July 10. Day 13 Walking.

7am wake-up. Restful sleep. A bug bite on my heel from a take-off-the-socks break yesterday is super itchy this morning, and swollen. Sore knees. Ooof. Let’s go!

Stretches and packing.

8am breakfast and pack lunch from breakfast buffet. Thankfully, the Norwegians eat sandwich things for breakfast.

9am start walking. My left foot was wet within five minutes. And on my right foot, the bug bite was right where the shoe meets my heel so it rubbed against the bite all day…very gratifying to begin with, but now it is raw and sore in addition to being itchy.

My poncho paid for itself today, without a doubt. It rained the whole day. That said, the forecast read 45mm last night but only 15mm this morning. And while it rained all day long, were lucky we didn’t get 45mm, as there were steep, muddy trails and a lot of wet grass and plants on the trails. The water still pooled on the trails and by km 1, both my feet were drenched and squishing.

We followed a wrong trail and had to walk back uphill to relocate our way.

I also started the day with my hiking pants rather than rain pants. That was a mistake and we found a spot where I changed into my long underwear and rain pants instead. That was better.

By noon, after 3 hours of walking, we had only done 6.9 km! We had a quick food break under a porch of someone’s farm house along the trail. I tried to replace the bandaids that had slipped off my toes but my feet were soaked and the bandaids just ended up under my toes within a few minutes. I also changed to dry socks but that was short lived too.

11.5 km, we stopped for another snack break but didn’t sit down.

21km at 4:50pm. A loooong day with few breaks and hardly any time off our exhausted feet. 600m elevation. 1500m up and down. Alt som ikke ta livet av deg, gjør deg sterkere. What doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger. It was a hard day, yet even at the worst of it, I was happy (though tired!) Still, I realised I would rather be in the discomfort of today than the discomfort of chronic stress in my last role as a teacher.

The hostess took our wet clothes and shoes as we entered the guesthouse and is drying them for us. What service!

The place we are staying is super characterful. It’s an older guesthouse with some beautiful solid wooden furniture. We were served a homemade meal, including blueberry crumble and ice cream for dessert.

The fog is still thick, and we don’t see much, but the forecast is hopeful for tomorrow. I’m looking forward to a good night’s rest as Mother Nature clears the visibility.