Njord Symposium Monday, June 02, 2008

KJELL & JOAKIM WITH NIGEL AND KRISTEN FOSTER
THE BOAT HOUSE WHERE THE SYMPOSIUM WAS HELD
Barry and I had a fantastic time in Norway in glorious sunshine. The symposium was a lot of fun, in a great location right next to the sea. Everyone camped perched amongst boulders on grassy patches, and we ate in an old boathouse right on the water, you could have fallen over backwards into the sea ( but fortunately no-one did!). The setting for the event is a pretty chain of islands and islets dotted on the west coast, from a few square metres in size to a few kilometres squared. Where you launch from is really sheltered and protected from any swell, but the further west you go through the islands, the more exposed it becomes and usually you can find challenging conditions for rockhopping. At the moment the calm weather provided at most a 0.5metre swell and we had 2 great days exploring the outer islands, paddling past colourful old boathouses, and squeezing through narrow gaps between islands. The Norwegian people we met were really friendly, fun and relaxed... we'd love to go back some time to explore the area more and hang out with them. Our group even got serranaded by a boat full of musicians on the way back from our trip, which was very cool! We gave a talk about New Zealand on the Saturday night and Nigel and Kristen Foster made a surprise appearance that evening, on their way to a symposium in Iceland - it was nice to catch up with them.

Thanks to Ronny at God Tur for putting us up ( and depite the weekends festivities, getting up at 5.30am to take us to the airport this morning!). Thanks to Njord for inviting us to the sympoisum. Thanks to Kjell for the photos.

BARRY ON THE BULKEN WAVE