Emerald Mirror.

What a change overnight! Around 3am I woke up to heavy, heavy rain and a rather impressive-sounding thunderstorm! A's tent held out really well considering the sheer amount of water pelting from the sky, and we stayed completely dry. We had a long lie and the rain lessened significantly, so we had our breakfast and packed up the tent in nothing more than a light drizzle.

As we left Evje, the drizzle had turned to low-hanging mist for our drive to Sirdal, which is really just as beautiful as bright sunlight in a funny way. It suits the heavy mountains and BIG scenery of Norway. It clings to the pine trees, rises from the fjords and encloses waterside towns in a thick shawl of cloud. Several times I wished we could have stopped to take photos of the pockets of mist sinking into dips like bowls of porridge, but the mountain road we were on was narrow with few opportunities for pulling over. We passed through beautiful scenery, lots of signs for elk (complete with bullet holes from what I can only imagine are frustrated, unsuccessful elk-stalkers) but none of the real thing, spectacular houses and cabins and shade after shade of greeny-grey.

M and I both know Sirdal, although M has been there many more times that me. He calculated he has probably spent about 9 weeks of his life there. For me, it is special as it was the first place I ever stayed in Norway with M, two years ago. It's a lovely place, and after touring 1200 km of new places, nice to see somewhere we recognised. Somehow the day had crept away from us and we realised we were starving, so we headed to Høyfjellshotell in Sirdal, next to Fidjeland ski centre.

We were only planning on staying for lunch, but ended up booking a room for the night as we were aware of our wet tent and the low-hanging cloud... What a treat after 5 days of camping! The hotel was lovely; the room great with lovely views and a nice clean, soft bed. M and I had a swim in the pool (we were the only ones in there - millionaire's swimming!) and a shower, got changed and headed out to Dorgefoss waterfall. The waterfall rushes down between two narrow, high rock faces, with a boulder wedged right in the middle of the crevice and smashes into a narrow river at the bottom. The river is pockmarked with numerous kettles (potholes) that form deep plunge pools of swirling turquoise water. Beautiful but menacing. The waterfall comes somewhere in the middle of a run-off for a nearby hydrodam, and sometimes a wall of water suddenly gushes from the top - I've never seen it happen but would love to - from a distance!

We picked up some booze for our 'hotel bar' - a sink full of cold water (we're classy Scots) - and headed back to the hotel for dinner. On our return, the car park that had been utterly deserted when we left was FILLED with Mazda MX-5s. The Mazda MX-5 club of Norway (Maita) were staying at the hotel. The car park looked amazing - like a showroom - although after spotting 9 identical cars in an identical shade of red, I can't imagine how the owners could accurately guess which was their own motor the following morning!

We had a couple of drinks in the ACTUAL bar of the hotel, where we chatted to the Chairman of the car club, and then back to our room and our comfy, comfy bed. We'll both sleep well tonight - what a bright spark M is for deciding to book a room for the night!