I went for a quick run around Lofoten before we decided to head out on our hike from Nusfjord to Nesland. I had read about this hike and it sounded wonderful. It would be an out and back hike, which will come into play later.
We drove to Nujfjord and found that it was a pretty busy village. There is a small fee to enter the village since it is a fishing museum, however, if you are hiking there is no need to pay an entry fee. It was, of course, raining. Why wouldn't be?
On the trail from Nusfjord to Nesland
Of all the people in the world to hike with, I would choose him every time.
The started of muddy. So muddy that I was jumping and leap frogging. It was one of the messiest trails I have ever experienced.
Lots of leap frogging happened on the trail
We basically dodged mud for a long period of time. We were right along the coast, so we had beautiful views during the hike.
Beautiful views on the hike from Nusfjord to Nesland
We reached an area where we saw a ladder that climbed up a significant climb. In case you are new around here, I am extremely afraid of heights as of a few years ago. (See hike in Italy.) I believe it corresponds with me being in a trauma ICU. There is just something about being aware of the bad things that can happen that makes me nervous in certain situations. Ken finds my new fear of heights to be a little entertaining. In the past year he is learned that it is a real fear and tries to be encouraging versus irritated.
Yeah, I was not excited about that ladder.
I took a few deep breaths and agreed to climb the ladder first. There may have been a moment where I started singing the 7 dwarfs song Whistle While You Work. Moving on....
Clearly I lived from climbing up the ladder.
Despite the mud to start, we were having so fun on this hike.
Please notice that I stated that we WERE having so much fun on this hike. Yeah, true to form, Norway threw us a curve ball. You see, this hike was rated a family friendly hike and easy. When selecting this hike, I wondered what could go wrong? There was a point when I started to mention to Ken that I hoped we could get a cab from Nesland back to our car in Nusfjord instead of hiking in the swamp on the way back.
Well, the horrible strech came about a mile from Nesland. We reached a stretch where the boulder maneuvers were so large that my little legs could not handle it. I have no idea how a child, that I would assume would be my size or smaller, could handle this. It reached a point where I told Ken someone was going to get a broken femur and we decided to turn around. That seems to be a theme in hiking in Norway.
We turned around and quite honestly all I could think about was having to go down that stupid ladder. Fortunately, there were some Germans in front of us and a German lady stood at the bottom of the ladder and calmly talked me through the hike down while Ken was at the top. God bless this woman because my palms were sweating.
I survived the climb down and knew the worst part was over, I would just have to deal with the mud. To be honest, I really do not enjoy mud all the much, but at least it is not terrifying.
Even if we turned around, we were having fun on the trail
Even if I had to hike through mud, I love him for bringing me to Norway
A true life photo of us
Ken found me a beautiful flower on the hike back to Nusfjord
We arrived back to Nusfjord, walked around for a moment and decided to head back to the car. The parking lot was packed with tour buses and we could not wait to head out of there.
We left Nusfjord to drive to the village of A. Yes, just A. This village has the shortest name of any place in the world. On the way there, we stopped off at a beach for a few pictures.
A Lofoten Island beach
I can only imagine how beautiful this is with sunshine
We continued on to A and wandered around a bit and decided to have a little snack and drink at a restaurant. Many US dollars later, we found ourselves watching some fishermen clean their fish.
Checking out A.
We drove back to our guest house and talked with a Norwegian couple from Trondheim. They told us how special Lofoten is and that this was their first time to visit. They were surprised to hear that we were Americans and were glad to hear we were visiting the Lofoten Islands. We had a little dinner, watched a little Netflix and went to sleep. It was not the day full of sunshine we were hoping for, but it was a great day of vacation in a beautiful part of the world.
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