A Trip Down Memory Lane?

The weather forecast said it would be suiteable for hiking, this first day in our summer holiday, so that’s what we planned for.
Oslo is both a capital, and a county, and the backyard is a huge forest! I wanted to go to Nordmarka (The North Forest) as we’d been a lot East so far. Hubby looked at the map and suggested a parking lot and loosely where to go from there.
I very much agreed! Beacuse then, maybe, we could go to a lake called Helgeren and a cabin I visited with some neighbours back in 1988! Hubby just rolled his eyes.
“You and your trips down memory lane, you never seem to recognize the places anyway!” Well… That cabin visit took place during winter, we were pulled on cross country skis by Huskies on a Friday evening, it was dark. And I was 14 years old. I doubted I would recognize anything else but the cabin… 😉 My memory thought the cabin was placed between the forest trail and the lake, but after consulting the newly bought map, and the original map from ’88 glued in my Garfield School Diary (yes, I still got’em all), I realized the cabin was situated above the forest trail and the lake was farther away. How’s that for a good memory?

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Anyway, we did as planned. Parked the car at Hakadal train station and started on the forest trail. The most exciting thing that day actually happened after only 5 minutes. We’d just passed the gate at the beginning of the trail when we noticed a young cow in the middle of the trail. Somehow it had made its way out of the fenced field where the rest of the herd was. Wondered how that had happened, it was a live wire…
Issi was thrilled to see this big animal, she wanted to play! I had to hold her back, hoping the harness would hold, while Hubby tried to “shoo” the cow out on the side so we could pass. The rest of the herd had curiously gathered themselves by the fence. Like they were thinking “Moo, what’s going on..?”

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So we continued…After a couple of kilometers the road splits first once, then once more. The trail going left leads back to my childhood village, but we were taking the trail going right, the Trehørningen trail (“Three Corners”). It leads of course to Trehørningen. Both a farm and a lake. But first we passed between two other lakes, the Elvannet (not possible to translate) and Langvann (Long Lake). The trail goes alongside Langvann, and midways you can see the farm Trehørningen to the right.

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Leaving Langvann behind us, we soon came to another trail split, the Gørja trail/the Sølvviks trail. Gørja is a lake, and Sølvvik translates Silver bay. We entered the Sølvviks trail, and soon realized we had it all to our selves. Everyone riding a bicyckle continues on the Gørja trail, as it leads to a very popular destination called Kikut (“Lookout”). And the Sølvviks trail was truely “The Road Less Travelled”.

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Right… After yet another couple of kilometers I started on the lookout for the cabin. But from the trail it was impossible to see anything else but trees, obviously it was situated to high up and into the forest. Hubby finally found a path seemingly heading in the cabins direction, so we followed it and almost out of the blue, the cabin appeared!
I did recognize the cabin, but not the surroundings. A lot of trees had obviously been cut down over the years. I also recignized the hillside below the cabin, because at my last visit, I kept falling on my skis there over and over again, having a total fit of laughter! Only when you’re fourteen… 😉

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On this summers day however, we sat down on a bench in front of the cabin, having a bite of snack and a drink of water. We were quite tired after walking 11 kilometers from the train station. We didn’t stay more than 15 minutes before moving on. It was time to be heading back to the car.

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And so we walked on and on and on…. Back at the lakes Langvann and Elvannet we had a slight disagreement on where to take a break, so we actually ended up on separate sides of the river running between the lakes. Disagreements put aside, more snack and water had, and on we walked.

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We found a couple of fistsful of cloudberries out on a marsh and put them on one of our drinking bottles. Cloudberries and cream is delicious! 🙂
Down that last hill towards the gate, it felt good knowing the car was not far away. This time there was no sign of any cows on the loose, so hopefully it was back with the herd behind the live wire.
Back home I had to brush Issi thoroughly before we both could rest. She’d had lots of fun jumping and splashing around on the muddy marsh.

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This is where we walked. I’ve marked the trail only TO the cabin. As we had to walk the same route back to the car, the distance can be doubled to 22 kilometers.

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