Sixteen Loiper members turned up at the Dalseter Hoyfjellshotel for this year’s GB Nordic season organised by our own John Mordue. Loipers Martin Read and Stephen MacShane arrived at the beginning of March and the rest of us turned up a week later on 7th. This was the 3rd time for some of us – it wont be the last! The Dalseter hotel is friendly and comfortable and Grethe, the hotel manageress, made us feel very welcome as usual. There is plenty of good skiing to be had (both hill-touring and cross-country track skiing).
The season had started with an abundance of snow. For our week (7th March) there were well over fifty GB Nordic guests and leaders – we took over most of the hotel rooms and most of the space in the dining room. The skiing was planned on a day to day basis and the leaders were excellent.
Grethe gave us a super professional slide show one evening with some beautiful photos of the Dalseter area taken through the seasons of the year. There were other slideshows too – one from a Scottish couple Neil and Hilary about their cycling travels in Europe and the Western Islands (superbly well done and entertaining).
The week ended a bit strangely with Norway being one of the first countries to go into corona virus lockdown. The hotel adopted a strict hygiene approach (including a latex glove regime in the dining room) prior to shutting down a few days later. All non-Scandinavian nationals were asked to leave the country. Six Loipers (led by Neil Waters) had already left Dalseter on a hut touring trip into the Rondane National Park and another 7 of us (and others in the GB Nordic group) left as planned on 14th. Others (including Loiper Howard Adamson) who had planned to stay for one more week left prematurely on 16th. Oslo airport was very quiet with a much reduced number of flights and hardly any café bars open. We were lucky (most of us) to leave with holiday intact.
