Cycling the Kystriksveien - Day 8 home cycling Kystriksveien, 2006 Day 8 Updated 26 November 2006.

05/08/06 Beach combing at Nausthaugen

A rest day today. I am up at 08:20, the others an hour later. The very efficient underfloor heating made it a bit too warm for Janet last night; she had to keep getting up to open one of the large windows because she couldn't find a way to get the floor to cool down!

Much cooler today and overcast.

Skippy The Bush Kangaroo is our breakfast television - Sir John Staunton, the famous photographer, has slipped descending a cliff and lies injured. Lisa - a visting dance student - is due to audition for a role as a Kawakawa bird at the Sydney Opera House. Can she and Sonny save Sir John with enough time left for Jerry to fly her by helicopter to the audition? It's thrill-a-minute fare, shame they don't have re-runs in the UK.

Still life on Leka

We spend the morning happily beachcombing and building a collection of objects on the strand below the house. I start a conversation with a grizzled-looking fisherman who is chipping rust off his boat, which is drawn up in a beach hut on the shore. After a few sentences in diffident Norwegian we switch to English, and it transpires that he was in our home town last week, dropping off his daughter at the Law School. Coincidences abound here.

Leka is famous for its rocks - particularly its Ophiolite complex, the red rock which is seen everywhere on the island. When the clouds lift we get a much better view of the cliffs at the end of the bay. There's a red splash of paint on one outcrop below which marks a famous eagle's eirie to which a young girl was carried one afternoon seventy odd years ago. The three year-old was playing on the lawn outside her house in the bay while her parents took a nap after lunch. When they came down, she'd gone! They organised a thorough search of the area with other folk nearby, and found one of her shoes in a field below these crags. Incredible as it may seem, she'd been carried up to a nest on the cliff above by the eagle, and was rescued quite intact by two brave locals later in the afternoon. She's apparently alive and well and living in Rorvik.

The red splash of paint near the centre marks the eagle's nest

After lunch we do some shopping, and go for a swim in an inlet at the end of the lane from the Kowalk's farm which Ann recommended to us yesterday. The sea water is warmed a little by the sun where it sits in pools at low tide but it's pretty chilly!

Chicken supreme for supper, with banana custard to follow - we have a bit too much fresh food to carry over the next day or two, so we are taking the opportunity to use it up now.

I spend the evening on the porch, removing a buckle from the rear wheel of my bike and shortening the chain by four links, which seems to solve the jumping problem.

home cyclingKystriksveien, 2006 Day 9

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