May, part two

Monday 17th was the Norwegian constitutional day, and we went to London to celebrate. I dropped Odin off on Denton house in the morning, and we took the bus in to London, both dressed in our new traditional clothing, bunads. On our way to Southwark park, we met up with my friend Veronica who lives in Bristol, and went on to the park together. There, it was about thousand Norwegian gathered for the day, and quite a few in bunads. Even both in my "hometown" one, Romsdalsbunaden, and the one I got myself, Hedmarksbunaden. We went in a parade with a 10-person marching band, and had Norwegian hot-dogs and ice cream. There were speaches and a lot of chatting. We met Anne-Marie, who also lives in Oxford, and I also met Eva, who is from the same area as myself in Norway. We became quite tired after a while, so we decided not to go to the evening party, and had dinner on a pub together with Vero, before returning to Oxford. Then to Denton house instead of home, for staying there for the week to look after the house again.

This time we stayed almost a week, and had a lot of nice weather to enjoy the garden, and to have a barbequeue. I spent some time reading and relaxing in the garden, and got a good sun-burn on my back. It was a busy but very enjoyable week on the English countryside. A couple of days after we went back home this time, we were going to Yorkshire to take up on our earlier planned trip. With the very nice weather, camping was also a lot more tempting now. I was a bit in doubt whether to go, because Daniel, that was supposed to help out in the stable, had been ill for a few days, but assured me he would be fine with working when we were in York.

In York, we went to see a few of the things that we missed last time. The Minster looked to me less grand and more modern than many of the others we've seen, but it has a lot of history to it. We also saw "Barley Hall", a medievel great hall that really wasn't as interesting as I expected it to be. We climbed the Clifford Tower to get a view over York and surroundings, and had tea, scones and ice cream in a cafè, before we went back to the camping for some rest before dinner. After dinner, Tollef met up with a friend in York.

During the first whole day in York, I felt a bit cold, but thought it was because of my sunburn. Tollef also had a cold again, so we decided to book in on a B&B for the last night, staying just one more night in our tent. Once again, we ended up on a Campanile hotel, the same as in Cardiff and Runcon/Liverpool. The interesting thing about these is that they look identical, no matter where you are. The reception building with the restaurant is lying in the same direction (and distance!) towards the building with the rooms, and even the colour of the floor carpets and tiles are the same!

The next day I was even worse, and appeared to have a stomach bug, but we still decided to go on with some of our plans. We drove up through Yorkshire moors and to Goathland, which is known as the village of Aidensfield in the TV-series "Heartbeat", or "Hjartet på rette staden" in Norwegian. It was a really nice place, and the moors was really different from any other places we have seen here. We were almost ran down by a huge flock of sheep on the way down to the village. Afterwards, we went through Withby and saw the abbey there, when I got so ill we decided to just stop in Scarborough to have lunch (or, Tollef had while I slept in the car), and go to the B&B. We stopped at a superstore for some pain relief medicine, Ritz crackers and Coke, and camped in the hotel room for the rest of the day. The next day, we talked to NHS direct (National Health Services) on the phone, and the nurse assured me it was "just a nasty bug" and told me to drink enough and take som paracetamol for the pains. Tollef packed and sorted out everything, and I got myself together and in the car for the last 3 hours drive back to Oxford, and straight to bed.

Not the most successful trip, but now we are looking forward to travelling the south of England, and Wales. A map of where we have been to is presented here: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=105059154577559329202.00048274e49f983658653&z=6

And the gallery is regularly updated with pictures from our trips, and from our local surroundings, now turning into spring and summer with all its bloom: http://www.simira.net/gallery/Oxford-2009-2010/

Karianne