 |
| 194 miles |
An earlyish start to a dull and cloudy morning with more than a hint of rain, pesky flies still around though! Breakfast, special for Terrys birthday, smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, then service Bertie and on our way. Beginning to lose track now of where we are and what direction we're heading in, not helped when Nellie doesn't want to wake up, but we managed. Once again super scenery, unfortunately the weather has spoiled getting decent photos but we've managed to at least get a tasting. Another long climb with lots of hairpin bends on narrow roads with passing places, fortunately not too busy today and we only met one service bus, on a hairpin bend of course!
Dropping down on the other side we saw a P & O Cruises liner tied up at Skjolden, most of the passengers appeared to be strolling round the town as it looked uncommonly busy. Our route took us alongside the fjord until eventually we had to cross it and popped out of a longish tunnel where, once again, a ferry was just loading as we arrived, another freebie and again a battery powered ship - got a picture of the charging connector, it was huge! Off the boat and straight in to yet another tunnel, taking us to the next leg of the route.
Originally we had planned to go up over the Aulandfjellet and avoid the 21km tunnel but in view of the weather thought we'd give it a miss. However, the tunnel was closed and a super long diversion was in place so after pausing for a quick bite to eat we went back to Plan A and were glad we did. Initially the road was steep and narrow with, yes, lots of hairpin bends but at least it was quiet although mainly second gear most of the way up. But it spilled us out onto yet another fantastic area of mountains with many streams cascading down, lots of unmelted snow and dozens of lakes, some still frozen over. The dull and often very low cloud just added to the atmospherics as we bowled along on an almost empty road. Eventually it dropped back down again and after more tight turns we found ourselves at the other end of the tunnel, not exactly sure now of which way to go as we had made a few amendments to our planned route.
Managed to turn around before plunging into another 27km tunnel taking us completely in the wrong direction and decided it was time to find somewhere to stop as once again it was getting late. We encountered a series of unusual tunnels along this road; they almost all circled and climbed until we realised we were following what amounted to an underground spiral with just the odd popping out into the light. Of course this completely messed up all our satnavs and mobile phones whilst we were trying to find a reasonable stopover. We looked at a campsite but it just didn't feel right and was ridiculously expensive for very few facilities, but most all of the P4N ideas were not really suitable. However we eventually came upon a largish carpark, used for local walks and a viewpoint for a waterfall, with nobody in it and no signs prohibiting overnight parking. Both now quite tired after another long day, we decided that it would be okay and although quite close to the road in our experience traffic will quieten down, although it's not busy anyway. A nice meal and relax before an earlyish night.
Once again, another day of varying and superb scenery; shame the weather didn't cooperate.
Looks fabulous
ReplyDelete