Tour Report from the trip in Norway with our friends from the Azores.
It’s 5.00 a.m., we have finish packing the mc to drive down to Langesund. First a quick breakfast, then 6.15 am we’re sitting on the bike. The ferry will arrive 8.00 am and the trip down there is 100 km so we should have time, we just have to stop and fill gas. We arrived the dockside 7.40 am and the ferry arrives 7.50…..I’m so excited! After 7 years I should finally meet Manuel……we have been writing e-mails to each other for 7 years, became good friends without having seen each other…….the Internet is kind of strange in that way……but, we had common interests, like riding bikes, travelling, photographing and family. We even become grandparents at about the same time! I have had the pleasure of meeting his wonderful wife Annie once though….she visited Norway in the end of 1997. And now they were coming to Norway, to go on a 4 day trip together with Manuel’s brother in law Pierre, his wife Elisa and their friends Carlos and Teresa. They had been driving all the way from Lisbon in 3 days!
It was this winter Manuel sent me an e-mail and told me they were planning a trip to Norway this summer. Since it was natural for me to help a little with the planning, like where to go, what to see, I followed the planning pretty close……but not close enough!! I tried to tell them that they should not go more than 350 km per day, but they did not listen to that. They were used to long distances they said…….my careful “yes but” didn’t sink in. I tried 3 times to tell them that 500-600 km in Norway was too long in one day, so I said; “yes but, we have a lot of speed limits with 50 and 60 km/h and our roads are kind of curvy…” the answer was always; “no problem”……..ok, so I made contact with some friends I have that love to ride motorcycles…. these are friends that I consider a little “crazy” themselves when it comes to distances, and they all said, “THIS is crazy, Hakon!”……. to which I replied,” Well, I tried to tell them that”. So they shook their heads and said, we can’t wait for you to tell us about this trip when you come back!!”
Julia was ready with her camera, to take some photos as soon as they were on Norwegian soil and to take photos from when we first met! (you can click here to view the photos from the trip, or you can click on the link at the end of this report)
And here is the story:
June 22nd
To begin with we hadn't really planned to meet them in Langesund. We were a little uncertain if we were up to the challenge of such a grueling driving schedule. So the original plan was that we would meet them just before Geiranger and then follow along during the last part of the trip. But we impulsively decided that we couldn't wait to meet them and even if it killed us, we wanted go along on the whole trip. So we surprised them on the dockside in Langesund as they came off the ship expecting only to meet one Norwegian friend, not two (and a tag along American).
We all meet for the first time! It was great! It seems like we all fit together immediately! Ommund, an “internet friend” of Pierre had also met up, to go with us the first day. He’s a really nice guy. This also made the group equal since they are always nagging each other about witch bike is best, Honda or Yamaha……Pierre and Ommund have Yamaha FJR 1300’s, and Manuel and Carlos have Honda STX 1300’s................................me??.....well, Yamaha has never had any model that has been tempting to me.....so far. On the other hand, I have now my third Honda...;-).
Our destination for this first day was Flåm, so we went first through Telemark, up by Seljord Lake. There we had the first stop. Our friends really seemed to like the Norwegian landscape and our roads! And I think they also saw the (Norwegian Loch ness) monster here! We went further on very nice mc roads and the next rest stop was just before Haukeligrend. Then we went up to Haukeliseter, with a lunch break. They were all excited to see a small piece of ice floating in the water at this time of year. Just wait, I thought to myself with a grin.
We left Haukeliseter and continued to drive over the mountain, when in the last tunnel at Haukelifjell, having gone thru 5km of the tunnel, we had a very scary and dangerous experience…..a truck with engine problems started to blow huge amount of thick heavy smoke out from the side. I was the last one driving in our group and when I saw this happening I prepared to hold my breath to avoid inhaling that smoke, but before I finished my thoughts, the truck had stopped and the smoke was now so thick I could not see!! Manuel and Carlos were ahead of me and they had stopped too. I could barely see the taillights of Manuel’s bike ahead of me. Pierre and Ommund managed to go thru before the smoke was that thick….for a short while everything was chaos and we were close to panicking. Thanks to our smart wives, who all went off the bikes at the same time and managed to follow the white line on the side of the road to lead us thru the smoke, we made it!! When we finally got out of the tunnel after what seemed to be hours, we managed to stop cars that were coming the other direction, to keep them from entering the tunnel. A nice tourist with a motorhome offered us milk to drink as some of us were very sick from the smoke. After a short time we got the courage to get back on the bikes and continue. I think most of us were shaking pretty much for the next several kilometres. But we felt lucky and happy to have made it safely and carried those feelings with us as we continued.
Next stop was at Låtefoss. Once again our friends seemed to be impressed by the Norwegian landscape. It was fun to see their faces each time we stopped. We went further along Hardangerfjord up to Brimnes. Those roads are narrow but nice! At Brimnes we took the ferry to Bruravik. From here it was a short drive to Ommund’s summerhouse, where we had a short rest and a magnificent view of the fjord down below.
At 8.30 pm we arrived in Flåm. Unfortunately this was too late to take the “Flåmsbanen”, a beautiful train trip 45 minutes up into the mountains. We were sorry to have missed this experience, but even worse, because of an overbooking in our hotel causing a delay we almost missed dinner also. But after some explaining with the hotel restaurant about our harrowing day, they made us a very nice dinner. We enjoyed the meal together but we were also very tired after a long and exciting day.
June 23rd
The plan for this day was that Julia and I should meet them in the afternoon because she had to work a little in the morning and this would give them time to visit the Briksdal glacier. We planned to meet just before Geiranger. Today’s goal was to reach Kristiansund where we had hotel reservations.
We had a little misunderstanding about the meeting point, so they had started to go down to Geiranger without us. When I called Manuel on the mobile phone since they were not at the meeting point, he said; “we’re going down some really steep roads right now!!” In the centre of Geiranger we caught up with them again. Once again they seemed to be impressed of the nature and the landscape! Manuel wondered if we colored the water in the fjords to impress the tourists…… ;-))
Well, I have to say that so far we had been very lucky with nice weather! We took a few pictures in Geiranger. Then we went up the “eagle road” from Geiranger with a new stop just to look at the view, over the mountain, crossing the fjord and then up to the mountain again before we went down “Trollstigen”, a new distance with breathtaking nature. We also stopped and looked at “Trollveggen” before we went to Åndalsnes, Molde, Bud and then the “Atlantic Ocean Road” over to Kristiansund. We were late, once again, it was 11.00 pm when we were at the dockside, waiting for the ferry to take us to Kristiansund. And we had not eaten much that day so all of us were starving!! Luckily, Julia had some crackers and cheese in the top box and we could have some small appetizers while waiting for the ferry. It was a good thing, because all they could come up with in Kristiansund that time of night was pizza in a pub…..and what a pizza!! The poor waitress burned the first pizza and the smoke from the pizza was almost as bad as in the tunnel!! Anyway, the peanuts and beer were good! (why didn't they listen to me when I told them that 350-400 km in Norway is enough for a day? ;-)).... It was past 2.00 am before we went to bed and we had to be up early next morning, breakfast at 7.00, it’s a long drive from Kristiansund to Oslo. But surprisingly, by 8.00 am we were on the bikes and ready to go.
June 24th
The first 200 km this day was ok. The roads were nice and the temperature was ok, maybe my warm weather friends thought it was a little chilly though. When we arrived in Oppdal it started to rain…..more and more….and over Dovrefjell the temperature dropped to 6 C!! It was time to show who are the real VIKINGS now, so Manuel had my extra pair of warm gloves and Pierre had my fleece sweater…. poor Carlos…hopefully Teresa managed to keep him warm…;-))
It never stopped….it rained all the way down to Oslo, though it had lightened up a tiny bit when we reached our destination of Asker just outside the city.
I’m sorry you never got to see the beauty of Dovrefjell…….I guess none of us cared about any view at this point. I noticed that the girls had finally stopped carrying their cameras around their necks as they rode on the bikes.
We arrived almost on time (6.00 pm) close to Henning’s place. Henning is a friend of Pierre and Elisa from when Henning and his family stayed in the Azores Islands. Sadly, we had to leave the group for the evening instead of getting to meet Henning and his family and enjoying a nice evening together. But again, Julia had to do some work that just couldn’t wait. Her mobile phone had been ringing the whole trip south that day and some eager tourists from Lithuania were waiting for confirmations of their reservations with PlusCamp. We agreed to meet the next morning at 10.00 a.m. and provide a tour of some of the sights of Oslo before the visitors had to leave Norway on their way south. Since we had another 90 km to go in the rain, we had covered 760 km this day and 560 of then in pouring rain, we decided to take the car to go meet them the next and last day in Oslo. And we have to admit, it was very nice to sleep in our own bed after that whirlwind trip!
June 25th
We met 10.00 a.m. this morning to take the Oslo tour. Now the weather was really nice and warm again! We took a trip to Bygdøy where all the ship museums are. Then we went around town to look at the royal castle, the parliament, city hall, Gamle Aker church (Oslo’s oldest remaining building), and Vigeland Sculpture Park before we had lunch at Lofoten restaurant at Aker Brygge. Henning’s father had offered to take a tour with us in Holmenkollen Ski jump. It was a quick tour with glimpses of some of the highlights of our sights, but it seems like our friends enjoyed Oslo, especially the sculpture park ;-)) I didn’t know they all had such a “hands on” interest in sculpture!!
Finally, in the afternoon we guided our friends along Ring 3 and out of the city, in the midst of tons of traffic. As we looked in our rearview mirror we could see huge rain clouds building up over Holmenkollen. It was incredible how these friends had managed to bring so much good weather with them. The forecast for these 4 days had been very grim, threatening heavy rains and thick clouds the entire time. And except for that last day of riding we managed to have 3 beautiful days for our friends to enjoy the nature of Norway. When they finally decided to sneak through the traffic on Ring 3 and head towards Gothenborg we watched a little sadly as their taillights disappeared into the traffic.
Sometimes 4 days seems like pretty long time….and sometimes not. It was already time for our friends to go further on their trip and leave us back in Oslo. They would go to visit Spain and Ibiza before they went home. We were sad to see them leave and both of us had the feeling that we had met some really special friends. The good thing is that we will definitely keep in touch, and we plan see each other again. I don’t know exactly when, but Julia and I will visit the Azores Islands and our new friends in the near future, and I am hearing rumors that there is a cruise, either in the fjords, or along the Norwegian coast, planned in the future by some people from the Azores.
We just want to say to Manuel, Annie, Pierre, Elisa, Carlos and Teresa, thank you so much for coming, thank you for sharing your trip with us, and thank you for being such good friends. We look so much forward to seeing you all again, soon!
Julia & Hakon
(Click here to view the photos page from this trip)