Wade in the water...

Sigve and I have become quite good at getting out and going for walks since he came out of hospital. We started out carefully, going for only half an hour or so, and have increased gradually. On Sunday we walked for 2 hours in partly rain, and thought that was pretty good. Monday we had torrential rain, so we skipped it, but Tuesday we set out for another one. We picked an area that was mostly unknown to us, but there was a marked path that was estimated to 1,5 hours of easy paced walking. We knew it would take us much longer, so the plan was to walk for about 45 minutes, and then turn back. There was a map at the start, so we tried to memorize the layout of the path.

From the start we walked along an overgrown dirt road that was flooded, and for a while a brook had taken over completely. 

Later it narrowed down to a single file path, still filled with water.

Admittedly, there were sections that were dry too, but they were few and far apart.

In some places someone had built boardwalks over particularly muddy sections, 

but not all were finished.

This little river is usually a much smaller stream, and there was a spot that was obviously meant for crossing, but now it was flooded. We both agreed that Sigve's balancing abilities were pretty good for someone who has been very sick only a short while ago!

Thank God this place had a bridge. It's a narrow strait between two parts of a lake, and  this is where we must have taken the wrong path, going left instead of right. There was no sign, and we can't even remember seeing another path. Anyway, this led us in a very much wider circle than the marked path that we were supposed to be on, but this path was marked too, so only when we kept going south in stead of north did we notice that it had to be wrong. 

After a lot more wading,

and climbing, which is the part that Sigve finds the hardest at the moment,

we came to a crossroad, with a sign, and it confirmed our suspicions: we were completely off track! Unfortunately there was no distance indications, so we didn't know which would be the quicker way to get to a road. Once on a road we could call someone to pick us up and take us to where our car was parked. We knew for sure by now that we would not end up back in that spot! 

We decided on the path to the right since that at least was the direction we had intended to go in the first place. 

This forrest area is not very big, really. From the middle of it a 2-3 hour walk in ANY direction will take you to a main road. So if this had been earlier in the day, everything would have been fine. The problem at this point was that sunset was 1 hour away, and we knew it would take us longer than that to reach a road. 

So we set out again, at a slightly faster pace now, or as fast as Sigve could go.  There was still a lot of water everywhere.

And we also decided it was time to get some help, so Sigve called Jostein, his brother, (how did we survive before cell phones?) and after a bit of describing the terrain and conferring with a map, they decided where we had to be, and what direction to take. He and his wife Liv got in the car and drove to where they figured we would reach the road, and started walking towards us with flashlights. 

Just as the sun disappeared and it started to get dark, we came to where the path turned into a dirt road, and further down the road we met our rescue party! They had driven up part of the dirt road, so we didn't even have to walk all the way to the main road.

They took us to our car, and by then it was totally dark. The whole trip had taken us 3 hours and 10 minutes, and all in all it had been a refreshing experience. We had warm clothes, waterproof boots and neither of us were exhausted, but it still felt good to sink down on the couch at home.

Now I kind of feel like we got lost in Winnie-the-Pooh's 100 acre wood, somewhere around where Pooh set the trap for Heffalumps LOL! But like my friend Ruth commented on Facebook: We all know that some VERY BIG adventures have happened in the 100 acre wood! Thanks Ruth, who is canadian, and used to very much bigger woods :-)

In the morning we'll have to decide where we'll go on Wednesday, and yes, we'll start earlier :-)

Today I am grateful for:

*Jostein and Liv who dropped everything and came to our rescue

*Having untouched nature close by

*Being physically able to take advantage of it