Well, we woke this morning and much to my surprise Lynne said she’d had her best nights sleep since whatever it is that she did to her shoulder. So we decided to carry on and head for the ferry to Norway. After I went to the shop and got my 4 free bread rolls (part of the deal for stopping here) we made our way to the ferry port at Hirtshals. We actually checked in before time. That has to be a first for us! We were soon on the ferry and on our way. The ship, boat, or whatever you call it was surprisingly quite luxurious and we found seats and prepared for the 4.5 hour crossing.
After an hour or so we decided to go and look at the duty-free suspecting it might not be exactly cheap. We were right, everything seemed really expensive. The beer was dearer than we had paid for it last night at the petrol station. We did however buy a bottle of gin though, for no better reason than it had a hare with antlers on the bottle. Pretty sad eh? Well we all have our foibles and we’ve probably got more than most.
Lynne also bought a shirt which was relatively cheap and that was about it as we decided to pass on the various very expensive packs of sweets!
When we returned to the seats we had left jackets on by way of keeping them for ourselves we found ourselves surrounded by 9 or 10 Norwegian pensioners. I was instantly struck with a nasty case of old bagraphobia. They all seemed to like the sound of their own voices and especially the woman behind me who if I sat back in my seat I would get her laughing her old lungs out about 6 inches from my ear! There was one old guy who had a way of speaking that put me in mind of Red Indians in the old cowboy films. I though it was just me but Lynne said it just at the moment I was thinking it! Spooky or what? Unbelievably we put up with this for the better part of an hour until we saw land start to appear on the horizon and used it as an excuse to move and watch our approach to Norway.
‘We were soon on the road having landed at Langesund and it didn’t take long to hit a traffic jam. Along the way I’d noticed a rattling from the back of the van and Lynne went to investigate. It turned out to be a roof light at the back and in the process of trying to close it, coupled with me breaking as the traffic in front had stopped she managed to wrench her shoulder and set herself back again. It had been going so well and now we were at each other’s throats again!
We drove a long way in stony silence. There are a lot of new roads under construction around Langesund and pretty soon the satnav was trying to send us down a road that didn’t appear to exist! So I carried on, thinking it would eventually recalculate and find a way. Unfortunately it spent the first hour trying to divert us back to the original nonexistent route. However I was unrelenting in my quest to Ignore the bitch in the satnav and she finally gave up and we could see we were at last on the road to Bergen.
As we drove I started looking for places we might be able to wild camp for the night. One soon presented itself, it was a small picnic area with no-no camping signs and it was right beside a lake. It was only after we’d been there half an hour or so that I realised there was a dwelling on the hillside directly overlooking where we were. We still decided to chance it and soon we were joined by a German couple who proceeded to cook their dinner on a camping stove outside.
Anyway, we were never disturbed at all so all in all a first nights wild camping success.
Wandering Wildman 