Søgne
Weather: warm, sunny, ~26°; rainy in the evening
Kilometers on bike: 0 km
First time I have slept through the night without problems. I have breakfast with Jane, Trond and their kids. Their boy, Sander, is hiding behind the entry tarp of the tent and loudly singing the same songs over and over again… Very amusing, obviously drives his parents mad, because he obviously sings in the car as well. 
After the breakfast, I help them getting their stuff packed and I say goodbye to them. Meanwhile Stefan, Thorsten and Katja break their camp as well. They want to go to Kristiansand and take a ferry. I give them the hint with the “cheaper” ferry to Hanstholm.
My neighbours from Bergen will leave today, too. They are on their way to visit some friends. I have some smalltalk with them and the woman advises me to go to Lista, because it’s more beautiful than in the Sørland. And I could get a new saddle on my way through Mandal. A while later, her husband returns and says there will be a partial solar eclipse between 10:30 and 11:30. Because we don’t have those special glasses to directly observe it, he improvises an observationstand from branches, dark plastic foil with a hole. When you now hold a white paper beneath it, you can see a small sun and how the moon begins to cover it. It’s very small, so he gets the idea to get his binoculars. Now we get a bigger picture of the sun and the moon. Everyone is happy.
One after another the other campers leave from “my” meadow. After a while I am the only one left, resting in the cool shadows of the wood. Well, there will certainly some other arrive today late afternoon or in the evening. My sunburn burns like fire. I avoid getting too much sun over the day. Not as easy when you’re doing an outdoor trip.
Later on, more campers arrive. With them, a young couple from Rheine, Jörg and Andrea. They drove through parts of Norway with a rented caravan. On their way, they had a major breakdown: the brake tube burst. Gladly they were on a parking lot when that happened. A day before, they were in the mountains… We have a nice time and they got chocolate!
An older but very fit looking couple on bikes arrive. Lightly packed and we wonder if they are Germans. Somebody told me, you can always recognise a German biker because he got Ortlieb backrollers. Well, they also got a lightweight Vaude-tent… I go and check. They are from the Netherlands. Obviously they are taking the same route. We talk about optimising baggage and maps. They got a nice bike map of the Nordsjøvei, which I intend to get from a bookshop the other day.
My evening meal is not that tasty. I combine a dried forest mushroom soup with Basmatirice to get me an Outdoor Forest Mushroom Risotto. Well, not that tasty as it sounds.
Back to Jörg and Andrea. We chat and they show me their vacation photos on their laptop. Outside the caravan it slowly begins to rain. During the night, the rain becomes stronger. I guess I prefer the pelt down of the rain on my tent over the drunken singing of my Danish tentneighbours. I don’t sleep much that night.
Tags: Åros camping, Solar Eclipse, Søgne
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