NORTH SEA SUMMER

After a night with the nightingales (who were still singing in the morning) I headed off along the coast towards Kristiansand and Arendal.    Boat in garden - Lillesand It was a quiet sunny day and there were holiday homes and boats everywhere.   I began to think that there might be more boats than Norwegians.   By the time I reached Kristiansand it was feeling like summer.   I wandered around the town a bit and then set off to find the campsite out near the airport.   It was in a massive open field by a main road and was the most expensive I stayed on in Norway – more than twice the price of the excellent one at Sandnes the previous night. The girl on the check-in assured me it was the best in Kristiansand and I believed her because I’d been told the other one was more like a swamp. Map. The next day I continued on towards Arendal, inland at first to reach a bridge, then back to the coast. Lilac was coming into bloom, and dog-roses, and I ke...

Sitting on a bike all day I needed to find something to do with my brain at times.   This was especially the case when dealing with steep hills, where I started to find snatches of songs insinuating themselves into my mind and repeating over and over again.   The first of these was a song called ‘Nancy of Yarmouth’ in a version recorded by a Suffolk singer named Cyril Poacher back in the 1960s. I don’t know why it got into my head, but it did, and I thought I’d better learn the whole thing, so I found a transcription of the words on my phone then copied them onto a piece of paper and slipped it into the map case on my bar bag.  The pace of the song seemed to fit the rhythm of my pedal strokes perfectly, especially when going uphill.  And of course Yarmouth was over on the other side of the North Sea.  Learning this song took me through most of Norway, and when I wasn’t practising the song I devoted myself to learning to count in Norwegian. It was a ...