We left the camp in Oslo today at about midday. Bogstad Camping turned out to be ok in the end. The wifi was good and although the site was pretty busy, it was still quiet. Within two or three miles we were on a motorway for a straightforward run away from the city. We drove without a stop all the way to Risor on the coast south of Oslo. I went straight to a place I’d found on a marina overlooking the pretty little harbour of Risor. There was absolutely no one else there and we couldn’t see any facility to pay for the night’s camping as everything was closed and locked up. Lynne wasn’t comfortable with the idea of stopping there regardless, and immediately found another option online. I put it in the sat nav and we set off. As usual I followed the sat nav instead of my instinct. We ended up driving for about 15 minutes having turned right out of the marina when turning left would have got us there in about 3 minutes! Not the end of the world I know, but irritating nonetheless! Once parked we went and paid 200 NOK at the machine and then walked down to the harbour. Risor is a really pretty little town on a harbour full of white wooden houses. According to history the houses used to be built so close together that there were numerous fires over the years where hundreds of wooden houses were burnt to the ground.
We dined on salad, again! To coin a favourite phrase of a close friend, I’ll be going home looking like the proverbial ‘racing snake’. Afterwards we had a walk back into the town so that I could photograph the harbour at night with the street lights on. I have to say that idea was an abysmal failure as I just couldn’t get the exposure right and the composition was crap too. On top of my photographic ineptitude, it was bloody freezing so we made our way back ‘home’. That was it for today, fairly uneventful with no photographs worth showing.
The following morning (starting to make a habit of cramming two days into one blog) we had another walk into the town. It was no livelier than it was the previous day (Sunday) and still cold even though the sun was shining through a perfectly clear blue sky. We did mooch through a couple of shops but didn’t buy anything. I still never cease to be amazed at the prices in the shops, Lynne picked up a scarf in one shop and dropped it like a hot brick when she saw the price of £104.
It wasn’t long before we were back at the van preparing to move on. The plan was to make our way to Kristiansand where we would camp for two nights at a place I’d found online and then Wednesday morning we would be right there for the ferry to Hirtshals in Denmark. Well, you know what they say about best laid plans. On the way to Kristiansand we drove into Arendal hoping to have a quick look around. It didn’t take us long to abort that idea as I couldn’t see anywhere suitable to park Nellie! Oh well, never mind. Shortly afterwards we saw a Ford dealership and I thought, let’s have one last shot at getting the brake light working. Well the young guy I spoke to was very helpful which made a change from what we had experienced previously. Perhaps it was to do with him being German and not Norwegian. Anyway, he looked at our problem and decided there must be a break in the wire. I did asked him if it was possible that we just needed to repair the circuit that had obviously been broken when the fog light got smashed. He dismissed that idea out of hand and said that he thought it was definitely a broken wire. Once again it would be impossible for any of the service team to look at it as they were far too busy. “Ok, thanks for your time anyway” I said and we carried on our way. We hadn’t gone far when I thought why don’t we try bridging the two terminals inside the light fitting and see what happens. We pulled into a rest area and I started to try to take the light fitting apart. First problem, I hadn’t got the strength in my fingers to pull the fitting apart. Then Lynne said why not try putting another light bulb in? That had never occurred to me and I had never looked at the remains of the fitting to see if it would be possible to get the base of the old bulb out. A minute or so later and the remains of the old bulb were out with the help of a pair of pliers. As luck would have it there was a matching bulb in the set of spares we had bought on the Dover to Calais ferry. I twisted the new bulb in and went to the front to switch on ignition and try the brake pedal. Lynne shouted that it was now working! Eureka! She came forward to press the brake so I could see for myself. Eureka (again) it worked! All I can say is if it hadn’t been for Lynne’s genius suggestion we would have still been worrying about the drive through France where we have this strange idea that they’re all out to get us.
We carried on towards Kristiansand. On arrival in Kristiansand we got so far along with my well planned route to a camping space and found the way blocked by a locked gate. I had kind of foreseen this problem because reviews I’d read had said how awkward the place was to get to. But I had a cunning plan, or so I thought! I sat with my iPad on my lap whilst watching the little blue dot on the screen (us) and letting it guide us toward the destination. This plan although brilliantly executed by myself, failed miserably as every way was blocked and after half an hour we gave up and drove away not quite knowing what to do next. By now we were hitting rush hour traffic. In the end we clicked on a campsite in the sat nav and made our way there until the sat nav tried to send us down another road that didn’t exist. This brings me to another problem we’ve had a couple of times here. While you’re in a tunnel which actually has slip roads and exits inside the tunnel, when the sat nav loses it’s satellites, you’re basically on your own. So today I lost count of the wrong turns I took from inside tunnels! We spent the best part of three hours driving around looking for overnight parking nearish to the city to no avail. By now we were not getting along so well because I was well stressed by the amount of driving and getting lost and u turns and reversing back down dead ends. It has to be said, your average Motorhome is not what you would call nippy!
In the end we decided to go to plan b. We’re wild camping about 20 kilometers outside Kristiansand at the moment and tomorrow we will drive really early up to Stavanger (over 3 hours away) and spend the day there before driving back for the ferry on Wednesday!
Wandering Wildman 