Monday morning the weather looked good, and following the instructions from the hostel I made my way in to town and then on to ile de Re, a 30km island just 3km offshore and surrounded by good sand beaches. As I walked along in the shallow water, wistfully staring out across the Atlantic, I was approached by one of the four girls from the bus, "Are you travelling alone?", "yes I am", "where are you from".....

   We walked along comparing New Zealand and Norway and talking about Jotunheimen which is the next major stop on my tour and where two of the girls go regularly. One of them even has a cabin up there, very cool. They left to find a shop and I walked along further for a swim. When it came to be my turn to find lunch I discovered I was a really long way from the shops so I took the beach route to the market and tried a cross-island route to get back to the water. Once again my internal compass was on the fritz and although I came out at exactly the right point on the beach that I wanted, it involved a much longer road walking section under baking hot sun than I had intended.

   I joined the girls for a sun bathing session and watched as more and more people arrived as the tide went out. Soon there were nearly a hundred of them all digging in the muddy sand and under rocks looking for some sort of local seafood thing.

   In the evening I met a group of English lads from Devon, here on a two month train ride, they were heading for the beach with more than a few beers. When the girls finally got ready we also headed for the beach, but got some pizza on the way as it was now 9pm and none of us had eaten since the beach. Kirstin, Kiristina, Matrina, Julie and I met the four guys (Sam, Alan, Chris and Chris) and when all the beers had been drunk and only the pizza crust was left we went to a local bar for a few rounds of table football. My skills in fussball are sadly not existent, so I talked with whom ever I could and watching in awe and amusement as Alan managed to convince a local that we were drinking with Will Young (the winner of the Popstar TV show in England). Now that I have looked him up on the net I can see that one of the Chris' is a dead ringer for Mr Young.

   A bit of drama in the hostel last night. When returned to my room at about 3am I found a guy coma-ed out in the toilets. I found the night watchman and he decided to kick the guy out. By fluke he was sharing my room so for the next 15 mins I heard the two talking and then the drunken guest noisily packing his bag. Just as he left another person asked him something and the guy took off like a rocket. The asker followed pretty quickly and everyone woke up. It turned out that the guy who was being removed had another bag stashed behind the bed and in it were some clothes he had stolen from the others in the room. At this news I made a single leap from my top bunk to the cupboard that had my bag and everything important to me right now. I found everything in order but it gave me a big fright, so I spent the rest of the night holding my small back pack with all my valuables and waking at every slight noise.

   This morning I am off to San Sebastian in Spain. The girls are heading there too and I should be getting to the train station to make our reservations. Another train ride doesn't sound too exciting, but we will be travelling through Bordeaux, and I will have the chance to learn a few more Norwegian words before hiking over their mountains later this week.