Corona restrictions were again reducing our freedom, but some arrangements were still allowed (December-21). We had expected a cancellation, but the concert with Travelling Strawberries on Ladekaia was carried through. Ladekaia is an eatery and concert venue located at the hiking path Ladestien. This old german baraque and quay from WWII has a charming, rough style. The renovated baraque got Trondheim Municipality’s price for “Good practice in housing design” in 2016. It can be highly recommended if you want a coffee and cinnamon roll on your sunday trip or a dinner and concert in the evening. The place has a big outdoor serving area, where you can admire the view of the fjord or study the WWII structures, including railroad tracks on the quay.
This is how nice the place looked this December evening:
But first a bath! We didn’t want to create attention and chose not to jump from the quay. East of Ladekaia there is an idyllic little bay where you can take a bath undisturbed, even without reserving a spot with your towel hours in advance:
From the bay Ladekaia looks like Soria Moria Castle from Norwegian fairy tales:
We had learned a little trick from Taru and Klas on our last bath: bring something warm to stand on. Our seat pads are hereby renamed standing pads!
Everything OK so far. But those small rocks… We should have brought neoprene socks or sandals as well, this wasn’t too comfortable for the feet. The advantage could be that we forgot that not only the feet where cold?
The big suspense was in the picture production. Would the GoPro manage to capture any of the nocturnal activities? The answer was: not quite! But that wasn’t really the camera’s fault, more a case of “human failure”, as the nice way of saying it goes. Firstly, we had underestimated distances and light. Secondly, the camera tipped over before we got into the water, without us noticing! This time we are therefore unable to provide real bathing proof, only photographical gems like this:
Notice the ray of light in the water going diagonally upwards to the right. That was from the flashlight meant to light us up during the bath. About half of the people present thought we most likely almost certainly for sure had pictures, so we didn’t need another round in the water.
A (not taken on purpose, he just went in the way) picture of Knut, at least proving that we actually where in the bay at some point:
And the bath itself? With crystal clear water, the surface plane as a mirror and veeery shallow until some meters out: Magnificent!
Next: Time to go to the concert and eat christmas food. Music from The Julekalender, Beatles and others and as extra treat in the end: “O helga natt”. Not a dry eye in sight.
Great atmosphere!
…until we checked the pictures and realized we didn’t have any of the bath! Of course we concidered taking another round after the concert. But bathing in cold fjords in the darkness after wine and aqua vita is something even we don’t recommend, so we got right into a taxi home.
Some tension two days later though, when we realized we forgot the backpack somewhere! But thanks to good service from TrønderTaxi we could pick it up on Monday, with GoPro and everything intact. Towels and swimming gear were a little smelly, but we can’t blame anyone else for that. That’s how the days go by…