It was not quite the Harry Potter birthday Ria was hoping for, but waking up in a pretty yellow tent nestled in a knee-deep field of soft green grasses and white and pink flowers along a deep and magnificent fjord in western Norway was a pretty close second for Ria.
Ria and I were back in the tandem together, and led the group across the main fjord and into a smaller fingerling fjord, an absolutely magical experience. We had a beautiful day, spending lunch perched on a steep hillside. Liselotte brought out cake and sang the Norwegian birthday song, complete with a little dance, for Ria. It was delightful, and I think that Matt was at least as pleased as Thom and I were, although this may have had to do with seeing Liselotte doing the little dance than with anything else. Or maybe it was because he likes cake.
I gave Ria her gifts at dinner: a frisbee, which turned out to be quite popular with Matt and Jason, and a tiny stuffed hedgehog wearing a party hat. Ria named it Mat, after Matt, but to spare his fragile ego she assured him that the pudgy little hedgehog's name is short for Mathilda. Matt saw right through that. And Liselotte made cheesecake for us, over a whisperlite stove, on the side of a fjord. Amazing.
Our camp site was again on a hillside, and near our tent was a large rock on which a local bird had made a scrape nest and payed two pretty brown eggs. We never did identify the parents of the eggs, but think they are probably gulls or possibly oyster catchers.
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