Our New Year’s Resolution was to try to always combine pleasure with business. I am very lucky that I enjoy my work but I haven’t always taken advantage of being in the places I’ve visited.
Thus it was that we flew to Oslo nearly 48 hours before our first appointment at the GREAT Trade Mission to Norway.
After a great supper (with a Nordic nod rather than being full-on covered in pine needles and nestling in reindeer moss) we slept well and were up and raring to go on what turned out to be a maritime museum extravaganza.
The Fram Museum led us through the tribulations and challenges of being Antarctic explorers with its success heavily based on clever design work and forward planning.
The Kon-Tiki Museum was the (polar) opposite- the success of the voyage based on sheer determination and very little preparation.
And finally the Viking Longships’ collection featured 3 ships that had been discovered in burial mounds but no one seemed at all sure what it all meant.
Our subsequent Meet the Buyer event went well and enjoyably, ditto our Norwegian jumper buying spree.
Look out for David wearing his sweater and hat around the new Saltcote: he’s the one that looks like the cover of a 1960’s knitting pattern.
(See left, where he is back home giving our beach hut a lick of paint in the sunshine.)