Trying out the best warmest boots ever in the world!!!!

Getting ready for sleding Sami style!!!

It's back!!!

Well looking out the window this morning, it's coming back!!! Very
excited!!!

What connie brought in finnland....

The most amazing pair of fox mittens! Uber toasty for sledding!!!!

Road trip!

So today, Connie, Trond, Maria and I are off to Finland and Sweden on
a shoppig trip! It's like going to france to buy alcohol, except you
buy everything as it's ALL cheaper than in Norway!!!! But on the way
we had a bit of a traffic jam, behind reindeer!!!! And check our the
road... In enland you have to watch out for patches of black ice, but
here ou don't need to worry about that, you just drive on ice all the
time! But the winter tyres with studs use here are amazing!

My name in ghanese and Korean!!!

What I learnt in school today!

Bartie and finnie much prefer to be inside!!!

Huskies loving the snow!!!

Getting used to life in the snow!

so the winter lifestyle is really starting to become the norm here in Norway. We now have about 4 inches of snow on the ground permenantly in Gargia and much more up in the mountain. The tempurature is hanging around -3. It was told this was the worst tempurature as it is when everything is most slippy as the snow melts a bit and re freezes as ice and there is a lot of slush about, and it is so true! On Saturday i took out the quad to have a play with it on the snow without snow chains and oh my god! It had absolutely no grip, going from 2 days before we could drive down Bascades Mountain pretty fast to being unable to stop! And walking around, even in my awesome Sorel Boots (designed for expeditions to the arctic where temperatures can drop to -75!!) i was still slipping around! However the next morning, temperatures were at -6 and the difference was amazing! You could walk in normal shoes and run without any slipping, the quad could actually turn corners! It was amazing that just -3 degree temperature drop and everything changed!

Well yesterday i also finally got my Pigs on the Deck!!! Its my winter tyres for my car! The reason the Norwegians called it that is in Norsk it is "Vinter Dekk Med Pigg" direct translation - Winter tyre with stud, so i had my first drive yesterday and it does make such a difference, they tyres are very impressive. They dont clear the road here (it is nearly impossible so they dont bother) so you are driving on top of snow and ice, not on the road which is very strange, although my practice drive was a lot slowly that Trond who took out my car! A mechanic from the this area really knows what a car can do in these conditions and it is a lot more that you would expect just by having these excellent tyres on!

This week has also seen the first few trips with the huskies with the sleds! Very exciting and the dogs adore it! They dont have anywhere near as much weight to pull so they are very happy. We are waiting a bit for me to go out on the sleds first time with 8 dogs as we dont have quite enough snow to break properly, so we just need to get a bit more!

I am also learning why Norwegian people have a bad opinion of the British, becuase they get all the worst tv shows you could imagine! From America they get Friends, Project Runway, Letterman, Sex and the City, some pretty good american TV Shows, from Britain they get Holiday Reps to Ibiza, Justin and Colins Home Make Over, Aggie and Kims how clean is your house and some TV so bad, it didnt even make it onto British TV!!! TERRIBLE!!!

Anyway, im off to see how Bartie and Finnie are getting on, Connie very kindly gave them a Moose Leg each this morning! Oh my god they were so excited! Sat there just chewing away on this monsterous bone!!!

Har Det!

Ally

Let it snow let it snow

Huskies training in the snow!!!

Snow!!!

Winter car tyres are now a must, quad bikes almost being swapped for
snow mobiles and sleds, and the Norwegian people finally admitting
it's time for winter clothes!!!

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Check out my blog at http://allybartieandfinnie.blogspot.com

Snow is coming!!!!

SNOW IS COMING

Its a very strange feeling waking up with it now being -3 most mornings and you look around and there is steadily getting more snow on the mountains. 3 days ago there was a little bit just on the highest mountains, and now all the peaks have a deep brilliant covering of snow. It is quite and erie feeling, like you are waiting for something amazing and difficult to come, but this is nature's way of warning you that it is about to come and not go away for 8 months...

Also, the speed of the spring, summer and autumn seasons as what we in England would experience is amazing. When i arrived in August, it was just entering summer, all the grass was brilliant green, the trees full of leaves, flowers blooming and tempuratures as high as 20 degrees C. Within 3 weeks we were in deep autumn with tempertures never above 10 degrees, the deepest orange colours of some of the leaves and the moss and braken on the ground of the mountains had turned a deep purple with the lycen (sorry cant spell that) a bright lime green, almost helping guide the reindeers to it to eat. Now, only 2 weeks since that period all the orange leaves have fallen from the trees leaving a mixture of skeletons and deep green trees that keep their leaves in winter ( i have no idea which is which with the names of different trees) The ground is no longer a thick mud in the forest, but a really hard frost covers every day and the tempurature is now no higher than 3 degrees... and all that change in 5 weeks!!! its quite amazing!

So this weekend we have had a camp of 15 families each with a child with autism plus in the day another 12 families joined us also! So we had 88 for lunch yesterday!!! Madness and we are finding children everywhere, the thing about the Fjellstue is there is so many rooms for them to play hide and seek! They are everywhere!!! Thank god they go tomorrow!

So tomorrow we have to do breakfast and lunch, i am going out with Connie to train the huskies and i think we will stop both teams on the mountain, light a fire and have coffee! A very civilised way to train dogs! Although it is very important for them to learn to stop and lie down as in the Finnmark race that we are training them for, they will stop and sleep in their harnesses on the sled line with around 800 huskies around them... so they really do have to get used to it!!

And finally, my tip of the day, if you ever need to make fire in the woods, find a silver birch tree - the bark stripped off the tree and ripped into little strips if the most amazing firelighter!

Har Det Bra!