Norway JUne-July 2016

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Woke up to a beautiful sunny day with clear blue skies (this was 4am). In fact we didn’t notice any dark last night. The day before had been our first and it was both very long and much wetter than we’d hoped. We arrived at Genoa airport too early at 3:30 am, the airport didn’t open until 4:30! Thought we would be early enough for the 2+hours before check-in. The reality was that check-in doesn’t open until 5am. So a slow and unnecessarily early start to the day. Had our last Italian coffee and headed off for Oslo. Picked up our Rent a Wreck. It’s a super small Skoda, bright red, and is perfectly fine if a bit filled to the gills with our camping stuff. Navigated our way round Oslo easily and just when we anticipated the journey becoming easy we hit traffic. The supposedly 4 hour drive we had planned to the south west of Oslo, we didn’t even manage to complete in 7 hours! Stopped at a less distant town as we couldn’t cope any longer with the traffic, Friday afternoon in the summer is obviously not a good time to travel, and there were lots of roadworks on what are only 2 lane highways to start with. We then had to explore three campgrounds, the first boggy from the incessant rain that day, the next we were two weeks earlier the seasonal opening and finally a really nice one in Moysand, it was packed with motorhomes but dry space for a small tent and decent wash block. We were both super tired and slept very well despite the noise and light, we’ll see how that continues!

Today’s journey also took longer than planned, this time because we were enjoying the scenery. The end point is Stavanger we went via a number of steep windy roads along the south west coast with lunch in the very pretty fishing village of Sogndalstrand. Before there was a small outdoor museum of a couple of wooden houses built under an overhanging rocky ledge, good protection against the weather and on the shore of a huge (and beautiful) lake. Glad of our small car negotiating the tight and twisty roads to these places.

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Photos

Heller
Small homes, 200 years old, built under a rocky lege for protection against the weather.