Day 20-2. A rest day in Voss.
With our exertions over for the day we returned to the tent to embrace and celebrate our mid-afternoon dip. Damae lay in the sun and promptly fell asleep whilst I fiddled for a bit with my solar panel and battery charger both of which had failed consistently to recharge my camera and Psion batteries during the trip. This had irritated me since Sweden, and on returning the items to Bever I discovered that the combination would never have worked as the charger needed more power than the solar panel could supply. Also the panel itself was way too small to work usefully in the weak northern sun in Northern Europe. I would have needed one an order of magnitude bigger to have had a chance to charge up my AA NiMH batteries.
As I had bought the combination on the advice of a salesperson, after explaining where we were going and what we wanted to charge up, they offered me a complete refund. This pleased me very much and I accepted immediately. It would have been nice to have known that before I went on holiday or not buy the items at all but this was the best result I could have hoped for. So top marks to Bever on that score for some good customer service.
Still back in Voss we whiled away the hours. I tried to entice some sparrow sized birds to eat breadcrumbs off my hand but they were too wary to come that close before I started setting up the new bike computer. Shortly after it was set up and tested, Dame decided to air our sleeping bags, and as she started fluffing mine in the air, my missing Cateye 7 computer dropped out of it. This cheered me up no end, and I had a new spare bike computer into the bargain. Our handlebar bags almost always join us in the inner tent as they contain our valuables and I put my computer in it in the evening. I guess I must have stowed the computer in the bag and it fell onto my sleeping bag, working its way in as I went to bed. My mood improved, we came up with a plan to cycle up to Mjølfjell or Upsete and back the following day and then to leave our cycling at that.
The successful afternoon was assured when I finally discovered the source of the tapping that had been with us all afternoon. In a tree above us there was an apprentice woodpecker hard at work practicing his art. The noise rang out over the campsite but made little impression on the camera as I videoed the perpatrator. Well at least that mystery had been solved.
Some time after tea I felt the urge to cycle round the lake. We got about five kilometres along and realised that soon the sun would leave the valley and it would get cold. Also we had the wind with us which meant the return leg would be somewhat harder work. After taking some pictures in the beautiful evening sun of the views around us we returned to the camp, and had an early night. In order to beat the warm sun on the way up we had decided to leave early the following morning.