The Road goes ever on and on; Down from the door where it began;
Now far ahead the Road has gone; And I must follow, if I can;
Pursuing it with eager feet; Until it joins some larger way;
Where many paths and errands met; And whither then? I cannot say.

[JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings]

Friday 30 June 2017

Torsfjorden

The ut.no website/App gives no information about walks starting from the car park where we are currently sitting. However, there's clearly a path and a waymarker, so it only took a look at the map to see where it went and from what the map told me I suspected it may be possible to join two paths together for a circuit.

From the number of people we'd seen heading up the path as we breakfasted and faffed, we knew the path to be popular, but that didn't prepare us for the number of people we could see below us when we descended the other side of the pass towards this gorgeous beach:

Plenty of tents dotted around on the grass

Stopping for elevenses (what with it being half past twelve) on some rocks just above the beach, a fine vantage point,...

...I regretted having a bag of hats and gloves with me rather than my swimming costume and a towel. I imagine it was bitterly cold in the water, but I quite fancy being able to say I've been for a dip in the sea within the Arctic Circle.

Being such a nice spot, elevenses was extended to encompass lunch, then uphill we headed again. It proved to be perfectly possible to join the two paths shown on the map, so it was over a different pass that we returned.

Reaching the junction of paths where we needed to turn back towards Bertie, it struck us that most people do an out-and-back walk. There are paths leading to the beach from three different start points. We used two of those paths and until we turned to loop back to the start, they had been remarkably busy. Once we turned, we were on our own on a boggy, but not eroded, little-trodden path.


Attractive surroundings on the road walk

The final few minutes were a walk along tarmac, but it is a little travelled road. In fact, I think that most traffic is wanting to park in this overfull car park, where at least half of the people coming and going are carrying monster packs (not necessarily heavy, as yesterday we saw someone stuffing a duvet into their pack and today saw someone stuffing in two full sized pillows). We also note that most of the cars bear hire company stickers, suggesting that this walk and the camping spot by the beach are well publicised somewhere, even if it is not on the ut.no map.

The remarkably pleasant outing came in at a modest 4.1 miles with around 400m of ascent.

2 comments:

  1. Wow! Just look at that skyline ridge in. the final photo, and we go on about Skye.

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    1. We admired that ridge at length as we walked back along the road to Bertie, but concluded that to tackle it one would need three things that we are lacking: the equipment, skills and inclination for climbing.

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