Blogs from Trondheim, Trøndelag, Norway, Europe - page 5

Hey! Voila enfin des nouvelles! Je suis donc a Trondheim mais avant ca j'etais a Oslo et avant ca j'etais a Bergen... Donc Bergen sous la pluie... je crois bien que c'est la que je m'etais arretee. Donc oui ce jour la j'ai rien fais de bien spectaculaire, pas de rendonnee, trop pluvieux. J'ai visite le musee des beaux arts... pas tete a par pour quelques Munch qui valaient la peine et quelques autres tableaux. Sinon je me suis promenee dans la vielle ville qui vaut le coup d'oeil. C'est des maisons en bois toutes reliee les une aux autres, tres jolies mais c'est difficile a decrire comme ca... Sinon vraiment rien fais d'autre... Le trajet en train (7h) depuis Bergen jusqu'a Oslo etait tres beau! Magnifique vue sur les montagnes et sur la plaine automnale. ... read more

Night trains; interesting in theory, but a little less than ideal in practice. Last night, David and I took a night train from Trondheim to Oslo… it was fast, efficient, and free (thanks Mary and Danny), but not (in my humble opinion) conducive to sleeping. The chairs recline to a decent degree, but that means that the person in front of you can recline their chair so it’s practically laying on your lap… and what’s a person supposed to do with their legs then? I have yet to figure out this particular dilemma, but quite possibly by the end of this trip I will have a handy solution (aside from just blocking the ability of the person in front of me to recline!) Incidentally, David disagrees with me on this gripe… he says it is the ... read more

I pushed on from Trollstigen via Andalsnes. There I got my wheel fixed (170 kroner) and had the good (or bad) luck to notice a slow puncture at the shop. We found the culprit, a little thorn stuck in the tyre. Lucky I guess that we had the wheel apart anyway - but now I've lost my no puncture record. I think I made about 2000 miles puncture-free though - must be some kind of record! That night I pushed on (i had some vague hope about making Trondheim the next day, but gauging distances is hard). Despite coming out of the really high mountains the terrain was anything but easy. Eventually as the rain started around 9pm I hauled up at a little nature reserve with a shelter. It was the worst night of the ... read more

Jotunheimen is the national park that contains all of Norway's high mountains over 2400m and highway 5 runs right by to 1434m over 20km from sea level, an obvious attraction for me on my panniered up bike. I was lucky. I started the climb late in the day (queue 3rd spoke breakage!!), so there was no way I was going to make the top. It wouldn't have been practical to camp up there in any case. After chatting with a friendly guy at the tourist info at the base town, I decided to try for Turtagrø 1000m up the pass. The first 400m vertical of the climb passed easily and I was actually getting a bit over-confident as I rounded the first false summit. There the switchbacks stopped for a while, but as I found is ... read more

Eight hours after hopping off the grand old sailing ship in Bergen, I was out of bed and on my way to the airport for a 7:40am flight (wednesday 4th June) to Trondheim - about six hundred kilometres to the north-east of Bergen - which is the third-largest city in Norway, with a population of about a hundred and fifty thousand. By far the biggest tourist attraction in Trondheim - and I mean that literally as well as figuratively - is the Nidaros Cathedral, which sits right in the centre of town and was built in the late eleventh century (supposedly over the sight of St. Olav's grave - making it an important pilgrimmage sight), and is everything that you would expect a gothic cathedral to be! After spending the morning walking around the city and ... read more