This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
on the West Coast of Norway
ummer had not yet arrived in this Northern Hemisphere outpost in early June, and it was drizzling softly as we got off the train at the tiny spot of Bjorli, five hours north of Oslo. It was 9pm and still as light as day outside, even with the rain. We assembled our still shiny, newly acquired bikes in the waiting room, and headed out into the wet an hour later to find a campsite by the river nearby. In the morning the rain had stopped and we cruised some 40 km down a lush and green valley, briefly stopping to admire huge waterfalls, and surprised at how much snow there still was on the tops. We stopped by a huge rock wall named “the Troll Wall” — so tall the tops were lost in the mist. Several people have died here whilst parachuting off the tops and as a consequence this is now illegal. The weather fined up just in time for our big grunt of the day: a steep 800-metre climb up the “Trolls’ path” — an incredible road zigzagging its way up the mountain. It’s something like the road up tothe Homer - Tunnel but somewhat longer and steeper and continuing on to the top of the mountain. We were cheered on by big tourist buses and German campervans: on this road foreigners by far outnumber Norwegians. They could not believe we were going to cycle all the way up! It certainly was a slog in the heat and it took us 2 hours to complete the climb. We had a stop on the top to admire the view back down before we wound our way to the top of the pass (just a few more uphills...) past high snowmounds on the sides of the road — leftovers from the spring snowploughing. Heading down the other side was really cruisey, and it didn’t take us long to get down to the fjord on the other side. This was to become a familiar pattern on this trip: fjord, uphill, downhill, another fjord... Norway has a great ferry system on the West Coast fjords, but unfortunately the tunnel engineers are numerous and there is heaps of money for infrastructure: the result is fewer ferries and more underground driving — which is not a good development for cyclists or tourists in general! Our
Jeanine Langvik & Wayne Stevens
first ferry trip was relaxing and beautiful — they even forgot to charge us! Fortunately most tunnels, which are sometimes several kilometres long, have a way around them and most of the time the old road is open to bikes. We only had to cycle through one 600metre tunnel, which was uphill and pitch black except for good reflector markers at the sides. Fortunately we only met one car and no trucks! On the top of the next uphill we had excellent views of Geiranger, one of Norway’s most scenic fjords. It’s very much like Fiordland — steep walls, deep waters, lush and green and heaps of waterfalls. One thing that makes Norwegian fjords different is their long cultural history — people have lived here for thousands of years. Geiranger had its fair share of dramatic stories to tell. At one tiny farm, which was situated at a ledge a few hundred metres straight up from the fjord, they had to tether their children so that they wouldn't fall down! At another farm, the only access up from the fjord was by ladder. The cunning inhabitants promptly pulled the ladder up whenever the tax collector was in sight. As a consequence, this wastthe richest farm in the fjord. Talking about taxes, this is not a cheap country, and we tried to keep the food bill as low as possible. As a result our staple diet consisted of macaroni, tomato beans, tunafish, cornflakes, bread and “planecrash” (fish filets in tomato sauce). Our only luxury was some delicious milk chocolate to get enough energy for all those uphills and, for Wayne, some coke. A good thing about Norway is that you get money back when you return empty bottles — one krone per bottle. At one stage Wayne resorted to collecting bottles from the side of the road to fuel . “his coke-addiction. This was pretty time-consuming so we figured we’d never get to Bergen this way! As it was close to the solstice it was incredibly light at night and hard to sleep as the birds kept on singing, and it was so light inside the tent that you could read a book all night. Sandflies were pleasantly absent; however, the mozzies made up for it. Once in Stryn, at the head of the long Nordfjord, we headed up towards Jostedalsbreen, the largest glacier in Northern Europe. It has several arms that reach down into the valleys, and we cycled past a beautiful glacial lake fringed with old farmhouses, cows, flowers and Germans in campervans to get to the glacier. (Typically German, they bring everything they need whilst in Norway: from sauerkraut to beer... the Norwegian economy doesn’t benefit much from them!) I had the busy Fox and Franz glaciers in mind as we got to the glacier terminals, but there was noone there! We found a solitary campsite under the ice and had a much-needed dip in the freezing river. The views that night, as well as noise from falling rock and ice, were dramatic and it was great that there was nobody else around. The remaining trip consisted of heaps of uphills, long downhills, stray sheep, nosy goats, great ferry trips, tunnels, and as we approached Bergen, more and more wet weather. It seems true what they say — it always rains in Bergen. The countryside just north of Bergen looked flat on the map — but of course it’s never what you think it is, and the last couple of days were more a matter of covering the kilometres to get there. I kept thinking it would be a really nice place in the summer... when I realised it was in fact summer! It certainly didn’t feel that way as we made our way into Bergen and the temperature gauge showed 10 degrees. The last day I had had a vision of a warm train taking us across the mountains to Oslo all day. It had been pissing down most of the day and we were soaked and filthy. Bergen is a beautiful city (a bit like Wellington with heaps of green hills, a fantastic harbour, rain and wind) with a fascinating old town in the centre of the city, but we weren't tempted to put up a wet tent that night. So we headed straight for the train station and got on the night train back home. However, the rain followed us like a curse and for the next 2 weeks it rained every day in Oslo, setting new records for the month of June... uly, however, was the opposite — real summer and swimming everyday in the warm sea).
[Photo captions and page text that interrupted the story:]
2 Se ne CREE ce Ek
Trip Reports