Geiranger to Bergen (South and West)

We had not intended to cover this distance in one go, but it just turned out that way.

The road out of Geiranger climbs from sea level to 1030m in one continuous ascent with numberous hairpin bends. There is a side road which climbs to the summit of the mountain overlooking Geiranger village and fjord. However, this is an expensive toll road, and you only have to come back down again, so as we are cheapskates, we gave it a miss.! We gave two German hitchhikers a lift a short distance. These two girls had been towl there were buses, but as is is the school holidays, there are none at the moment.

As it was so sunny and warm, Geoff decided that you can´t go to Norway and not swim in a fjord. This soon proved to be not such a good idea. It was really cold; this was hardly surprising, as just behind the fjord, you can see the snow-capped peaks where the water originates from!  On our onward journey, we noticed house numbers painted on direction posts, which were in the thousands. Presumably, houses in these remote rural areas are numbered in a linear fashion starting from the nearest town, and working outwards.

The Norwegians seem to love digging holes. More roadworks because of a new tunnel. The diversion was not much more than a dirt track, but at least the road stayed open, even if it was obscured by a large cloud of dust from the previous vehicle and the diggers nearby.

We found the aire in Bergen, almost directly under a large bridge. This has to be the most tightly squeezed in we have ever been, and not cheap either- 250 NOK per night including electricity, but another 100NOK (over 10 pounds) for water and waste.  However, we usually empty and fill up as we leave a site, so we did not need to pay the extra to do this here.