Walking Norwegian wood: no fairies, no Beatles, some zombies.

We went for a nice long walk in a Norwegian forest today. I would have been humming Norwegian Wood had I not found out it was about cheap wood panelling rather than anything to do with lovely old-growth forests.

The North of Oslo is surrounded by lakes and forests and is a traditional outdoor playground for Norwegians. On a Summer day, like today, they are out in droves walking, running, riding and swimming. In Winter the same tracks are used for cross-country skiing and other cold-weather activities.

It was a lovely long walk though a fantastic forest of pine and birch trees. They grow so thickly that the ground is covered in a thick carpet of moss and there are mushrooms and toadstools everywhere – a real fairy-tale wood. I think it would have required eating some of the funghi to end up seeing any fairies though.

We went off on a set of obscure tracks and for a long time saw not another soul. Then we reached our halfway point – a cafe designed to be a halfway point for a huge range of activities in the surrounding area. Suddenly we were amongst a couple of hundred healthy Norwegians also taking a break from their Sunday activities.

It was a great way to spend a day. And in our view all those many travel-writers and bloggers who can’t see any reason to go to Oslo should take a walk from Sognsvann.

Sadly, however, our best efforts failed to find a beetle we could photograph to complete this post.

*****

The boys created haiku for their schoolwork today. Inspired by some behind-the-scenes activity at one of our favourite blogs, one of their topics was zombies. Here is Declan’s:

Zombies invade Prague,
Green corpses from dark death rise,
They will eat your brains.