Quit our jobs, sold our home and everything in it, gone riding...

[Lightcycle]

Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/244.html

We putter around the Preikestolen Campsite, taking our time before leaving. I like that the days are so long up north that we can wake up and start riding anytime we want - which is late! Daniel and Sara are early birds and have left while we are eating breakfast, we'll catch up to them at the next campsite.

First ferry of the day. Get the wallet out, Neda!

The day starts off without rain, so we're very optimistic that we'll get a chance to experience the fabled Norwegian summer that's on all the travel web sites and brochures. You know, the ones that feature all those green-covered fjords towering over impossibly clear blue skies?

We start heading north

There's a route that travels right along the western coastline of Norway through Stavanger. But going that way requires a very long and expensive ferry to get to the next fjord north, so we opt for the inland route instead. Our chosen road curves around a myriad of inlets and lakes. Nice. And very scenic as well!

If you like riding past water, you'll like the west coast of Norway!

If you like riding through tunnels, you'll like the west coast of Norway!

 

[Lightcycle]

Stopping for a photo opp

Loving Norway now that we are warm and dry!

Riding carefully, lest I wake up the troll underneath this bridge

Traditionally, Norwegian trolls live in rocks, mountains and caves. Later on, they were associated with landmarks and I think it was the Three Billy Goats Gruff fairytale that was the first account of a troll living underneath a bridge.

When the road rises high enough, you get spectacular views of the inlets below

Roadside flowers bloom in the middle of a Norwegian summer

 

[Lightcycle]

These steep cliffs were cut by glaciers!

A fjord is created when glaciers extend to below sea level. The deep grooves they carve into the bedrock underneath are exposed when the glaciers recede and are then filled with seawater creating inlets, channels and fjords. Pretty cool that all of these geological features we're riding around were created during the last ice age 10,000 years ago!

We roll into the campsite at Kinsarvik in the late evening and the sun is still hanging high in the sky. I love traveling in the north!

 

[Lightcycle]

Our neighbour Dan sizes up Neda's cooking gear and is deciding whether to start another camping gear comparison showdown or not...

Sara and Daniel have planned a pretty long riding day tomorrow and we've got a different schedule so I think this may be our last evening with them. It's been nice having company for a while and I'm sure we'll run into each other somewhere, sometime! The world seems so small when you're riding around it on a motorcycle!

Raining when we visit Borgund

Well, the good weather lasted all of one day. The rain is back in the morning and the air is cold with mist hugging the sides of the mountains. We ride to our first site of the day, the Borgund Stave church but it's too wet to walk around, so we duck into the visitor's centre to wait out the rain.

Stealing free wifi

The wifi may have been free, but the staff at the visitor's centre were giving us the stinkeye because we had occupied a table for over an hour without buying anything. So we bought some really expensive cake from them. Too ashamed to say how much we paid... Ouch. Norway is expensive!

During a break in the rain, we literally ran out to see the church

Stave churches are built in the middle ages and are made entirely of... Norwegian wood. Isn't it... no, too easy. There used to be a lot of them built all over north-west Europe but today, most of the surviving Stave churches are only in Norway. The Borgund Stave Church was built in the late 1100s and is the most well preserved and authentic stave church.

The church is surrounded by a cemetary

 

[Lightcycle]

The wood has been heavily treated with tar which gives it a dark appearance

Christianity? I always thought the Norse religion involved Valhalla, Odin, Thor, Hulk, etc.

Inside the Stave Church

Great detail inside the church. You can see the dragon motif repeated everywhere.

There are runic inscriptions on the wall inside and one reads, "Thor wrote these runes in the evening at the St. Olav's Mass" No kidding!

The cemetery outside Borgund Stave Church

 

[Lightcycle]

Dragon motif on the roof pointing off to the sides. Similar to the ones on the bow and stern of their ships

Overlapping tiles of the roof look like the feathers of a black bird

Tombstone in the cemetery

 

[MacDoc]

Love Norway...taking a mid summer 2 week cruise up the coast past the Arctic Circle next summer. So lush on the western side. We were there a few weeks earlier 2 years ago and amazed how clement the weather it.

 

[Lightcycle]

Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/245.html

Just a quick update with some thoughts from the road: We're still on our march northwards through the fjordlands of the west coast of Norway. And it's still raining. We've only had one day of sun in the last week. The "Come Visit Norway" green fjords/blue sky travel brochure is falling apart like wet tissue paper at the bottom of my tankbag.

The scenery is gorgeous. If only it wasn't so wet!

Even though the pictures don't show it, there is quite a lot of traffic on the roads in Norway, even though we've made a decision to stay off the main interior highway. Most of the license plates we see are Norwegian. We've not seen a lot of Norwegian travelers on our journeys, but now we know that they do travel, but they just like to spend all of their high-value Krones inside their own country. I guess everywhere else outside of Norway is just too cheap for them!

There's only a short window of summer that Norwegians are able to enjoy warm weather and despite the rain, there are a lot of motorcyclists on the road braving the inclement weather. My waterproof gloves are starting to lose their waterproofing, but I'm glad I have large handguard spoilers so my gloves don't get too wet when they're hiding behind them. However, when another motorcyclist rides past us and waves, I experience a brief anti-social twinge because lifting my left hand from behind the handguard means exposing it to the rain and getting it wet...

But I'm Canadian and it's only cold water, so I wave politely and get my left hand all soggy. Dammit.

Oh, and I think my right boot is also starting to leak.

The Hardanger Bridge is kind of unique because it's the only tunnel-to-tunnel bridge
in the world, both ends of the bridge lead to a tunnel!

The geography afjords us plenty of opportunity to cross small bodies of water. The last few days have taken their toll (literally and figuratively) on us via ferries, bridges and tunnels. Some of these tunnels are quite long, ranging from 3kms to over 10kms! At every tunnel entrance, there is a sign that tells you how long the tunnel is that you're entering. Whenever I see a sign that reads, "6,184 meters", I smile because it gives us a bit of respite from the falling rain, and most times the air in the tunnel is nice and warm. On the longer tunnels, I stick my left glove out in the airflow to try to dry it out.

Oncoming cars that pass us must wonder what I'm doing. But I don't care. My glove is wet, deal with it.

What the heck is this?

At one end of the Hardanger Bridge is the Valavik Tunnel which is 7.5 kms long. It's so long that there is actually a funky traffic roundabout with disco-blue lighting in the middle with exits that will take you to different parts of the country. Imagine taking the wrong exit? It'll be like digging a hole to China and then breaking above ground to find yourself in Mexico! Damn!

Another roundabout

But 7.5 kms is nothing for a tunnel in Norway. Just a bit further north, we enter the Lærdal Tunnel and before we enter, I read the sign, "24.5 km" Sweet!? That's a lot of glove-drying time. When tunnels are really long, you also wonder what kind of weather you're going to get on the other side because often the mountains that they're tunneling under stop the clouds and precipitation from getting to the other side, or vice versa.

 

[Lightcycle]

Caves inside the Lærdal Tunnel

As we get deeper into the Lærdal Tunnel, we approach these huge caverns, also lit up like a discotheque. It turns out that the tunnel is so long that every 6 kms there is a large space to give travelers a visual break from tunnel vision (literally!) And also, if you realize you're tunneling to Mexico instead of China, there's space to turn a vehicle around and go back.

All that's needed now are huge speakers to pump techno music into these caves. And seedy teenagers in the corners peddling E.

My glove is almost dry as we exit the Lærdal Tunnel and... the weather is dry on the other side of the tunnel! Of course it is, after riding for so long underground we're probably in a different time zone as well!

China? Mexico? Nope, still Norway, however still doesn't look anything like in the travel brochures...

"It's Norway or the highway!" Glad we are staying off the main interior highway.

When the road climbs higher, it's so cold that ice forms on the lakes up here!

 

[Lightcycle]

So pretty! We must stop to check it out.

Reminds me so much of Iceland

More Icelandic scenery up here

I should really be saying that Iceland looks like Norway, not the other way around!

Norwegian/Icelandic Turf houses

 

[Lightcycle]

Turf houses provide good insulation and you can grow potatoes, turnips and carrots in the attic

Okay bye, Iceland, we have to continue on.

Back to the lush greenlands at sea level

In North America, kids open up lemonade stands and sell lemonade for 5 cents.
In Norway, kids open up fruit stands and sell cherries for... €7 ($11 CDN). Yikes.

We're traveling through a region that produces most of Norway's fruit in the summertime. It's akin to the Niagara Region in Canada. This particular area yields 80% of the cherries for the country and everything we've read about them say that these particular Morello dark-red cherries are supposed to be most awesome, and we're here at the peak time in the season as well. Neda loves cherries and fruits and this was on her bucket list for Norway. But looking at the price tag, we had to walk back over to the bikes and have a huddle to decide if we wanted to spend $11 on a carton of cherries...

So... we're not actually buying these cherries to eat. We're going to put them in a glass case and showcase them in the living room of wherever we decide to move to.

Who are we kidding, those cherries disappeared before our butts got back on the bike. They were good. Not sure if they were $11 good, but they were good.

 

[Lightcycle]

...and then more money paid to the ferrymen to take us to the other side

Riding into Sogndal

And another ferry. And it's raining again... Starting to get a bit repetitive now.

Hey, I found the Norwegian Lake Louise!

And Neda says "hi" from the road

 

[Lightcycle]

Getting close to our destination for the evening

Updating the blog in our "campsite" in Moskog, our tent just outside and the cottages in the background

There is nobody tenting in the rain when we arrive in Moskog. Everyone has rented little warm and dry cottages in the campsite, but they are four times more expensive than a tent site (which is expensive to begin with!) So when we head into the washroom/kitchen building that the tenters can use, we realize that absolutely nobody comes in here because they all have their own private washrooms and kitchens in their cottages.

So we totally set up inside the communal kitchen just like it was our own living room. We now have our own dry and warm private cottage for a quarter of the cost!

LOL! We are such hobos...

 

[DemonPig]

Minus the rain, I feel like moving to Norway. My type of scenery.

BTW, what model of a tent are you using for these trips? And how do you feel about it? I'm sure you mentioned something somewhere but there's no way I can find it quick in this full size novel.

 

[Lightcycle]

It's a Mountain Hardwear Hammerhead 3 3-person tent.

What I like about it:

- It's rated for "3 people" which is tent-code for "2 people comfortably + their gear"
- It's tall enough inside to stand up (more like stoop) to put on your rain pants before going out.
- 2 separate entrances and 2 vestibules, you can go for a late night pee run without waking the other person up and each vestibule can store boots and raingear.
- freestanding, but you can stake it down in windy weather
- fully waterproof - after 3.5 years, we've not had any leaks (knock on ripstop polyester)
- removable fly + you can unzip interior panels to expose mesh sides for hot weather
- it's got a few pockets and hooks on the inside to store stuff, hang up camplight, etc. Very well thought out.

The only drawback I can think of is that it's relatively heavy (7 lbs) compared to hiking tents, and it doesn't fold up very compactly, which is not a problem for motorcycle or car camping, but I wouldn't want to carry this thing on my back for hours a day. And we also replaced the stock stakes, which were like trying to hammer wet noodles into the ground. We got some alloy Y-type stakes instead. You could crucify a rhinoceros to a granite wall with these things...

The tent doesn't come with a footprint (for extra protection against punctures and rain), so you have to order it separately. I'd get the tent-specific footprint instead of a generic one, because it's measured to be slightly smaller than the tent, so water rolling off the tent goes to the ground and doesn't pool up underneath the tent.

 

[bocutter]

The only drawback I can think of is that it's relatively heavy ...

Speaking of heavy, have you posted the total weight of your loads?

I did a weigh-in in Aug. Two 50L top cases (on side), tent, s/bag, a/matt, and wanigan top case came to about 125lb.

 

[DemonPig]

Thank you for the detailed response. I'm looking for something smallish but comfortable and durable. Thought you'd be a good person to ask.

 

[Lightcycle]

I'm looking for something smallish but comfortable and durable. Thought you'd be a good person to ask.

Yeah, I think our requirements are a bit different than yours. We basically needed a replacement house! :iconbiggrin:

For small, maybe look into a bivy tent. It's basically a shell around your sleeping bag that keeps the rain and mosquitoes off your face. You won't be able to sit up in it or keep any gear inside the tent, but it'll be light and compact. I've seen some that roll up into the size of a water bottle and weigh less than 2 lbs.

Speaking of heavy, have you posted the total weight of your loads?

I don't know for sure, but I'm going to guess I'm carrying close to 150lbs and Neda is carrying 120lbs? I know the volume though, we had to ship it separately from the motorcycles from South America to Europe, it was 225L for the both of us!

 

[AF4iK]

Wow those tunnels are wild. Imagine if there were a power outage?

 

[Riceburner]

probably have generator backups...hopefully.

I like my tent too. Dome, free standing. I pick it up and shake it out before packing up. Was expensive in the late 80s, but has held up till now. The fly seams started leaking a couple years ago. Everything else is great, just need to seal the fly seams somehow.