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August 6 Sunday sunny Bicycle touring Norway While Sharon slaves over a hot skillet making pancakes, I create a sign on Sharon's front pannier cover reading, "Kiwis," with an arrow pointing in the direction we are, in case Arran and Rebecca come by while we're tucked away on our side road. I set the sign on the roadside secured by a couple of rocks to keep it from blowing away. By the time we're finished breakfast, our Kiwi bicycle touring friends still haven't come by. We take the bikes out to the road. Sharon follows a path to a waterfall, while I read beside the lakeshore. Just as Sharon is returning from her hike, Arran and Rebecca show up on their touring bicycles. Perfect timing. The fellow that gave Arran a ride into Odda, Norway, last night thought the Rema 1000 grocery store was closed,so he took Arran to another grocery store on the hill. No wonder the guy thought the Rema was closed -- it looks like a warehouse with its tiny windows covered up by stacks of boxes inside. I wouldn't have guessed it was even a grocery store by its appearance. As Arran walked back to the Rema after his shopping excursion, he said he saw us bicycling up a hill out of town. He said he met a couple of neat Norwegians on his ride to and from town. One guy told him they build so many tunnels in Norway that they are the foremost technology on tunnel building in the world and even export the technology and expertise. "We export holes to Korea." Arran and Rebecca stayed at a rest area last night. Not too many places for free camping along the road with a fjord on one side and hill and orchards on the other. Sharon predicted they would be staying in an orchard. I thought maybe in a tunnel. There was a place halfway through one of the tunnels where a hole led to the fjord. I suppose it would be pretty noisy with the traffic echo though. One guy told Arran that when drunk drivers go off into the fjord, the fjords are so steep and so deep that the driver usually isn't found for a couple of years or so. They occasionally bob to the surface. What do you call a guy with no arms or legs and goes swimming in a fjord with his car? Bob. Arran says the scenery just keeps getting more spectacular. "Why did we bother to take those pictures back there?" he keeps saying. It is fabulous bicycle touring with all the waterfalls gushing off peaks. The kilometres go by fast with all the terrific sights to look at. The days pass quickly. We pull our touring bicycles to a stop by a river with three picnic tables. A nearby souvenir shop has animal skins on display. Car drivers stop. Do they take pictures of the beautiful picturesque landscape? No. They just take pictures of the skins. Recalling what the woman said about getting water out of the creek to drink, Arran goes down to the river to fill his water bottle. I take mine over to the souvenir shop for a fill up. While I'm there I ask if the river water is okay to drink. The woman replies, "I wouldn't drink it. You'll be very sick." So much for Norway's sparkling clean safe water. I did fill a jug from a pipe coming off the mountain last night. Kind of surprising about the water warning, the river looks cleaner than the creek water the lady gave us. We have seen hoses feeding into various streams as we cycle past, but maybe people are using the water only for irrigation for their orchards. After lunch we throw our legs over our touring machines and begin to climb. And climb. We climb a mass of switchbacks to a pass. The road weaves around the side of a mountain and ends on a windy summit. Sharon wants to know why they always put these summits in the windiest places. While we're waiting for Arran and Rebecca, I don rain pants and windproof coat as we wait, to help fend off the cold gusts. I build an obelisk with fallen stones and top it off with a tall pointed one. I proudly show it to Arran when he arrives. "That's quite phallic," he chides. They break out the Scotch whiskey to toast our successful ascent. The whiskey is in a little Macintosh tartan flask and comes with four tiny metal tumblers. Arran says it can't be true Scotch design or else it would only have one tumbler. Must be the guest pack. Rebecca takes our picture and then decides to take a self timer group photo. She readies the camera, intricately balancing it on rocks. The mirror flips up and then the camera dies in that position. Must be the batteries or my ugly mug. Even though it's freezing cold at the summit in the wind, and the descent will be chilly too, Arran doesn't put on long pants. He says true New Zealander's only wear shorts in the summer. We coast down the other side, marveling at the views. Most of the houses have sod roofs. Lots of fireweed in splashy purple brush strokes by the roadside. Near the bottom we see a grassy road into a field. We bicycle into the field and set up our two bicycle touring tents below the highway. We eat supper by a frigid lake. It is filled directly from a hidden glacier. These free Norway camp sites are going to be tough campsites to beat. We have a view of a lake, a waterfall spills off a distant mountain, a river is fifty metres away. A full moon rises in the clear night sky. Just another average day on a Norway bicycle tour. A zero Kroner day, too! |
