19-Jul-2004 -- We spend a week or two each summer at my wife's family cabin on Hvaler, in the SE corner of Norway. Last night (sunday evening) the weather forecast was relatively bad, with low temperatures and little sun, so we decided that a confluence trip would be a good way to spend the day.

As we woke up and prepared breakfast, a deer came by to say hello and wish us a nice trip. :-)

We drove into Fredrikstad and then SE to Halden, crossed the border into Sweden at Kornsjø, and continued east past Ed. About 10 km south of the point we turned north on a small road which should allow us to get within 150-200 m from the confluence.

However, as we got a bit closer we met the swedish equivalent of a "No Trespassing" sign, a No Entry road sign which means that the road is closed to motorized vehicles. We tried to find the alternate access road, from NW of the point, but this was marked the same way. The first visitors must have used one of these two roads to get as close as they did, possibly because they weren't posted at the time, or because they knew the people in the area. This wasn't an option for us though.

On the way north we'd noticed a dirt track that seemed to lead in the correct direction, so we returned to this and followed it past a couple of tiny farms and up a steep hill. At the top of this hill we were about 650 m from the confluence, so we stopped there, turned the car around, parked and started walking.

We started along a logging track, but left that almost immediately, then went down a steep hillside to a large clear-cut logging area. After crossing this we came into an area with old growth forest, where we also found a rock pile that might have been an old burial mound.

Past this and a wet area with multiple drainage ditches, just wide enough to make it difficult to jump across, we got into the old logged area noted by the first visitors. Three years of new growth had made it a lot denser! The actual point is now located between multiple 4-6 m tall spruce trees, we took most of the images, including the GPS photo, about 8 m north, in a small clearing.

It had taken us 20 minutes to walk to the confluence, on the way back we took a route slightly more to the north, so that we crossed the logged area higher up, and ended up on the same logging track we'd started along. It still took 17 minutes to get back to the car.

In this area the border between Norway and Sweden meanders around quite a bit, enough so that when we decided to return to Hvaler via the shopping area at Nordby, just south of the main border crossing at Svinesund, the shortest route was to get back into Norway at Kornsjø, and then after about 15 km return to Sweden once more via a border crossing so small that it doesn't have any customs post at all, just a marker stone!