Norway August 31st aka Thursday

 We moved accommodations and to begin with, this felt like a let-down. I really loved Hamn i Senja. The fjord contained all these little islands in it and when the sun was out, the water looked like a tropical turquoise. I felt that the next fjord wouldn't live up to this. And indeed, it looked a bit like it wouldn't at first but I grew fond of Mefjord after a while.

It was a foggy day. The fog came in early on and meant that the drive was featureless. We tried to stop off at places to walk but couldn't find trails. In the end we gave up and got to Mefjord Brygge hideously early and weren't able to check in. But they did point out local trails to us that weren't thick in fog and so we did them.

To begin with, we climbed a hill that overlooked the town and then we went onto a trail so new that the map at the start didn't reflect how it was currently laid out (later on in the trail we found another posted map that was accurate). These trails had been created by locals and they had an air of whimsy about them with cute little houses.

One house included within it tales of the hulder which were weirdly Biblical saying that the hulder were a race born from Eve who was a terrible mother who quite simply couldn't keep track of her naughtier children and decided to just disown them.

The trail was a lot of fun and went up and down hillocks. I learnt that Lisa is just as phobic of spiders as Joe on this trip, maybe more so as I suspect Joe is just making it up, as she screamed and then cried repeatedly "get it off me get it of me" when she walked into a spider's web. Due to this one spider, and the presence of lots of boards across boggy areas, the trail was deemed to be going through Spider Swamp.

That night, we ate at Mefjord Brygge which was still pretty good if not as stellar as Hamn i Senja. Maybe I went a little far that evening with arguing that eating whale meat (which was on the menu but I did not choose it opting for a cow derived steak instead) was not any less ethical than eating cow and might even be better as there was significantly less impact on the climate. It did not go over well that I dismissed arguments that cattle owed their mere existence to us. I think there was another debate too with regards human beings apparently having souls, something I was surprised to hear from someone that otherwise appeared to be non religious.