{"id":896,"date":"2015-08-08T09:22:52","date_gmt":"2015-08-08T09:22:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwihoods.com\/?p=896"},"modified":"2015-08-08T09:22:52","modified_gmt":"2015-08-08T09:22:52","slug":"isdalsto-voss-flam-fagernes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kiwihoods.com\/?p=896","title":{"rendered":"ISDALSTO, VOSS, FLAM, FAGERNES"},"content":{"rendered":"

5 August<\/p>\n

We said goodbye to the farm camp and drove up north around Bergen.\u00a0 We are off to Isdalsto to visit the Norwegian couple we had met in Copenhagen.\u00a0 This place is just a bit further north of Bergen so not far off our next route where we will head back towards Oslo.<\/p>\n

We had to stop at a camping and caravan store to buy a seal for our toilet as it had started to leak.\u00a0 I guess it is probably quite old and they don\u2019t last forever.\u00a0 Thankfully they had what we needed so we will have to fit this in the next day so that it is back working properly again.<\/p>\n

We arrived at Laura and Knut\u2019s house which is a lovely 130 year old timber home with a huge amount of land around it.\u00a0 It is quite amazing when you see the house you would never guess it is that old.\u00a0 I reckon they obviously built\/build houses incredibly well here in Norway.\u00a0 Plus I think they maintain them really well too.\u00a0 You rarely see rundown unkempt houses here.<\/p>\n

It was so nice to have someone again to visit in a place where we know no one and just happened to hit it off with this lovely couple.\u00a0 Knut was working in the North Sea oil rigs so we missed seeing him unfortunately. Laura made us coffee and waffles with strawberries and cream \u2013 so totally unexpected and really lovely.\u00a0 We ate the waffles like they were Belgian ones \u2013 not as they do here in Norway.\u00a0 It sometimes amazes us how you can get on so well with someone you have only met once, but we had a wonderful afternoon and though we were offered to stay the night, we sadly had to say no as we needed to keep on moving onwards towards Oslo.\u00a0 Laura had made a delicious soup \u2013 more like a casserole to us, that she gave us to take with us along with some other Norwegian goodies.\u00a0 It was so welcome to have tea for the night especially as we freedom camped late that night and it meant Scot didn\u2019t have to cook.\u00a0 Laura loves to practice her English which I can well understand as you do tend to lose any language that you aren\u2019t often using.<\/p>\n

We really hope we can catch up with them both again sometime in the future before we head away from this part of the world.<\/p>\n

Our freedom camp was outside of Voss where we had previously passed through on the Norway in a nutshell tour.\u00a0 We decided to stop in a rest stop on the fjord front where there were already a few campers staying.\u00a0 We thought it would be a safe place where there are others.\u00a0 It was ok until I started to not like the look of a few of those who were camping there the night, but it was too late to make a change by this time.\u00a0 There were other quite respectable vans there so Scot was of the belief we were ok.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t sleep well though as I hadn\u2019t before when freedom camping as there were others arriving through the night who were talking to the ones I didn\u2019t like the look of.<\/p>\n

The next morning, I found out why I didn\u2019t quite like these people \u2013 they were very dodgy looking \u00a0Bulgarians (I wasn\u2019t holding that against them) but they were living out of their cars.\u00a0 I have developed a real suspicion about these nationalities like the Romanians and Bulgarians in countries such as this as they are cited for their bad behaviour all the time.\u00a0 When I see them like this, many of them together living in one car (3 in this case) \u2013 although they did have a van with a Swedish number plate which I wondered how they had acquired that \u2013 I get quite suspicious.\u00a0 Norway is an expensive country for most but for those nationalities it would be difficult for them to survive here as they are generally much poorer.\u00a0 It seemed that this was their nightly camp and there were about 12 of them living there.\u00a0 We spied one of the girls selling a magazine in Voss similar in style to those who sell the Big Issue in Brisbane city. I just didn\u2019t get a good feel about these people and I was very glad to be moving on, maybe they were ok, but maybe they weren\u2019t.\u00a0 Gut instinct to me is everything when travelling and they just looked like real ratbags.<\/p>\n

We stopped in Voss to have a look around and then continued on around the route the bus and train had taken on the tour we did.\u00a0 We stopped at Gudvangan, but there isn\u2019t a lot there.\u00a0 It is mostly just a carpark for buses and cars who are going on the ferry trip around the fjord.\u00a0 There was a cute little cottage with God Kaffe (Good Coffee) so we stopped there and had a cup with a local \u2018cake\u2019 called Lefse which was like a sweet flat bread rolled up with a spread on it and we were told that different parts of Norway make a different tasting spread for the Lefse.\u00a0 It was very different to what we are used to but pleasant.\u00a0 Scot is always eating the red currents that are currently growing on bushes all over so he had a few in the garden this little cottage had.<\/p>\n

We travelled on to Flam where we decided to stop in the camping ground for the night as we liked it here when we got off the ferry a couple of days ago.\u00a0 It is quite reasonably priced, clean and well laid out.\u00a0 We are parked on a terrace with a view of Flam and a river that runs into the fjord.\u00a0 I had been getting cranky about the van as you don\u2019t get a chance to give things a good spring clean that often when you are always on the road, so since we had stopped early today we both got to and did some of our overdue jobs.\u00a0 We fixed the toilet first, then Scot got on the roof to make some further water proofing fixes where we thought there was a problem still and I spring cleaned inside, doing all the washing and dusting and sweeping out the interior.\u00a0 It feels great when this is done.<\/p>\n

We then took a walk up a near by nature trail which has a great view over the fjord and surrounds.\u00a0 We watched the ferry that we took arriving in and the people getting onto the Flam rail.<\/p>\n

We had another delicious dinner complements of Laura and it started to rain, so we are snuggled in our cosy van doing the blog and reading.<\/p>\n

I think it rained all night as the ground was quite mushy when we got up, but it was so cool as there was fog\/mist all around the fjord and the hills around us.\u00a0 This is how a fjord is supposed to look \u2013 misty and eerie.\u00a0 We packed up and headed off on the E16 highway towards the East.\u00a0 The countryside starts to change as we head away from the west coast of Norway.\u00a0 We drove through the longest tunnel ever \u2013 we thought 11kms was long but this one was 24kms long.\u00a0 Almost as far as from Clontarf to the city. \u00a0\u00a0Scot found out that there is a tunnel in Norway that is 45km long which took a while to build but saves a lot of work maintaining the alternative road over the mountain.\u00a0 They cut out so much difficult travelling, I think NZ should start doing a few more tunnels to cut out some of the mountain drives, although that would then change the countryside so maybe not. \u00a0The countryside gets less mountainous and more lake like fjords with rivers often running into them.\u00a0 We hit road works which went for quite a few kms but it was good to see them doing the roads up as some of this highway isn\u2019t in the best shape.\u00a0 I guess the snow and ice plays havoc with the maintenance of the roads.\u00a0 Scot thinks all the beer tax is going on all the road works J.\u00a0 We came across a few lovely settlements that were obviously ski\u00a0 field areas where there were a lot of holiday chalets.\u00a0 You can tell that Norway is like NZ when you come across sheep just either wandering over the main highway or lying along the side of the highway right near where we drive past.\u00a0 Also came across a cow doing the same.\u00a0 We planned to travel further today to get close to Lillehammer where we will head before Oslo, but with the slow travel due to road works we were held up and we only made it to Fagernes which is another lovely village on a lake.\u00a0 It was quite warm in the sun this afternoon so we decided we had to go for a swim in Norway so this lake was the best opportunity.\u00a0 It was quite cold and it took your breath away, but we still managed to have a bit of a swim.\u00a0 I have not lost my paranoia about something lurking below me in the water after my scare which is crazy because there will only be fish swimming here, not sharks or dugongs, but regardless of what I tell myself I still get a bit freaked out when I can\u2019t see much because of how deep the water is. \u00a0I hope this will eventually go.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow we will go for a walk around the town and maybe another swim while we can if there is sun shining before heading off for Lillehammer.\u00a0 Lillehammer is where the winter Olympics were held here in 1994 and will also hold the youth Olympics next year.<\/p>\n

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