Boohoo!

Today we were up at 6.00 am. Neither of us got a great nights sleep because of the lorries which had parked by us. One turned up late last night and left his engine running for about 20 minutes after he got there and the other one started his engine at about 5.30 this morning and didn’t leave until just before 6.00. I’m sure there’s a good reason why they do that but it doesn’t help when you’re trying to sleep. We had decided to get up early though as we were going to drive to Stavanger for the day. We’ve had numerous chances during the 40 days we’ve spent in Norway to buy souvenirs but as usual we’ve left it all until the last-minute. Hence the 300 mile round trip to Stavanger in the hope that the souvenir shops there would be up to scratch! After a 4 hour journey I can now tell you, they weren’t! Stavanger, like most of the towns we’ve visited was a bit of a let down. True, it was grey and overcast and the sunshine would have made it look a lot better and I suppose it’s fair to say that it had that end of season feel about it. The real main objective of todays trip was for Lynne to try to get a coat she’d seen weeks ago in Bergen. Heaven only knows why she couldn’t have bought it then, but no, here we are with one day before we board a ferry and leave Norway and suddenly she has to have that coat. Well I’m afraid we drew a blank in Stavanger as most of the shops where you might have expected to see such an item were slightly the wrong side of second-rate, in my opinion. Strange really because there was a huge cruise ship in the harbour so the custom must be there but most of the stuff on sale seemed like a load of tat!

What things we did buy were from one shop where the girl on the till had a small container with a sign saying ‘Tips for my wedding’. It had three pitiful coins in it and I thought, blimey, that’s not gonna be much of a wedding is it! Heres a tip, cancel it! We made our way back to Nellie (the motorhome, Lynne insists on giving it a name) and set off back towards Kristiansand.

Todays drive was a last reminder of Norway’s incredible scenery which changes at every turn. On the way out we drove some minor roads through mountainous areas and saw low-lying mists with a heavy frost everywhere. It served to remind us both that we didn’t really want to leave tomorrow but with winter drawing on and us without winter tyres it wouldn’t be wise to stay on into October. We’ve both come to the conclusion that apart from Bergen, we haven’t much liked most of Norways towns and cities but absolutely fallen in love with its countryside which is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. We discussed briefly where in the world you might surpass what we’ve seen in Norway and the only names that came to mind were the Canadian Rockies and New Zealand. I wonder if there might be any suggestions forthcoming from any of my readers. Well, what do you say you two? So back to Kristiansand and to be honest after yesterdays experience we avoided the town like the plague. As I’m writing this, the final blog to come from Norway we’re wild camping in the same place we stayed last night. Let’s hope there are no noisy lorries tonight. We have another early start in the morning as we have to check in for the ferry at 7.00am. Boohoo, I don’t wanna go!😭