Nicole and Ingrid  rowing with a giant

What a week this has been !!    The two sound rather negative on the phone.  Our moral is badly damaged.  We often wondered : what the hell are we doing here ??  Our final goal suddenly seemed so unreachable.  All we did was cycling round the fjords, endlessly !  We felt like being on the moon, such a dramatical landscape. Not to mention the icy puds.   In these isolated villages, we didn’t see a living thing or person.

The Briksdal-glacier, meantime, made up a lot.  It’s one of the largest glaciers of Europe, with a thickness of 400 meter, 1.150 square meter.  Norway at it’s best.  Walking all the way to the top was worth while.  It gave us a positive shot –  God, we needed it !   Flanders, we’re back on the run, we’ll go for it !!  

                                  Briksdal-glacier

Most spectacular to us was the crossing of the Sogne-fjord, Nicole says.  The spot where we planned to cross the fjord was about 10 kilometers width.  So we knew before that it wasn’t going to be easy.  We had found a fisherman who was willing to take our bikes to the other side.  He even got us a plastic rowing-boat.  But our fisherman was pessimistic. “You’ll never make it”, he kept on saying.  Speaking of a positive shot !!  “The wind’s all wrong and there is a very strong drift as well”.  But, determined as we are, we wanted to do it.

Halfway the crossing, misery came our way.  Waves as high as the ones you encounter on the sea.  The drift pushed us to the other side.  Ingrid was completely knocked-up.   She could hardly hold her oars.  So I was on my own for this titanic job !

Our fisherman had brought a friend with him on his boat,  André, a contractor.  A tall man, sized 2 meters and 130 kilogram.  His hands were as big as coal-scoops.  He climbed in our little boat and started rowing with me.  Can you picture the scenery ?  This tall man in our small plastic boat.  We nearly sunk with all the extra 130 kilos !!  Eventually, we made to the other side, all thanks to André.  We were some 7 kilometers away from the spot we had planned to arrive.