5 August
We said goodbye to the farm camp and drove up north around Bergen. We are off to Isdalsto to visit the Norwegian couple we had met in Copenhagen. This place is just a bit further north of Bergen so not far off our next route where we will head back towards Oslo.
We had to stop at a camping and caravan store to buy a seal for our toilet as it had started to leak. I guess it is probably quite old and they don’t last forever. Thankfully they had what we needed so we will have to fit this in the next day so that it is back working properly again.
We arrived at Laura and Knut’s house which is a lovely 130 year old timber home with a huge amount of land around it. It is quite amazing when you see the house you would never guess it is that old. I reckon they obviously built/build houses incredibly well here in Norway. Plus I think they maintain them really well too. You rarely see rundown unkempt houses here.
It was so nice to have someone again to visit in a place where we know no one and just happened to hit it off with this lovely couple. Knut was working in the North Sea oil rigs so we missed seeing him unfortunately. Laura made us coffee and waffles with strawberries and cream – so totally unexpected and really lovely. We ate the waffles like they were Belgian ones – not as they do here in Norway. It sometimes amazes us how you can get on so well with someone you have only met once, but we had a wonderful afternoon and though we were offered to stay the night, we sadly had to say no as we needed to keep on moving onwards towards Oslo. Laura had made a delicious soup – more like a casserole to us, that she gave us to take with us along with some other Norwegian goodies. It was so welcome to have tea for the night especially as we freedom camped late that night and it meant Scot didn’t have to cook. Laura loves to practice her English which I can well understand as you do tend to lose any language that you aren’t often using.
We really hope we can catch up with them both again sometime in the future before we head away from this part of the world.
Our freedom camp was outside of Voss where we had previously passed through on the Norway in a nutshell tour. We decided to stop in a rest stop on the fjord front where there were already a few campers staying. We thought it would be a safe place where there are others. It was ok until I started to not like the look of a few of those who were camping there the night, but it was too late to make a change by this time. There were other quite respectable vans there so Scot was of the belief we were ok. I didn’t sleep well though as I hadn’t before when freedom camping as there were others arriving through the night who were talking to the ones I didn’t like the look of.
The next morning, I found out why I didn’t quite like these people – they were very dodgy looking Bulgarians (I wasn’t holding that against them) but they were living out of their cars. I have developed a real suspicion about these nationalities like the Romanians and Bulgarians in countries such as this as they are cited for their bad behaviour all the time. When I see them like this, many of them together living in one car (3 in this case) – although they did have a van with a Swedish number plate which I wondered how they had acquired that – I get quite suspicious. Norway is an expensive country for most but for those nationalities it would be difficult for them to survive here as they are generally much poorer. It seemed that this was their nightly camp and there were about 12 of them living there. We spied one of the girls selling a magazine in Voss similar in style to those who sell the Big Issue in Brisbane city. I just didn’t get a good feel about these people and I was very glad to be moving on, maybe they were ok, but maybe they weren’t. Gut instinct to me is everything when travelling and they just looked like real ratbags.
We stopped in Voss to have a look around and then continued on around the route the bus and train had taken on the tour we did. We stopped at Gudvangan, but there isn’t a lot there. It is mostly just a carpark for buses and cars who are going on the ferry trip around the fjord. There was a cute little cottage with God Kaffe (Good Coffee) so we stopped there and had a cup with a local ‘cake’ called Lefse which was like a sweet flat bread rolled up with a spread on it and we were told that different parts of Norway make a different tasting spread for the Lefse. It was very different to what we are used to but pleasant. Scot is always eating the red currents that are currently growing on bushes all over so he had a few in the garden this little cottage had.
We travelled on to Flam where we decided to stop in the camping ground for the night as we liked it here when we got off the ferry a couple of days ago. It is quite reasonably priced, clean and well laid out. We are parked on a terrace with a view of Flam and a river that runs into the fjord. I had been getting cranky about the van as you don’t get a chance to give things a good spring clean that often when you are always on the road, so since we had stopped early today we both got to and did some of our overdue jobs. We fixed the toilet first, then Scot got on the roof to make some further water proofing fixes where we thought there was a problem still and I spring cleaned inside, doing all the washing and dusting and sweeping out the interior. It feels great when this is done.
We then took a walk up a near by nature trail which has a great view over the fjord and surrounds. We watched the ferry that we took arriving in and the people getting onto the Flam rail.
We had another delicious dinner complements of Laura and it started to rain, so we are snuggled in our cosy van doing the blog and reading.
I think it rained all night as the ground was quite mushy when we got up, but it was so cool as there was fog/mist all around the fjord and the hills around us. This is how a fjord is supposed to look – misty and eerie. We packed up and headed off on the E16 highway towards the East. The countryside starts to change as we head away from the west coast of Norway. We drove through the longest tunnel ever – we thought 11kms was long but this one was 24kms long. Almost as far as from Clontarf to the city. Scot found out that there is a tunnel in Norway that is 45km long which took a while to build but saves a lot of work maintaining the alternative road over the mountain. They cut out so much difficult travelling, I think NZ should start doing a few more tunnels to cut out some of the mountain drives, although that would then change the countryside so maybe not. The countryside gets less mountainous and more lake like fjords with rivers often running into them. We hit road works which went for quite a few kms but it was good to see them doing the roads up as some of this highway isn’t in the best shape. I guess the snow and ice plays havoc with the maintenance of the roads. Scot thinks all the beer tax is going on all the road works J. We came across a few lovely settlements that were obviously ski field areas where there were a lot of holiday chalets. You can tell that Norway is like NZ when you come across sheep just either wandering over the main highway or lying along the side of the highway right near where we drive past. Also came across a cow doing the same. We planned to travel further today to get close to Lillehammer where we will head before Oslo, but with the slow travel due to road works we were held up and we only made it to Fagernes which is another lovely village on a lake. It was quite warm in the sun this afternoon so we decided we had to go for a swim in Norway so this lake was the best opportunity. It was quite cold and it took your breath away, but we still managed to have a bit of a swim. I have not lost my paranoia about something lurking below me in the water after my scare which is crazy because there will only be fish swimming here, not sharks or dugongs, but regardless of what I tell myself I still get a bit freaked out when I can’t see much because of how deep the water is. I hope this will eventually go.
Tomorrow we will go for a walk around the town and maybe another swim while we can if there is sun shining before heading off for Lillehammer. Lillehammer is where the winter Olympics were held here in 1994 and will also hold the youth Olympics next year.
