20230619 A day on Runde

We slept in to eight o clock the next morning on the bare mattress in our open sleeping bags. After a good night's sleep we could better grasp where we'd found ourselves and it was then that I noticed someone had pushed a wadded up blanket into a hole in the concrete wall The family were gathered together around the tiny table in the kitchen enjoying a large breakfast.

We went outside to eat our breakfast and Amanda found two Dutch birders sitting at the picnic table outside. They chatted about the birds they'd seen and what they were called in different languages. We learned the Dutch word for cormorant is 'assholen'. The women had a strange manner. One kept breaking into song as she spoke.

As we settled in, the large family washed all the dishes and checked out at noon, racing up the hill behind the lighthouse.

Amanda went out to the rocks overlooking the ocean with her spotting scope. It was sunny and beautiful and the breeze was warm. She saw pipits displaying and streams of puffins flying low over the water past the point and overhead. We saw gannets, oystercatchers, cormorants, razorbills, and two otters in the water struggling to swallow a fish head. The sunlight shimmered on the surface of the water and the white buildings were in sharp contrast to the deep green hillside dotted with white, pink, and red wildflowers. The grey stone was covered with orange lichen.

I took stock of our groceries purchased at the Bunnpris kiwi; flatbread, carrots, cheese, a chocolate bar, sliced salami, liver paste for $20. Ingrid hiked out to see us before they left, asking about how we were going to handle the lock for the hytte. She wasn't sure if we could lock it without a key. We reassured we would do our best to lock up when we left.

We'd planned on hiking around the island that afternoon and were worried someone would visit while we were away and lock our luggage inside so we ended up taking the giant medieval lock with us when we went out.

We hiked up the cliff and along the ridge coming to a point overlooking the sea cliffs and the ocean below. The rocks below the nesting gannets were stained white. We couldn't see puffins but Amanda was certain she could hear them flying into holes in the cliffs below us.

While sitting there we reevaluated our goals for the trip. We'd originally wanted to drive inland 4 hours to see the cliffs in Dombås but the hytte was so nice and Amanda was so excited about the birds, we decided to stay another night. We would try to do a boat tour the following morning. We could see them down below floating at the base of the cliff and venturing into a little undercut cave.

Amanda booked another night online but it refused to take our credit card to pay for the 4Kr ($0.40) of tea and coffee we'd consumed so far.

From the cliffs we could see oystercatchers, white tailed sea eagles, skua, razorbills, weed-eaters, and meadow pipits. Eurasian lark song filled the air but we couldn't see them. Looking it up we learned they fly up high when they sing. The song was varied like a mockingbird and seemed to fill the air with no discernible source. Hiking back to the hytte after a full day looking at birds we had to stop because an immature skua was standing in the middle of the trail.

After sitting at the ridge for an hour we decided to move on around the edge of the island to look at the colonies from a different angle. The cliffs were so white with poop (and the smell wafted over us a few times) from a distance they seemed to form large poopsicles. An info placard called gannets "the biggest and most majestic sea birds" and said they only started nesting on the island in 1946.

Amanda exhausted my enthusiasm for looking at birds and I spent some time reading and attempting to escape the burning sun. She'd parked herself on the grass above a different sea cliff where she thought she saw a puffin and I decided to continue on around down the path. I told her I would wave her down if I saw anything cool. Up on the ridge there was a lookout point where birders and hikers gathered and I followed the trail down into the jumbled rocks where I discovered all the puffins were hanging out. After seeing the fourth bird fly into it's burrow up close I hiked back up over the ridge and up to the cliff where there was a wooden bench out of the sun and I waited for Amanda to look in my direction.

She took a photograph of me waving her over. This last spot, at the corner of the island furthest from the hytte was full of puffins. We could see them flying in with their beaks full of fish and returning to sea from the hills around and above us. Other birders, one man carrying a camera lens about the length and weight of a bazooka struggled down the rocks to find a good point to see them.

Amanda took hundreds of pictures hoping for a few lucky hits. The puffins didn't linger but flew straight in to their holes and they didn't linger when they left either so she got a lot of practice taking pictures at full zoom using the smallest focal point.

Though it didn't get dark we ran out of food and water and decided to head back to the hytte. Everyone told us it rains most of the time on Runde but we were so hot we stripped down and swam in the foul smelling sea water down by the boat launch.

After our swim we decided to wash our clothing and rinse off the sea water by taking a sponge bath in the laundry room. Though we had the hytte all to ourselves, we locked the laundry room door, stripped down, and filled a bucket with water. The water from the sink faucet was warm but when I moved to the other sink to fill a bucket to dump over my head and shoulders I discovered that faucet was ice cold and I let out a high pitched cry as it spilled down my back.

Afterward bathing we put on our remaining clothing, started the washer, and stepped out of the laundry room to discover a French couple had just arrived for the evening and probably heard my cold water ululations.

It was only 7:15pm and we were still waiting for our clothing to dry but Amanda said she was going to bed. She was cold and worried she might be getting sick.

While Amanda napped I pulled the clothing from the washer and hung it on the line stretched across the room above the heater. The French couple had left some meat searing on the stove top unattended and the whole house started to fill with smoke. I hung around to see if they were watching it and then decided it would be weird to turn off their food so I decided to hang out at the top of the stairs to make sure they didn't burn the house down. A few minutes later one of them came in to stir the pot.

I had a bunch of ebooks on my phone and I ended up reading 'The Long Weekend Life in the English Country House 1918-1939' by Adrian Tinniswood. Rich people have apparently always been racist assholes but it was interesting to read about the weird social rules among the English gentry. There were prescribed days of the week in which you should visit, set lengths of time to stay, and various rules about ball dancing, singing, and playing musical instruments.

The book mentioned two mixed drinks that were popular with the people at the time and I took notes of the recipe because they sounded interesting.

The White Lady

Gin
Cointreau
Lemon Juice

Paradise

Gin
Apricot Brandy
Orange Juice

The book also mentioned a work of art painted on the wall in one of the eccentric rich people houses. The little black and white image looked interesting and I took note of the name. It was called Elephants in different attitudes by Jose Maria Sert and it was painted on the wall at Port Lympne. I found a reproduction of the mural online:

Before bed I wandered around the lighthouse, sketching the view, and finding some pools full of rusted iron gutters and roof tiles. I took a picture of a framed drawing in the hytte showing how they exploded the old lighthouse. Someone drew a little troll running away from the blast.