.

 

Unfortunatelly, this trip ends, but I got a LOT of experience, I did a lot of things, which I didn’t do before. I met new people, some of them became my friends. I really enjoyed the time spent here- it was like vacations. After that we were talking about what we improve in this trip. Share the emotions and went back home.