A night in a simple hut

I am staying in Stalsbergsvea, where there are a couple of simple huts close to the owner's house. The huts are nice, with one major disadvantage. The toilet is a couple of hundred metres away up the hill that one came down to get here.

The day started well enough, although having to climb 130 m over a kilometre and a half to rejoin the formal trail took half an hour. That made it a pretty slow start to the day.

The walk itself seemed to spend a fair amount of time on asphalt road, interspersed with short stretches of Farm Road or Forest track. There were some short climbs, normally quite steep, to get high up on the valley wall. The final stretch of this was crossing a saddle that looked like it might have been a shortcut down the Valley. As a walker, some of the shortcuts lose their attraction because they are so steep and difficult to negotiate.

Along the way, we passed Skåden Gard, the place where I stayed on my first night out of Lillehammer when I walked this route in 2012. This year, it has taken me a day and a half to get to the same spot my younger self took a day to walk.Read more