{"id":5256,"date":"2023-08-10T16:20:48","date_gmt":"2023-08-10T15:20:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/?p=5256"},"modified":"2023-08-10T16:20:48","modified_gmt":"2023-08-10T15:20:48","slug":"norway-going-south-june-22nd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/biking\/norway-going-south-june-22nd\/","title":{"rendered":"Norway going south: June 22nd"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Thursday 22nd<\/sup> June: Its Thursday and I am staying at a campsite called Hogkjolen Fjel Fannre<\/a>m. Its located on the E39 to the west of Trondheim on the way to Alesund which is where I want to end up tomorrow night. Last night up on the E6 in a town just south of a town called Mosfjelt(?) was my first night of hiring a hytte \u2013 a cabin \u2013 which cost Kr400 \u2013 about \u00a340. It was a cute little place. It had a fridge which I didn\u2019t expect. It had lights. It had a mattress on the bed and a small cooker and a kettle. All in all it was fantastic. As I wrote earlier, it was the perfect space between staying in a swanky hotel and camping in my small tent which is the other extreme. I\u2019ve been buying smaller and smaller tents in order to be lighter \u2013 because \u2018light is right\u2019 <\/a>\u2013 right? Have I already said this but, being in a (small) tent<\/a> is alright when the weather is dry but as soon as you add in rain, the whole thing becomes almost untenable (maybe a slight overstatement but it becomes extremely awkward) as you squeeze round and try to take off motorcycling clothes and boots in this small space. When the weather is questionable, staying in these huts is the perfect answer. Its almost an answer made in heaven. For example \u2013 no, lets start from today. I knew when I stayed in that hut last night that it was going to be raining in the morning and that it was going to start raining at about 8am. So, the bike was outside, of course, I was safely dry inside. The bike was covered up with the Oxford cover I will now always take with me travelling. And it rained right on cue at 8 o\u2019clock. I dithered, eventually packed up. The rain was not heavy but it was more than a drizzle and I left though I wondered about leaving a little later. I think I got on the road by about 9.50 in the end. It was raining but I was in wet weather gear and it was OK. I rode for an hour, maybe more like two hours. What made things start to go downhill was when big trucks came thundering in the other direction. They cause so much spray and splash. Usually I can move over when I see them coming to the side of the carriageway to get away from the worst of it but one particular truck \u2013 maybe I didn\u2019t move fast enough or maybe there was a particularly deep puddle but I got drenched and from that point my legs felt wet. Somehow they had got wet. I thought that this good quality wet weather gear (made by Klim) is fine but it has its limits or perhaps is starting to weaken. An hour later I stopped at a roadside diner \u2013 not a fantastic place but fine for the purpose and had a coffee and a strange cake. I sat at a table by the window and looked out rather despondent at the rain falling heavily by now. And in the end I just had to go back out and get back on the bike in this heavy rain. I headed off, continuing south on the E6 and I was thinking things like (the Buddhist mantra) \u2018everything is impermanent\u2019 and \u2018it can\u2019t rain all the time\u2019 (after the song by Jane Siberry) and for a flicker of thought I thought: this is a privileged moment to be in the middle of suffering and to have this opportunity to think through these things. And I rode and maybe an hour later the rain stopped. I was going south and then eventually as I got further south, the sun came out! So I stopped at a roadside picnic spot and had a roll and some orange juice sitting on their benches. I think I kept the wet weather gear on \u2013 I can\u2019t remember but I certainly felt a huge relief. Then I continued south, riding around Trondheim where they are doing huge roadworks and it was the kind of time that people are leaving work: lots of traffic, queues of traffic, lots of tunnels. Eventually I got around Trondheim and took the turnoff from the E6 to the E39 which is the road that goes right around the coast on this west part of Norway. This is a beautiful part of Norway. I gave myself a cheer in the helmet for getting on to this new road: having gone up the E6 and then back down the E6 and now I was doing something different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this point I put a random campsite into the GPS because I wanted it to route me round Trondheim to the right place to get onto this particular road. Then, maybe it wasn\u2019t the same campsite that I put in but I stopped by a wide gravel drive off the main road towards a big site \u2013 where I am now. You could not call this place pretty but it is sprawling with gravel tracks everywhere. There\u2019s even a mechanic\u2019s garage just at the end of the drive where my cabin is planted where people are working on interesting looking vintage cars. The man that runs the site in the office is an older man who was interested in my motorcycle travel and showed me maps and some nice routes that he recommended, all of which I have forgotten and he showed me down to this hut. (That\u2019s what I like about these old school campsites \u2013 that the people who run them seem genuinely interested in your travels.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\"untitled-35.jpg\"<\/a>\n<\/div>
Drying in the sunshine<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This is hut number two in my travels. This hut has four beds in it \u2013 two bunk beds. It has a small kitchen with basic equipment and a veranda with a small table and chairs. The sun has been shining in making it beautiful and warm. I have all my wet clothes spread out, drying in the sun. The only thing that has not dried yet is the sheepskin (on the seat) which was soaking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\"untitled-33.jpg\"<\/a>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Why do I like this campsite? I think its partly because it has a variety of people staying. There are people who are travellers. There is a German couple in the cabin next door who are travelling on two GSs, then there\u2019s another German couple on one GS over in a tent (interestingly they had packed up and left before I event ventured out the next morning). There\u2019s also some interesting looking vehicles around. Its definitely not one of those sites where all you see are Dutch families sitting around all day outside their huge white motorhomes. It seems much more to cater for people who have a different idea of travel. Interesting. I like it. I\u2019d come back. And (I keep saying this) I really like the hut formula. I\u2019ve been to two sites now and they have had huts available. I haven\u2019t been turned away.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s a quick gear review: the bike<\/a><\/strong> is doing fine. A lot of riders are on big GSs here \u2013 which, of course, I don\u2019t have any more. However, what my bike does not have is fantastic weather protection because I fitted a rally style front end and screen onto the bike. The original screen was actually better at keeping the wind and rain off so it is self-inflicted. I wonder whether a clip on screen extension would work, though perhaps it would look out of place. The helmet<\/a><\/strong> is fantastic. It is definitely water tight. I would know it by now if it wasn\u2019t. Water runs off the visor quite nicely. Now that I no longer need to wear glasses, I\u2019ve not been wearing sunglasses but have been using the drop down sun visor which I can, with a struggle, put up when I go into a dark tunnel and some of them are very dark and then down again when I emerge back into the sunshine. That works very nicely. The GoPro Hero 11<\/a><\/strong> seems to work well though it runs out of battery at unexpected moments. It\u2019s the same with my \u2018B-roll\u2019 camera, my Sony FDR<\/a><\/strong> \u2013 the batteries seem to suddenly go from \u00be full to being flat. Tomorrow my route is over to Alesund to pick up the rest of the route of the Motorrad tour<\/a> and perhaps I will follow that round to Stavanger. Its Thursday and I don\u2019t need to be in Kristiansand until next Wednesday. I did not realise I had so long so I can really take my time on this. It seems like there is a bit of rain coming but its not continuous \u2013 unlike when I looked on my iPhone app: the weather in the place that I left this morning is currently rain and its going to rain all night, all Friday, all Saturday and stop early Sunday morning. Whereas down here it\u2019s a much more mixed picture. So, obviously, you have got to be prepared for rain in Norway and I think you have got to be flexible enough to do some dodging and diving in your route to avoid it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thursday 22nd June: Its Thursday and I am staying at a campsite called Hogkjolen Fjel Fannrem. Its located on the E39 to the west of Trondheim on the way to Alesund which is where I want to end up tomorrow night. Last night up on the E6 in a town just south of a town…Read more Norway going south: June 22nd<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,27],"tags":[54,221],"class_list":["post-5256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biking","category-travel","tag-camping","tag-norway"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5256"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5257,"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5256\/revisions\/5257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}