REST AND MEDIA DAY
Ljosland - Ljosland, 4,53 km, +71 m
Date | Days total | Distance today | Total distance | Elevation gain | Start position | End position |
19. 7. 2022 | 7 | 4,53 km | 167,08 km | 71 m | Ljosland | Ljosland |
MAP - DAY 7:
We are sleeping on a big parking place by the middle section of the Ljosland skiing slope. I am waking up due to the heat after almost 7 hours in the afternoon. Same spot, same weather as the last year. Like we never left.
I feel quite fresh, the food and sleeping helped a lot. I can't remember when I slept so good. Only my feet are quite sore. The first steps hurt a lot. The skin must get used to everyday long walking and running in technical terrain. I ran so little this year, not more than 300 km for the whole first 6 months of 2022, as the winter in Lyngen was sooo long. I was skiing until June. Here I have to do this 300 km distance ideally in 6 days in later stages of the trip, when I get to better terrain and body adapts totally. So I am using this day as a "media and feet healing rest day". I work on the computer the whole afternoon.
Later I at least want to run down from the lake, where I finished moving in early morning, down to the Ljosland valley, to the crossroad to the new dam, which I will pass the next day.
I take my 360 camera, turn on my inReach tracker and start running down, trying to find a clean nice natural path between the many cabins here. I succeed. When I am almost at the big parking by the skiing slope, I am realizing, that I did not start my watch. Damn! Radka is already down in the valley, so I have to walk back up to the lake, turn on the watch and start running the same path again. I simply want the future NPL hikers to have exact information where did I go. While walking back up, I felt I was really tired. Running down is fine, even the foot pain is better.
Soon I am by the parking again, bypass the ski-center building from the right side on gravel and start running down the steep hill straight under the skiing lift.
Down in the valley I start running on the gravel road, which starts by the valley station of the ski lift, because there are fences and farms literally everywhere. Luckily, one half of the road is gravel, one half asphalt. Like if it was prepared for me, I am telling myself. But after some maybe 100 meters, the road turns to full asphalt. Dammit!!! That was definitely not my plan!! But I am hurrying back to the computer to catch up with the writing, editing etc. The only clean possibility here would be to run through gardens around the houses, jumping over fences. Or wade the muddy shore of the lake, but it is also part of people's gardens. I would gladly do it, but there are people everywhere, because it is really amazing warm late summer afternoon.
So I am running next to the asphalt road and filming it to have the proof . But it is not nice. Anyway, I have to cross the road several times here, to avoid the asphalt front yards of the houses. So I did at least 60-80 meters on asphalt today. Not happy about it, my secret dream is to keep asphalt under 1 km the whole Norway. This way I have already over 600m, together with all the road crossings and the necessary town Lyngdal on the day 3. Luckily, soon I get to a bridge and I go straight into the rocky river bed again.
Super nice river, easy technical walking upstream, sometimes wading fresh water, passing several sun bathing families. Super lazy nice Sunday evening. Soon I am by a bridge. There is Radka with a camera, a few shots and I go out of the river. I cross the 5 meters of asphalt road and on a gravel parking spot at the crossroad, I call it a day. Only 3,7 km today and 71 vertical meters.
We are trying to find a good sunny spot for the car, to be able to work and charge the power stations on the last sun. While driving Radka is aksing me if I turned off the inReach tracker and my watch. Dammit again. My watch are is running. Luckily only about 800 meters. so that is why my Strava shows 4,5 km and not 3,7 km. Of course I count only the 3,7 in our daily statistics here on the website. Despite running even more, because I had to repeat the start when I forgot to turn my watch on :)
We find a nicely flat spot by the riverbed which I just passed and until the night I am working on the computer.
These articles and Instagram are killing me. But I have to do it. Or want. From now they will get shorter, because my path will lead mainly on trails, which are known. The first days I went my own way through a pathless landscape, so I had to make the description more detailed.
My plan is to start finally early the next morning. And finally not alone for the first time...