Rescue and re-build!

Dear Friends and Allies of the Orkney Boat, 

I know you have been worried; my apologies. In the days that followed our rescue and rebuild we have had to pace the path in order to make up our miles!

I had expected a kind response from the Granavollen pilgrim centre but I did not expect the action that answered my plea for help... Jane listened to my distressed description of events and then she simply said “I will help you.” We each ate the doorstop foccacia sandwich that we were given, then Jane rallied Inga - a pilgrim centre volunteer - who drove us to the location where we had left The Orkney Boat and its sorry trailer some 24 hours earlier. As we bumped down the track, unfamiliar to Inga, she remarked, “and now I am a pilgrim myself because to be a pilgrim is to take a new path.” It looked as though both stone and trailer had been undisturbed, my note unread. In fact, both were basking in the sunshine.

It was marvellous to have stone, trailer and walkers together again and en-route to a hardware store. When the depth of the replacement wheels turned out to be too great for the axle we had, Inga threw us straight back into the car and drove to the yard of her car mechanic son-in-law. Without fuss, almost without comment, the trailer was lifted aloft from the boot and fashioned with a new axle of rebar. She is fit to roll again, but I will need to go cautiously. "Marianne" (so called because she has the word FAITHFULL - of the tool brand - embossed on her frame) will not survive the loss of another wheel, as these ones are welded on. “The weather is like the children” said Inga as we drove back to the Pilgrimssenter in the rain, “it is crying one minute and laughing the next.”

The help and support offered by Granavollen, not only solved our practical issues, but was so remarkable and affirming that we will most certainly be going on! Nor did all the encouragement from home fall on deaf and jaded ears. TUSEN TAKK. I can not help but think how food, drink, accommodation, transport, two new pneumatic wheels, and a hand made axle plus labour FAR exceed what can be held in a scallop shell!

Although the previous two blog posts read like a catalogue of woe and hardship, it has not entirely been so. We have had moments of great success and satisfaction.

On Saturday, when we finally reached Nordenov, I had abandoned my artistic duty for a while to focus on making a crisp sandwich, when I noticed that a woman who had passed by a few times seemed keen to talk. This was Nina’s standing.

On Wednesday, before setting out on our new wheels, we were fortunate enough to be offered a tour of the Glasslaven Arts Centre, neighbour of the Pilgrimssenter and the Sosterkirkene (sister churches.) Granavollen, in the Hadeland region of Norway, is a particularly idyllic area - the very best to be trapped in, I would say. When we were back on the road, with a renewed sense of urgency and determination, our route took us through sparkling pasture and farm land and past a huge enclosure of 30 or more huskies, all hollering and leaping. Perhaps this is dog sledding territory in the winter! They put up a noise that seemed to say, “look at this idiot human doing a dog’s job!” I have a similar thought when I pass horses with The Orkney Boat in tow. I certainly now understand a horse’s need to toss its head about in its bridle. We climbed all day and were rewarded with this pilgrim teepee-equipped with water in the corner of a sheep enclosure.

I’ve a feeling the stone might have been extensively licked by the sheep that night and maybe also by the cows we met the following night. Despite being laid low by illness for a morning and a nervous power-walk along the side of a main road for a stretch, we continued to make good progress. We reached Hogkorset (the highest point in the Hadeland region at 757 metres) to find the following story.

“This route is known as Kjolvegen. Kjol is Norwegian for keel. Kjolvegen is mentioned in King Sverre’s saga... he had the keels of his ships pulled up here, across the ridge between Randsfjorden and Einavatnet, and some believe that this is how the name originated.” And now we had brought another boat of a sort up here!

I have reconfigured the harness, which is helping to distribute the weight around my body but the switching between rain and sun means that the mozzies find exactly what they love - warm, wet humans in light shirts that present no barrier at all! I have learned not to rest at the bottom of a hill - better to get up and rest afterward - and not start mentally stopping before the moment that you actually stop.

I often glance back at the stone while we are rolling. Despite all the photos taken of it, despite the narrative that is accumulating around it and the mythology that we are creating for it, The Orkney Boat, visibly, is unchanged, ever solid, ever patient, ever anchoring. We have walked 100 miles through Norway. We have another 350 ahead of us.