Euro Day 55 - Noooooo!

Our last day started with a bit of hectic final packing and tidying before breakfast and dropping Paul at the train station (he was feeling too ill to go to the event), and me to a Jury meeting to complete the verdict on the previous night's protest.  From there it was onwards to the event centre where we all went out for a run.

The summer house at Sponvika 

There have been about 1000 competitors doing the spectator races each day - it's fairly relaxed - no chest numbers and no real hassles if you are late to the start or anything.  Today there was an option of a free horse carriage  ride to the start! Jon took his camera out with him so he got some great photos of the forest. I think I've enjoyed the actual orienteering at this event the most of our 4 orienteering weeks.  

In fact at one stage during my course I unfolded my map and suddenly realised that I only had 2 controls left - our fantasitc trip was all but over. I felt pretty sad for a few moments but it didn't take long to cheer up when I thought about all the fantastic times we'd had. Also I still had to focus on finding the last controls !

About an hour after we all finished the WOC runners started their middle distance final - with the fastest runners starting last.  Both the mens and womens races were really close and not decided until the last runner crossed the line. It was the prefect spectacle and I think the organisers and TV producers (it was live to air on the Norwegian equivalent of the ABC) would be pretty ecstatic with the production! 

Harald and I watching the big screen 

Aside from a fantastic viewing arena the food on offer at the event was all locally sourced and pretty Norwegian.  There were moose burgers and sausages in waffles.  It was also pretty pricey so we all had packed lunches and local chocolate which was nice too - I had my old favourite of brown goats cheese on bread every day -  It's so sweet it's like caramel and I was a bit addicted to it in my Au Pair days.

There's a great expression in Norwegian that they use for when you have a nice time with something - like bar of chocolate or a warm towel from the dryer, or a good book. "å cøse meg" - "to cuddle/comfort myself"  would be the direct translation but there's really no English equivalent. Anyway it would have been the perfect expression to use for the good half an hour I had holding little Ada, the 2nd daughter of Linn, one of the lovely Verde-Thon children who are all grown up now. Linn took Linda's map and went out and had a run while her other daughter Lea did the Small Trolls course with Linda.

Once the event was finally over (and the time limit for protests had expired) we were free to start our final journey up to Oslo. Harald very kindly drove an extra few hours so he could drop us off at the airport hotel where Paul had already interred himself since noon. Our room was not much bigger than a cabin on the Spirit of Tasmania, but with breakfast thrown in and only a few minutes on a shuttle from the airport it was pretty good for our early morning departure.

After a long day and night of flights I am writing this from our very last flight. Wow what a fantastic holiday it has been. We've been so lucky with weather (in hindsight the crazy heat was probably better than constant rain would have been), and we've all had a fantastic time together. We've been looked after by great people in Norway, and it was nice to have Paul with us for a while (until he could no longer keep up with our pace and went down like a sack of potatoes a few days ago).