Norway – Page 4 – Contented-Campers.com

Eggum to Haukland

August 5, 2018August 8, 2018ricklongboard2 Comments

Before getting to today’s travels (all 46km of those) …

Best wishes to friends around the world as you prepare for the new school year. Many of you are now in new schools, or in new positions of responsibility. Best wishes, one and all, for an outstanding year, and, where appropriate – lots of love to accompanying partners and families.

Eggum was so beautiful that, instead of our planned overnight we spent three nights there. The weather has turned decidedly Norwegian (at last), although a local did tell us that they had snow in the middle of June, followed by this European heatwave. Good to know that experts and data remain ignored in the great debate about massive climate anomalies (perhaps a more palatable means of speaking of global warming?) We thoroughly enjoyed the downtime, did some (rainy) cycling, read, Niki commenced on her puzzle (the jigsaw kind, not the meaning of life) and appreciated the large lounge area in our small camper – particularly as we watched numerous folks setting up or taking down tents in the rain.

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Eggum Beach

August 3, 2018ricklongboardLeave a comment

We are currently camped at Eggum Beach on the northerly coast of the Lofoten Islands. We were expecting beautiful, but this is even better. Even the (short) drive up was relatively easy, given that the very narrow roads certainly slowed everyone down to around my speed, and allowed us all to make use of the wider passing bays. Also – no trucks!

Roads deteriorate away from the E10

… and get narrower

Campsite at Eggum

Campsite – not too shoddy!

We stopped at the Viking Museum in Borg on the way up, given that it was a nice day and the forecast was for rain in the coming days. The museum and artefact area were interesting, albeit a little underwhelming. I thought that for a €20 (each) entry fee we would be entitle to half a roast boar, mead, and perhaps a little dessert. Instead we got to see a replica iron forge (interesting), try our hand at archery (hard), see a replica Viking boat (at a distance), and then visit a somewhat sparsely furnished replica longhouse. Clearly inflation has limited the usual range of delights on offer. Also, Norwegian minimum wage must be higher than in the UK, given that the smithy, archer and other Vikings were recent imports. Hmmm, England looking forward to repaying Danelaw – what opportunities offered by Brexit!

Longhouse, Borg

Smithy

Rabbits in no danger

… at all!

Chieftain’s Longhouse

Work area, Borg Longhouse

We awoke to a morning of rain – our first day of extended rainfall in almost 5 weeks on the road. The lower temperatures encouraged us to don raincoats and take a short walk to the small hydro station, and gave us outstanding views of the glaciated landscape, including moraines that were in very good condition. We will be staying here 2 nights, particularly as it’s been very quiet and relaxing – apart from Niki insisting on a couple of photos at midnight! This is a great place to see the midnight sun, and we are only a week late in seeing this. Sun (sort of) set on our right, then rose again on our left an hour later – probably could do with a short course on latitude, time, and associated phenomena.

Niki wrapped up at midnight

Seriously … Midnight

Eggum Beach

Looking out from the campsite

WWII German radar station

Eggum Beach

So happy not to be in a tent (says Niki)

View from the lounge 🙂

The Birthday Edition

August 1, 2018August 2, 2018ricklongboard2 Comments

Most important event of the day – Happy Birthday Niki 🙂 (and Switzerland)

To celebrate (a little in advance), we spent the day in Svovaer, largest town in the Lofotens at around 5000 people, all of whom were out enjoying the sunshine. What a dramatic drive to get here. The road has narrowed enough for me to brake at the sight of oncoming vans and trucks, although the kids will point out that I do this naturally in any case. Have a flick through Niki’s view of the drive below:

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There’s no doubt that Svolvaer’s background is in the fishing industry as the smells leaks into the van on approach. Nevertheless, a lovely town with lots to see and do. As usual in towns, our GPS threw its wobbly and we ended up down a one way, with no exit … except for the footpath. Apologies to Norwegian cyclists, it wasn’t really our fault. The looks on traffic coming towards us who now thought they were in the wrong lane did provide a little smile, albeit nervous, on our part:

I’ve added a slideshow below of our time in Svolvaer, including our fastboat trip through the Trollfjord, and some shots of closeups with Fish Eagles – magnificent. The end of the trip saw us having our first, and LAST beers in Norway at 196 Norwegian Kroner, or €20.50, or NZD 35.30, or ZAR 319. Yup, that’s 2 beers, not a case!

We made up for it by sleeping overnight at a school car park, presuming that school is out for summer. We did see kids on bikes with backpacks as we were leaving …

Currently we are at Kabelvag, a whole 6km trip from Svolvaer, and seated at a pretty campsite that has provided us with water, showers, electricity, wifi – in fact, the whole 21stC. We are making use of this to have a great fry-up of fried eggs, bacon, sausage, tomatoes … Living like kings we are. Then we’ll use our Cosori pressure cooker to tenderise our pork & sweet potato curry for tonight – it’s all experimental.

We are going to get the bikes down and cycle down to Henningsvaer, about 20km away, and apparently, just stunning. I’m also putting together our July budget for posting – Heaven help us!

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Tengelsfiord

July 30, 2018August 2, 2018ricklongboardLeave a comment

And the Norwegian experience just gets better! A very short drive saw us arrive at the start of the Lofoten Islands. We’ve made a short detour to Tengelsfiord, and what a good idea this was. Niki has again found an absolutely gorgeous stopover. It’s right next to the road, but a car comes by once an hour, so I’m not too worried about noise. Check this location:

We’re having tea outside, about 10 meters above the level of the water, when we hear these loud splashes – look down and through the water we see a shoal of salmon, which then sport about for the next half hour, leaping out of the water, tail-walking and doing great circles. Because the day can’t just be spent looking at nature’s wonders, we got the bikes down and cycled to the mouth of the fiord. Unbelievable to see the tidal race – really looking forward to Saltstraumen to see the big brother version of this. Having a bit of a rest (all trained athletes do) and a water break, looking across the fjord, which was really narrow at this point, and behold, an enormous cruise ship comes by, filled with people with nothing better to do than travel the Norwegian fjords… A 40km round trip seeing waterfalls, spectacular cliffs, really rugged landscape – and no camera. Well, we were told to enjoy the sights, not just record them!

Tomorrow is off to Lofoten proper. No idea yet where we’ll be staying, and hoping our luck last. At €25 per night for a campervan spot in a campsite, we are trying to avoid them as far as possible.

I’ve added some pictures as a slideshow, just to show a) how dirty the windscreen is, and b) some indication of the beauty of the landscape:

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Evanskjer

July 30, 2018August 2, 2018ricklongboardLeave a comment

We enjoyed Narvik so much we decided to stay an extra night. The opportunity to spend a second day at the beach proved to be too much, particularly as, by the time we were up, awake and moving (not necessarily in that order) it was close to 28 degrees. Of course, the sun had been up for 7 hours, even though it was 8 in the morning.

Hearing of the Lunar Eclipse – biggest for this century (?) I made a concerted attempt to see this, but could only find the setting sun, just before midnight. Upon waking, I tried again at around 1:30am, but the sun was just rising. Poor Scandinavians, missing out on eclipses just so they can enjoy 24 hours of daylight …

Niki has done another fantastic job in getting us to a spot on a causeway to the marina at Evenskjer. We are the only campers here this evening, although quite a few campers came in to use the waste and water facilities (looking at you, U.K.) which are all free of charge. We seem to be doing great with our electricity usage, so being away from power has not been a concern. I’ll do a bit of a write up on gadgets etc at some stage, but for now we are really happy to have installed the 100W solar panel.

1:30am

11:30pm

Met Gunn today, who was instrumental in getting the climbing structure built here in Evenskjer, which is also the site of the annual December 1 Ice Swim. I can say the water temperature is a few degrees colder than at Narvik, which makes it slightly warmer than Clifton, Cape Town. Growing up there, I simply assumed you got headaches from swimming, never putting the 10C to 12C summer water temperature in context … Anyway, apparently the organisers of the annual swim had money left over and asked Gunn for ideas. She immediately came up with a climbing wall – what a structure, for about €30 000! There is a facebook page for the climbing club, if you google (verb).

A gentle 65km drive got us here early, so we’ve had a great day checking out the jellyfish (multiple species), having a swim, and generally unwinding from the stresses of the day – such as my electric toothbrush seems to have spat the dummy and I’ll have to go manual from here on. Not all cruzin’ you know!