Weekend at Tysnes
Jan took me to spend the weekend at his family's cabin on the island of Tysnes.
We took the bus from Bergen to the ferry, and the ferry to the island.
As we crossed the water, the rising sun lit up snowy mountain peaks and fjords all around us. (Linked large panorama.)
Then we rode our bicycles across the island, mostly alone on the one-lane road except for a burst of traffic every time a new ferry arrived. ("What kind of idiots are out bicycling at this time of year?")
The road was beautiful, crossing up and down hills, along bays, through fields and forests, along blasted out rock cliffs dripping with moss, mini-waterfalls, and icicles. Places that lay in perpetual shadow were frosted over in a kind of winter wonderland that melted away where the sun hit.
The path was frosty moss.
The cabin looks out over a small inlet that was partly frozen over. When we weren't making noise, there was only silence, except for the slow cracking of the ice as the tide moved in and out.
Even the smallest noises echo against the hills.
The cabin is lovely, very cozy. It took us all day to get it warm. Here's a gratuitous picture of fire.
We went out in a rowboat. The water is so calm you can see the marine life really well. We didn't see any fish, but I did see big red anemones, and big round red spikey things that apparently roll around on their spikes, eat fish, and make for good soup, some starfish, huge clam shells, and lots of mussels and seaweed.
And as always, hills in the mist, glassy water, and a fishing boat that appeared, when it passed us by, to be (illegally?) trawling for fish.
We went hiking in the forest, where hiking means tottering over narrow little compressed paths through the partly-frozen layers of moss and mud and tree branches that would creak and crunch ominously before plunging me unexpectedly ankle-deep in mud.
We walked across a frozen inlet. You could look down and see seaweed smashed against the underside of the ice.
On the other side of the trees was a wide expanse of frozen sea. In the picture you can see the rocks we threw onto the ice like little kids to see how solid it was. It probably could have held our weight, but I wasn't about to test it. (Linked panorama.)
That day the clouds had returned and melted most of the frost, but on the way backto the cabin we passed by several tree chandeliers of icicles draped over a stream.
And of course the sun set on the way home.
