A cabin in Hjemeland.

Norway week 3

After visiting Stavanger we stayed a couple of days in the small town of Jorpeland…finding a little bakery that became our regular coffee spot. The weather started to improve and I enjoyed a walk across to a nearby island. It’s now a leisure park but had been inhabited since the Iron Age right up to modern times when it was used for summer grazing for farm animals from the mainland. One horse loved it so much he would head down to the waters edge each Spring, in readiness to be rowed back across by boat!

An hour or so further north we booked a fancy cabin for a week’s stay in Fister, a tiny fishing village on the west coast overlooking the Fisterfjord. It’s incredibly peaceful and serene. The landscape here is much gentler and being on the coast more open than the Lysefjord. Across the water a flotilla of islands stretched far away underneath an endless sky. I set up a mini studio and spent hours watching that sky…drawing and painting. Porpoise regularly patrolled each evening and bats flitted about above the verandah.

It was interesting too to see the various boats passing by, many locals choosing to commute on water rather than on land to the other islands and to work in Stavanger.

We explored, walking nearby and driving across to one of the islands. We walked around a lake listening to all sorts of birdsong but the birds themselves remained elusive to our eyes. On the way back we spotted a mink and sat a while to watch it rock-hopping its way along a water’s edge.

Well rested, restocked and everything washed, we set off again for the long drive north though some of the most incredible landscapes I’ve ever experienced.