6. Not Another View

We have three golden rules for country walking/hiking.  1. If you start off warm, you’ll definitely be too hot by the time you finish.  2. No matter how long or steep a slope, if you take it at the right pace you can make it.  3. Heather always wants to go further/higher/for longer than me.   A circular walk presents no problem, when you’re there, you’re there.  It’s the there and back ones that can be problematic, as yet unsolved.

After we’d watched and photographed the real midnight sun (at 1.00am), staying up until about 1.30 and then having a latish breakfast we decided to head up to some high ground to look for alpine plants. The road up was fine with patches of snow as we climbed.  This was a service road for a dam at the top but then we came to a tunnel with a notice saying we could use it at our own risk, so naturally we carried on.  This tunnel was not for the claustrophobic, being narrow with exposed rock sides, going quite steeply upwards with absolutely no lighting.  Of course once we were inside that was it and we had to carry on.  The surface didn’t reflect light well so even our headlights weren’t much good and it seemed to be never ending and very dark.  It turned out to be about three or four miles long and was no fun at all.  Then there was a second one, just the same except that the road surface was just dirt but fortunately this one was shorter.   When we emerged, blinking into the daylight it was a real arctic type landscape.  No vegetation above knee height, lots of snow, and lakes visible but mostly covered in ice and snow.  So no walking on flat areas (possible lake underneath) or where we could hear water running nearby but not be able to see it (possible stream running underneath).   Just after we parked, the road disappeared under what looked like eight or nine feet of snow so we walked.  It sure was desolate and in the three hours or so we were there we only saw one other vehicle.   No new plants for us and no birds but amazingly a bumblebee and a butterfly which we’re reasonably confident was a Lapland Ringlet, and who amongst you is going to disagree.

Compared to staying in hotels this is a cheap way to travel (if we ignore the capital cost of the van) but I do think Norwegian campsites are pricey for what’s on offer.  Many look completely full but are in fact full of permanently located caravans for weekend use.  These tend to have a shed built alongside, a bit of fencing and perhaps a gnome or two.  It makes the sites look like refugee camps.  Most campsites here charge extra for electricity and showers and the sites themselves are usually rudimentary with very few lavatories or showers for the number of people likely to be on site.    One we stopped at a few days back wanted the equivalent of £30 without electricity so we made our excuses and left, finding another just down the road for £20 plus extra for electric which we don’t need and extra for showers which we expected.  Some sites have a small kitchen and washing up area which we don’t use but is important for tenting people.  Something I’d not seen anywhere before was that this particular site had coin operated two ring burner and coin operated hot water for washing up.  Unbelievable.

One way the Norwegians do exploit their fantastic landscapes is to have lots of designated ‘Scenic Drives’ and every one we’ve been on has been spectacular.   Some are over mountainous terrain while others follow the coastline.  Keeping as near the coast as is practical means that we go through a huge number of tunnels and use quite of lot of ferries.   This isn’t always just to shorten a route, some places on the main roads can only be reached by ferry and some of the tunnels are dug to avoid the precipitous old roads.  One tunnel ahead of us is 24.5km long and, according to the tourist brochures is the longest road tunnel in the world.  We miss that out and instead drive the old mountain road where the lakes still have mini-icebergs in them and the snow at the top in mid-July is still banked up to 15 feet high in places along the side of the road.  That isn’t from snowploughing, that’s just how deep it still is.  However, while I’m not complaining, Norway is a country of spectacular scenery like no other and after a while the constant visual stimulus really does become tiring.  I know, but someone has to do it.

One of these Scenic Drives we really wanted to do was called the Trollstigen, basically TheTroll’s Road which has been a tourist route for years.  As far back as the 1930’s the peaks around were given names like The Queen, The King and The Bishop to make them more touristically appealing.  Presumably before that it was ‘the pointy one’, ‘the other pointy one’ and so on.   Our approach from the north is up an impossible rock wall, or so it seems.  There are so many hairpins turns on the way up you can’t tell if you’re zigging or zagging.  At the top are viewing platforms jutting out over the edge with a 600 feet or so drop to the rocks below, a wonderfully designed café of rusted iron and glass and various walkways to enjoy the spectacle from.  While we were enjoying the view from one of the platforms we heard a deep rumble over the noise of the rushing water cascading over the precipice and over to our right about a mile or so away there was a rockfall/small avalanche.  All we saw was the dust rising in a number of places because by the time the sound had reached us the activity had happily mostly ceased.   I say happily because as our gaze dropped we realised that the fall was above the road we’d just come up, now with other cars on it.  It must have been a substantial rockfall for us to have heard it and it appeared that the rocks must have come to a halt somewhere on the scree slopes above the road.

There is water in abundance here with what appears to be a trickle over a hillside in the distance ending up being a huge cascade of water close up.  There are literally hundreds of these waterfalls pouring off the melting snowcaps above us.  It seems that this is an unusual summer for Norway, it’s colder and wetter and follows what one tourist office told us were two winters.  A number of the big mountain hiking routes are still closed by deep snow in peak season when they would usually be full (relatively) of hikers.  With that amount of snow melting we are probably seeing the falls and rivers as full as they ever get.  Some of the rivers coming down the hills at what seems to be about 45 degrees, crashing between rocks make you realise that you wouldn’t suffer for long if you fell in.  The noise is deafening and out of this context would be like an appalling dose of tinnitus.

Everywhere, we’ve been really impressed with Norwegian architecture from the classic, grass roofed traditional houses and clinker built, wooden planked New England look in various colours, to the modern bridges and angular glass structures set beautifully into the landscape (although obviously some of the tunnels leave a lot to be desired).  With the buildings it may be that it’s the way the stark materials and straight edges just resonate with the wildness of the landscape that makes it work so well. 

One of the other major designated Scenic Drives we did took us over a pass at over1450 metres (about 5000 feet) where it was so warm and wind free that we had breakfast outside surrounded by snow, watching Nordic Skiers gliding across the landscape a couple of hundred yards in front of us.  The snow poles alongside the road to indicate where the actual road is in the winter and the depth of snow were over 4 metres high.  A notice at the top informed us that in olden days this was a very dangerous road to travel because bandits would rob many travellers making their way across.  It didn’t add but could well have that many of their descendents now run many of the Norwegian Campsites while the rest are taxi drivers in Cuba.

We have had real problems with Norwegian place names though because different  maps and guides often have slightly different spellings or endings and sometimes we’re unsure whether we’re reading about two places or not.  Heather was checking out one town in our guidebook which sounded quite good, lively, interesting etc but suddenly realised she was reading about Kristiansand, not Kristiansund which is where we’re headed.  Kristiansund services the offshore oil industry and according to Lonely Planet, one of the big attractions is the museum about the 300 year old fish drying industry in town.  So we didn’t stop.   We’d come this way to go along yet another scenic drive called The Atlantic Road, which with a series of bridges and embankments joins up a number of islands on the edge of the exposed Atlantic coast.  We spent the night on the edge here with lashing rain and strong gusty winds and it was unnerving to say the least to be in a parked vehicle overnight which felt as if it was being driven along.   Just passed a village called Grimo, it didn’t look that bad.

I know we’re doing a lot of driving but we met an Austrian couple who had driven from Austria and were heading for North Cape (the northernmost point of Norway), down through Finland, Russia, the Baltic States and Poland back to Austria in four weeks.  Having to consider that at some time we had to think about our trip home and trying to work out how long it might take to get from Trondheim to The Hook of Holland, our port of exit from mainland Europe, I tried our satnav which disconcertingly said it was “too far to calculate”.