I have been lucky enough to get to visit some incredibly beautiful countries over the past few years. Even on this trip, Kyrgyzstan, Finland and Georgia have been particularly beautiful. But even so I wasn’t quite prepared for Norway. It is truly stunning.
In looking through our photos to pick some to upload here I had a harder than usual task to narrow it down to a manageable amount. The first run through I picked only the best ones, thinking that by being particularly discerning, I would be left with just a handful that I could then use here. I ended up with 54 that I thought all deserved inclusion. I have since managed to trim that number down somewhat, but it means that this update will largely be in picture format. Norway was just far too photogenic, and it’s also been so long since we were there that I think I’d fail to capture the place properly by simply writing about it.
Once across the border, our first priority was to find somewhere to sleep for the night. Exercising ‘Everyman’s Right’ we pulled off the road onto a stony beach (which, unless wordpress mixes up the ordering of these photos, will be on the top right below). Walking around the bay until we were out of sight of the road, we put up our camp beds and slept under the stars in one of the most beautiful spots I’ve ever had the good fortune to camp in. As we had an evening meal of canned fish on bread we were joined by porpoises swimming in the bay and a bright sunset. Travelling down the western coast of Scandinavia, we were to see many more impressive sunsets over the Northern Atlantic.
Shortly after entering Norway, we realised the boost hose was badly split. Vard repaired it with duck tape and a jubilee clip (it’s at the bottom of the photo). How many other damages can you spot? There are at least 9 things wrong with the parts you can see here, although some aren’t visually apparent.
These are a selection of the places we camped in on our way down the country; in fjords, by open bays dotted with islands, under a concrete picnic area in a roadside turning. Some were making use of everyman’s right, some were in official camp sites. One was a campsite we got free, as we didn’t have any Norwegian Krone – only credit cards, and he didn’t have a card machine. Plus Vard who had forgotten he was wearing two hats and was wondering why we were looking at him strangely.
We took the coastal road south, winding our way down through the fjords. There are few roads in this part of the world, although they are all exceptionally well maintained. The route we had chosen meant that we had to take ferries to continue our route. Expensive, but the views alone were worth it. Now that we were back in the more developed part of the world, Harrison was once again getting lots of strange looks. We were also seeing our first real rain since Armenia. Annoyingly persistent, but it meant there were lots of great sunsets and rainbows.
This took us past two of the main tourist draws of Norway’s coast – Torghatten and Saltstraumen. Torghatten is a mountain on a peninsular with a hole straight through it, which we walked up and through. Saltstraumen is a maelstrom – the strongest tidal current in the world, formed as 400 million cubic meters of water is forced through a gap of 150 meters. It gets to a speed of 25 miles per hour, and is slightly terrifying, even from dry land.
This is ‘Ekte Geitost’. A Norwegian specialty, it’s a goats cheese. Except with the look and taste of peanut butter, with a goats cheese aftertaste. Really bizarre. Even after multiple servings, none of us were entirely sure if we liked it or not.
Just north of the maelstrom was Bodø (pronounced as ‘Buddha’), where we dropped off some hitch-hikers (who thought Harrison was amazing, despite being extremely cramped with 5 in it plus huge amounts of luggage) and went for a good walk to the top of the local mountain/hill.
We travelled further south, and the scenery slowly changed from the more open spaces of the north, with thousands of islands dotted everywhere, to the more mountainous and fjord-heavy scenery that I always thought of Norway as. We drove deep into Western Norway; into their fjordland. It was here that the roads became completely unbelievable. They’re some of the most fun roads I’ve ever driven on, although much of that probably has to do with the scenery we were driving through. They also had highly evocative names; Trollstigen, the Atlantic Highway, Eagles Pass. We took it in turns on these, not wanting any of us to miss out.
While in the fjords, we went on a walk to trek behind a big waterfall. It was unfortunately at the top of a steep climb, but there were at least some cute goats on the way up.
We also spotted a glacier on the road down; a tongue of ice flowing down the mountainside into a fjord.
We found Norway to be an incredibly expensive country – even compared to places like Japan, Australia and Switzerland, I think Norway may be the most expensive place I’ve ever been. So much so that we decided that we couldn’t afford to drink any beer. We kept checking prices in the supermarkets in the vain hope that we’d stumble across coke-can sized beers for less than £2. We never did.
Perhaps to make up for this, we did end up cooking more ‘proper’ meals; pasta with pesto, chili con carne, Norwegian Bacalao (a spicy fish stew – delicious).
As we got closer to Oslo we were very aware that the journey was coming to an end; at least for one of us. Vard had booked his ticket and was due to fly home from Oslo in a few days. A deadline was approaching but although time felt tight we didn’t rush ourselves; we took our time and enjoyed the views.
Three Unwise Men 
Nature at its pristine best!