Thursday, August 2, 2012

Our little motorhome is going great and feels like home. I was concerned that it would be too small but not so. Paul and Janeve have an identical one so it is twins on the road every day.  For those that are following the itinerary, don't bother. We have reversed the order and the finish became our start. We were to have caught a ferry from Hirtshals at the northern tip of Denmark to Kristiansand in Norway for the start of the Norwegian part of the trip.We could not pre-book the ferry as we didn't have the rego number for the motorhomes. In the 2 weeks leading up to our expected departure with the ferry, the price had gone up from about Euros240 to Euros440. Not a chance!! We will catch the ferry back instead and  can get the journey at the moment for Euros 125. What a con!!

Despite this, there is no getting around the fact that this is a truly spectacular country. Awesome views around every corner, waterfalls and raging torrents as plentiful as ours are scarce and  fjords that are nothing short of amazing. I am wondering if we will end up with scenic overload.

Our starting point, Kristiansund, is in the north-west and our first amazing sight was the Atlantic road. This road south from Kristiansund has been built in the ocean and crosses from one small rocky out-crop to another, some of which are only metres long. In bad weather the waves have been known to almost crash over the road, but alas, for us, an uneventful crossing.





Our next stop was Andalsnes and a campground located in the most picture-perfect location on the Romsdalsfjorden with the fjord on one side and towering mountains on the other 3.

                                        View from the campground

 This is also the area where the Trolls  can be found?? hence the names of the 2 most well-known attractions in Andalsnes, The Trollvegen wall (the tallest vertical cliff face in Europe) and the Trollstigen Road with it's 11 hair-pin bends twisting it's way up 850 metres. Unfortunately, the weather was not so good on the day we drove down the valley to see the Trollvegen wall but we were luckier with the Trollstigen Road. There was some cloud around at the start of the drive but we managed to get some good views from the top before the weather quickly detereorated and clouds obscured the whole road.


Trollvegen clouded in. Was once very popular for base jumping but this was banned in 1986 because of the number of deaths. Now used for climbing.


We have to cross that wall of mountain in the background and that is Trollstigen






                                   Janeve at the look-out at the top

                Looking down on Trollstigen from the look-out before the clouds rolled in.

     View from the top. The clouded area in the centre is the top of Trollstigen



Once we were at the top and continued on a short way, the views were awesome. A beautiful valley surrounded by snow and ice-scattered mountains.





  I look at the mountains here and I can't help but compare them to those of Switzerland. But what I find so hard to get my head around is that the ones in Switzerland are 4000 metres high and here they are similar with snow and ice at only 1000 metres. This is because Norway is so much further north and much colder (and probably wetter).

Everything is going great and I am feeling much better than when we started. Even have done a few short easy walks. Internet is still iffy and when available, it is usually only for 1 hour. Cheers for now and will blog again soon.

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