We left Bergen this morning after deciding not to bother with a 3rd night. The camping was rather expensive at 285 NOK a night so we set off intending to wild camp tonight. We left at about 10.15 am. I wanted to head for Olden but the satnav wouldn’t let me enter an address there. So I put one in for Fjorde which is about halfway. Not sure what I thought my plan was after that but I was sure we could figure something out as we went along. What did we used to do before satnav’s? Well I suppose there were always maps!
We had to take another ferry along the way. Just the same as the other day, this ferry seemed to be a part of the E39 road. We drove straight on and within a minute or so the man came for payment. He asked how long was the vehicle and like a fool I said 6 meters. Then he started to say the fare would one hundred and something but quickly corrected himself and said it would be 300 NOK. Lynne duly paid and he handed her a receipt and walked away. As soon as she looked at the receipt she could see he had put us down as 6 to 7 meters. Well we have a laminated sheet that says we’re 5.999 meters! I took the sheet and the receipt and went to ask him if he had made a mistake. He quickly admitted it was wrong and gave me 160 NOK back.
I have to say that’s not a bad price difference based on a 1 millimetre difference in length! The crossing took something like 15 minutes at the most. We had sat in the van not even realising we were moving and suddenly the barrier at the front lowered and we were driving off. It wasn’t long before we were entering Klakegg, the destination I had chosen about halfway to where we actually wanted to go. I pulled into a supermarket car park and studied what to do next. The problem was when I put Olden in the sat nav then asked for a street name and I couldn’t find one. What I hadn’t noticed was that there was a small section I could have clicked on that said go straight to Olden! That’s me in Twat mode again. That seems to happen a lot! So now we had Olden in the satnav and we continued on our way. I lost count of the times she (the bitch in the satnav). I’ve got to stop saying that, but we don’t have a name for her. Anyway, I digress, she must have said a hundred times that the E39 was closed and tried to send us on all sorts of diversions. I ignored them all based on the fact that there was traffic including lorries in front of us all heading that way.
There were road works for at least 8 or 9 miles where traffic could only pass in single file but we came through it eventually and satnav girl stopped telling us the road was closed.
Once again we’ve passed through some incredible landscapes. We stopped at the roadside so I could photograph some rapids passing under a bridge. I never could resist falling water. We also stopped off at a lakeside or is it a fjord? Buggered if I know. Anyway there was a Salmon farm just off shore and with binoculars we watched them jumping out of the water and they looked enormous. I wonder if that was a vain attempt to escape or just something they do for fun? There were many other occasions where I would have liked to stop for photographs but more often than not there was just nowhere you could stop. At about 4.30 pm we started looking for places to stay the night. Eventually we turned onto the FV60 at a place called Byrkjelo and almost immediately started to climb. About 4 miles later we had passed what I thought was the most dramatic scenery we had seen and I was desperately looking for somewhere to stop when we came across an official stop where we could camp for the night. As soon as we were parked we went off for a short hike to the top of a small hill (on the mountain, like a nipple on a tit) which I was hoping would give us good views over the valley below. The following photo is the result. Again it’s a panorama of 6 images stitched together in Photoshop.
Lynne did dinner as we hardly ate yesterday. We’re eating lots of salad and fish which can only be good. As I write we’re parked next to what I think is a French family in a motor home not too much bigger than the on we’re in which begs the question, where the hell are they all sleeping. What’s even more disconcerting is that they all seem to be taking it in turns walking around the car park brushing their teeth with what looks suspiciously like the same tooth brush! Strange lot the French!!
Wandering Wildman 