12th May. After a rest day I spent reading The Devils (its complicated but engrossing) I set off this morning under heavy skies. I got an early start as the campsite was closing for a harmonica festival which was going to take it over for a week. (I am not making this up). I got a good start down to a town called Odda still on the same fjord as Kinsarvik, had a quick stroll round then pressed on.
The road climbed upwards and it started to rain, a kind of wet rain. Somewhere I pulled off and performed the bizarre getting into a rainsuit wearing enormous enduro boots kind of dance while it is pissing down and while everything is getting wet.
Once attired I headed off with rain on my visor and really going slower because I can’t see that much with the raindrops and steam. The road got higher and soon there is thick snow everywhere, of a dirty kind, then ice by the side of the road turning slightly green and beginning to melt – rain, snow and ice and the occasional waterfall throwing spray into the road- there was no shortage of water today.
But as I realised here, you just need to move to the other side of some mountains and the weather changes. My route joined the road called Rv9 (and of course I starting singing ‘Highway Nine’ or whatever the country and western song is called - 'Gulf Coast Highway'). Things changed. Its a long road that goes south down all the way to Kristiansand and I could have just kept going but that would leave me with a problem for tomorrow which is my last day here.
My choices were the ‘funny’ road to Lysebotn described in loving detail by a Norweigian biker ‘the funniest part is at the end’ or to head down for a campsite near the Rv9. I plugged in Lysebotn into the GPS and zoomed in on the road – just as I thought a tangle of blood vessels of hairpins that folded over on themselves increadibly tightly and countlessly, lovely for some riders but really scary for me, the rider who has not done a U turn since his test and whose heart is in his mouth on the haripins on ‘ordinary’ roads – let alone the narrow ‘funny’ roads. I thought it was going to be a tough choice whether to rise to the challenge or bottle out but in the end there was no way I was going to put myself through it. I pressed on down the 9.
By now I am feeling a little used to the beauty that is everywhere here. ‘Even’ the 9 is stunning, its whole length by a beautiful lake, with pine trees rising on the other side to high mountains, the occasional tunnel (how I like tunnels though damp and smelling like the cellar of the house I grew up in, it does not rain in them). The first campsite whose co ordinates I put into the GPS seemed to have vanished (did I mention that the list of all Norwegian campsite coordinates that I imported from the Internet seemed to have become deranged – they all have been relocated to the Indian Ocean. Honestly. So now I am sitting in the humid sunshine of the first four star campsite I have visited.
I wait to see how much it costs in the morning as the people running it only seem to put in a brief appearance between 10 and 11am. (It was cheaper than the 3 star site I stayed in previously) Its also by a lake and has swish washing and washing up facilities and is large and generally populated with white campervans but there is enough space not to feel surrounded and again a lovely view over a slightly more domesticated lake. I’ve chosen some routes from the MC maps I've been carrying so will cruise my way down and by indirections find directions out to Kristiansand where I will bite the bullet and camp in the 4 star site apparently in the middle of town or at least very close to the ferry terminal where I need to be at least by 7.30am on saturday.
Though not quite finished it has been an interesting time. To think I bought the first three maps of Norway taking you up to Tromso. I’ve not moved out of the area covered by the first and been amazed at the scenery, the quality of the roads and their emptiness. I’ve had the whole width of the 9 nearly the whole time I have been on it. Perhaps Norway is another country, like Slovakia, that I think about coming back to some day and ‘doing properly’. Here it would mean having a definite plan and timetable to reach the top, to much visited Nordkap. The trouble is, to get here you either drive 500 miles just to arrive at the bottom of the country via Germany and Denmark or you pay over £300 to take the ferry to Esbjerg and still need to ride for a couple of hundred miles then take the ferry up to Kristiansand. Its quite a expedition but one worth thinking about. But like other major trips I think about, it would be ideal to do it in a small group. Its hard to keep up morale when you get caught up in your own thoughts and doubts about the trip. Hmmm. Something to think about.
Total miles 199.5 Average speed 41.4mph Fastest 69.7mph Riding time 4.75 hours 5/12/2011 Kinsarvik-Evje