A bear with a sore head

After lunch, we decided to drive out to Pasvikdalen (the Pasvik valley) initially to find the viewpoint Høyde 96 from which the ugly Russian mining town of Nikel, some 40kms away, can be seen.

However, the valley is one of the last wilderness areas in Europe and known for its big bear population. Apparently there are about 20 big bears living there and you should be able to spot one anywhere in the valley. However, few actually have been spotted. Most Norwegian bears live along the border with Finland and wander between the two countries.

We saw a road sign advertsing a bear cave and could not resist investigating further. A short while later the small gravel road ended and a single footpath lead into the forest. We had to continue on foot. Undeterred we continued, safe in the knowledge that all we had to do if we came across a bear was to bare our white backsides. This is an old tip farmers would swear by. It would have been a very enjoyable stroll in an admittedly fairly dense forest had it not been for the mosquitos which were almost unbearable (pardon the pun).

The footpath continued on and on over streams (particular hotspots for the mosquoitos), around bolders and past ancient trees and we started to debate whether we should just call it a day and return to the car. Just as we 
were about to call it a day, we rounded a bend to eventually find the bear cave - hurrah!

It had been abandoned for about 20 years and so Morten jumped in to get a closer look

Unfortunately, there was a dense cloud of mosquitos at the bear cave entrance and Morten paid a heavy price for his bravery

In the old days people would hunt bear in the winter time and catch it in its den. They would simply see where the damp rose up from the snow and that was the sign there was a bear living there.

We marched double quick time back to the car to minimse further prolonged exposure to the mozzes and carried on to the viewpoint where we found Nikel, as ugly as we had been told. The town is dominated by a factory and  it's so polluted there the forest has trouble growing.