Safe Return Doubtful

The islands around Fosnavåg are so small that they can be explored by a hiker in half a day. Great places to stopover are fewer, which is why I returned to Mulevika last night for a second stay.

This morning I drove back through town, then across the islands of Leinøya and Remøya to Runde, known for its bird cliffs.

The islands of this archipelago are linked by bridges, though there is low traffic at this time of year, which I suspect will be considerably more in a few weeks.

Rather than head round the east coast of Runde to the car park for the boarded walk to the viewpoint for the cliffs, I parked at the end of a rough road on the south coast of the island.

It was another fine day, less sun, but a lot warmer and more humid, with practically no wind. Temperatures in the middle hours of the day were 22 to 25C, which is, according to locals, as warm as it gets in the height of the summer.

From the parking area there is a steep climb with the sort of loose rock that used to cause me problems pre-hip, but now I am getting used to; still slow though.

Once a couple of hundred metres height are gained the landscape opens out to the windswept plateau of Gokseyrmyrane, a blanket bog with patches of heather moorland, rock outcrops and small lakes. The path skirts to the west of the plateau, following the cliffs along for its length, about 5 kilometres. The views are spectacular, especially on a day like today.

I saw no one until the summit of Rundebranden at 297 metres. Here there were three other people, having ascended the two kilometres from the car park much closer, in the north east coast, and walking up the boardwalks.

They were an older couple of ornithologists, the guy having a huge camera. His partner chatted to me for a while. She was clearly less interested in the puffins nesting on the rocks below, which were the subject of his photography. She was clearly uneasy about how close the guy, her husband I assume, was getting to the edge of the cliff. I didn’t understand the Norwegian she spoke, but her discomfort was evident. I left, heading back the way I had come, and she followed me after a few seconds, deliberately turning her back on her husband who had paid no heed to her warnings.

As I had been in town this morning, visiting the supermarket, and finished my current book, we were behind time. It was after 3 pm when Roja and I got back to the van. Initially, I hadn’t planned to go as far as the peak, but conditions were so good, I couldn’t resist.

As the afternoon went on, two other vans joined me at the end of the rough road. There was a group of three young Germans keen on watching birds, and they pointed out to me a white-tailed eagle, with a wingspan approaching two and a half metres, being harassed, if not attacked, by gulls. The eagle seemed unbothered, focused on scanning for prey below, whereas the gulls, tiny in comparison, dived in and out from it. The Germans were away for just a week, in a very basic Toyota Hiace van which looked a very tight fit.

Another VW Crafter pulled in also, with a Norwegian plate, though it had no windows in the sides or the back doors. I guessed at first that it was someone starting on a self-build project, but actually it was a rental camper. I’ve seen quite a lot of these, notably in Scotland on the NC500 where there are some pretty basic ones, but this was a far more basic conversion. It was an old Crafter, with no air conditioning on the engine, and no windows, so in this heat it reacts a bit like an oven. It was a young French couple who had rented the van, and I felt sorry for them. At least they had only rented it for four days, and with the weather as it is, they can spend as much time as possible outside.

I wrote a couple of book reviews in the afternoon, and started to think about where to head for the weekend, as Friday is the big Norwegian holiday, their national day, celebrating their independence from Denmark in 1814.