Norwegian Odyssey Day 10, Saturday 4 January: Pootling, hotel, santa convention, and extreme Andy adventure

Today was a bitty day. Everyone did their own thing. Christian and I did. . . very little. It was extremely cold, and windy.

Important things first - the fire was lit by 8am, and Ali was already up and out by then to go horse riding, which made her genuinely happy.

 

Christian and I walked Alex and her luggage to Savalen, and he drove her to Tynset to get the train around midday.

Meelis was planning a 30km ski day, but failed to get Andy (or anyone else) to join him, and the conditions meant he only managed 15km. He managed to get lost, and we lost contact with him. Much concerned whatsapping ensued. He turned up in the end.

 

David was planning to go downhill skiing, but the lifts were closed due to poor weather. He had to content himself with walking up the hill and running back down it at full speed.

Meanwhile, I tried to ski around the village, but kept getting chased by the groomer, and didn't achieve anything very useful. I decided to join Jen at the hotel, via a brief flash of sunshine.

At the hotel there was a Santa convention. Nik made friends with some of them, and the group watched them doing physical 'winter games' challenges out in the snow. Very bizarre.

Christian met us at the hotel, and Andy generously agreed to take Christian and me on a skiing adventure - across the lake, as it had been piste-bashed.

We went through the village, and set off across the lake. There were some slightly worrying wet holes in the snow, but it held our weight. I fell once on ice. We headed uphill and to the right, and did a long loop mostly parallel to the lake shore. I found it quite challenging, as there was quite a bit of uphill and downhill, but Andy was very encouraging. We got to a point off the pisted path where we were just wading through thigh-high snow. It was odd, but I adjusted eventually - it was mostly walking rather than skiing.

We basically went round the very bottom of the lake, and then back up the cabin-side shore. Despite the challenge, I'm really glad I did it, as it was the only proper skiing safari we'd done during the whole holiday.

Andy continued on to the lower cabin so he, Jen and Charlie could move in with us, leaving Christian and I to make our way back up through the village in the light snowfall, and back to the upper cabin.

I think we had a sauna at this point. The troops all came up to our cabin for dinner in the interests of keeping the lower cabin clear for imminent departure.

Andy made tasty bolognaise with soy protein. I didn't know that such a thing existed, but I vowed to use it when we got home. I followed the instructions that Andy gave me, but that resulted in too much liquid, which he had to pour off. Oops.

 

Ginny made shortbread in a frying pan as our oven still wasn't working. It was recognisable as shortbread, but made a horrific sticky mess of the pan, especially as many drinks had been consumed by then. Much clean up was needed.

Then bed.