Beside the Seaside

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In Which Nostalgia Grabs Me By The Throat

September 10, 2006 by Mike

Risør

Route: Kristiansand - Lillesand - Grimstad - Arendal - Risør

The Family With used to arrive in Kristiansand at the start of the summer holidays, 'fresh' off the boat from Harwich.

Remember the 70s? Fred. Olsen's North Sea ferries were grey, passengers' faces were invariably green, and Kristiansand was impossibly big, glamorous and exciting. Now the ferries have been painted scarlet, there were no passengers to be seen today, and the whole town was quiet as a church mouse. I suspect it stays that way until the summer tourist season returns in June.

It's the size of a large village, too - so it isn't just Penguin biscuits or the money in my piggy bank that seem to have shrunk since I was a kid.

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Yesterday's beautiful ride was going to take some beating, but today's roads had an unfair advantage. The cliffs and forests yesterday took me by surprise - it's always special to come across incredible scenery you had no idea was round the corner.

But today I've been on roads I've known and loved since I was baby. The dark, dense forests hide characters from every Brothers Grimm fairytale; country lanes so gentle and country cottages so cozy that you expect to see a sign for 'Nutwood' and Rupert the Bear and his chums at any second; slate grey lakes as flat and still as a mirror; the recurring outcrops of rock, some jagged, some smooth, some gleaming with fool's gold, others moving from pink to orange in the warm late afternoon sun.

Today's roads also take me closer to Kragerø, and the little white house beside the seaside where I spent blissful summers as a child.

I can still feel beneath my bare feet every blade of grass and each slat of the wooden footbridge with the rope handrail out to the thin rocks with the diving board and the seaweed, smell the gravel hot under a bright summer sun, the smooth, gummy mussels we used to catch the crabs that scuttled endlessly in a pale yellow tin pot, taste the raspberries and the rips and the full-fat milk (remember that?) and I can sense with every fibre of my being the way the old striped bathrobe feels when Mum wraps it round me after jumping into the sea before eating breakfast on the terrace of the little white house beside the seaside.

As I get closer to a place I haven't seen for a quarter of a century, two thoughts:

1. If you cry when you get there, Mike, that's OK.
2. Is this whole trip, this entire motorcycle journey from Murmansk to Sochi (or Antioch) (or wherever), giving up my job and giving up my flat and leaving friends and family at home, years of dreaming and months (well... days) of planning, 31 or 32 international frontiers, Arctic nights in a hammock fergoodnesssakes and who knows what else, is this whole trip simply an elaborate justification for going back to Kragerø to see the little white house beside the seaside?

--

Before that, I stop in magical Lyngør, which is where my Mum spent her childhood summers and I think she'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

--

I dozed on top of a rock overlooking a still, deep lake and with dense forest on the far shore - may as well get the best of all the features in one go. I sent a txt msg to my brother describing where I was.

"Sounds PERFECT. I can picture the scene," he replied.

"WhatEVER you do, don't picture the scene. I'm stripped to my yellow-and-green Y-fronts."

Please, please don't ask for photographic evidence.

--

To Risør.

Mum must have spent some of those childhood summers in Lyngør with her best friend Berit.

They also shared motherhood summers in Kragerø, which is where Berit's son Thomas and I created The Bogeyman one long, hot summer about 100 years ago. We fished and swam and dangled mussels to catch crabs and explored and steered the wooden rowing boat to the shop down the coast at Stabbestad. And now I'm about to meet him for the first time in over 25 years.

He's married with kids and lives and teaches in the middle of this wonderful south Norwegian coast. So I'm a little bit apprehensive.

All Thomas knows is that I've given up work to ride a motorbike and I suspect he's a little bit apprehensive of what I'll look and act like.

His wife Anne-Lisa has probably never heard of me before and now I'm coming to stay for the night so she's probably a bit apprehensive too.

And...? It's brilliant to see him. Thomas looks about three days older than he did in 1979 and somehow we're chatting and joking instantly... It's brilliant to see them: Anne-Lisa is funny and charming and beautiful; their son Peder is the coolest 12-year-old and also makes the best omelette; a pretty good combination, you'll agree, it almost makes up for him wearing a Manchester United shirt.

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(Anna-Lisa had already gone to work when the camera came out)

And they've kindly invited me to stay, so I get another night in a real bed with sheets and everything. Bloomin' luxury.

Comments

By thomas, anne lise & peder | September 13, 2006 7:55 PM

Nice to see you after all these years! We will follow you on your journey.

By Kizz | September 14, 2006 10:09 AM

Your photos are amazing... and how smiley are you!!!! Having the time of your life, right?

Take care. K x

By kc | September 14, 2006 7:34 PM

I am saving the read ...but have really enjoyed the views! Memory fjord and all that kinda thing..

By Humpty | September 15, 2006 10:15 AM

Still reading Mikey and loving the map!

Hope you manage to cope OK when you get to Sweeden... xx

By MWAH | September 17, 2006 6:18 AM

Hi Miiiiiiiiikkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkeeeeeeeeeeee, immensely enjoying the view from my laptop. Wish I could be puttputting along with you for a spot of fishing although its hot and sunny in my hemisphere. Thrilled that you used the word "fancypants" too. What an underrated word. Take care of you. Love and mwahs. KC

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