There are occasional days when you can’t catch a break, today was our day. The day starts well enough, we set out for Bergen through a tunnel, to cross the suspension bridge and be on our way.
You have to hand it to the Norwegians – their engineering skills are superb. The tunnel we go through has not one, but two roundabouts. Two, and they’re massive. In the photo below, that’s a full size bus heading into one.
Not sure about their driving skills though, overtaking in tunnels appears to be acceptable, even around bends!
Much of our way into Bergen is through tunnels, but where the outside world emerges, it continues to be as magnificent as it was yesterday. Steep cliffs, waterfalls, fjords both still and raging. Norway is such a beautiful country. It’s quite extraordinary how within a stretch of a few hundred metres, a fjord can transform from glass still to raging torrent. Particularly ferocious are the downhill sections – white water all the way.
I’m surprised by how few people we see on or in the water though. With this much of it, I would have expected to see an endless parade of boats and watercraft, but reality there’s very little evidence of water sports or boats outside of city marinas.
We stop for lunch in Voss, a village on the edge of a beautiful reflective lake formed between the fjords of Sognefjord and Hardangerfjord.
Traditional farm houses and a stone Gothic church, the Voss Kirke, complete the picture. We potter around for a bit, run into a horde of Italian tourists, and then make our way back into the tunnel/gorgeous landscape route.
All goes well until we arrive into Bergen around mid afternoon. There’s a place for motorhomes, close to the city, but there are no places. Indeed, there’s a queue of people in the same predicament. Thwarted. Chris is not one to queue, and neither am I, especially with no known outcome. We instead review our options in an ever increasing radius outside of town. There are not many choices. The first is also full, the second tiny, but the third has space. The trouble is that by now, we’re 20km out of town and it’s too late to catch a bus in.
To add to the annoyance of the day, our electricity connector, the UK/Europe converter, is missing. By process of elimination, we work out that it seems to have stayed for a little extra holiday in Oslo. The quest is on for a replacement, and that takes the rest of the afternoon. Again, it’s third time lucky, but miles away from where we started.
We return and settle for what’s proved to be a frustrating day. At least there are bunnies to pat, and babies at that, and it’s pretty.
Let’s hope for more luck at Bergen tomorrow.
Miss Baci Travels 