Leben im Rudel: Tour de Nord

Part 8: Costal Route between Eggum and Unstad

Considering the endeavour the day before and the everlasting sunshine, I decided to do something easy-going: a hike along the cost, from Eggum to the surfer village Unstad and back. But spoiler alert: it wasn't all that easy... of course not. :-D

The trail began in Eggum at a stone fort that wasn't of any interest to me. ;) But there was also the stone sculpture "Hodet", which was all the more interesting! It is said to have 16 different head shapes depending on the angle your looking at it... I didn't verify it though. :)

We then continued walking along the cost. The sun was shining, the path easygoing, the sea almost still, and sheep, everywhere sheep... so many indeed that Charlie & Stöpsel were no longer excited to see one, and I could take them off the leash. It was a superb relax-walk.

But then the path became very rocky and we had to climb over big stones, which were super slippery. I wore only my well ventilated, lightweight relax-shoes, because I had blisters the size of... something real big and this was our relax-walk after all... Within seconds we were profoundly dirty and wet. The trail leaded up the hillside, at parts very steep and muddy. Now we were completely dirty. In addition there was no shelter from the sun and we had walked 3 hours already... Especially the boys were quite thirsty and a little tired. And I had started to fantasise about eating ice-cream in Unstad, maybe having coffee and waffles... :-D

But Unstad was a rather dead village. Only a few houses, but no shop, no nothing (that's when I missed the more touristic places... :) ). A woman told me to go to the surfer shop (the one and only shop in Unstad), where they might have some coffee for me at least. So that's what I did. There was a bunch of surfers, all very friendly and chatty (and rather nice to look at... :) ), and they were kind enough to share some coffee with me. :-) One of them offered to give me a surfing lesson (wave-less sea is probably good for beginners :-) ), but I had left my bikini at home (being sure it would be cold and wet in Norway)... and nude surfing seemed like taking it too far... ;-) So we made our way back, through mud and sheep shit, in the sun, sun, sun... I was totally dirty and sweaty afterwards. And my poor ears were completely burned. For the rest of the holiday, I was busy "lubricating" them, so that some skin would be left on my ears...

The boys were super exhausted, mainly due to the sun, I suppose. When we were almost back at the car, there, where the path had been still easy and clean... There were quite a few tourists (all clean and wondering why we look the way we looked... :-D ) having a romantic picnic with a view to the slowly setting sun above the sea. Yeah... it was a nice atmosphere. But then we came along. We had to pass one young couple, which didn't pay much attention to us. That's when Charlie decided that enough is enough and that he needed comfort right here right now!! So he went straight to the guy, and sat closely next to him while starring into his eyes. The all too puzzled dude didn't understand Charlie's needs and only starred back at him. So Charlie pushed his nose under his hand and lifted it up on his head. That's when the guy got the message - and he started petting (muddy) Charlie. Luckily, the couple took it with humour - but then again, who can possibly resist Charlie's charm?? ;-) When I wanted to continue walking, Charlie refused to follow me - he wanted to stay with his new, much friendlier friend. :-D I had to personally escort him away from the couple... :-D

And also the usually ever jumping and running Stöpselito dropped on a stone and he wanted to walk no more either. I had never seen the boys being this exhausted. In fact, we all slept like stones that night. :-D Even though the difference in altitude on this hike has been only very small and it wasn't such a long hike either (maybe 16 km all together).

That's the power of sun! ;-)

somewhere on Vestvågoy