Monday 3rd September 2018
We had spent a large amount of money lately. New tyres for the car, brake parts for the caravan and car, expensive sites, diesel covering countless kilometres down this huge country, and essentials like wine, gin & beer, it had all mounted up 🙂
In an effort to reduce expenditure for a while, we perused the Camping Card app and found the nearest site offering an off peak discount was near Byglandsfjord, Neset Camping. The site would be 190NOK per night instead of 300 odd in most places, and, as a bonus, didn’t charge extra for a shower.
The first part of the journey involved descending down to Lysefjord on the 13 road and joining the queue for the Oanes – Lauvvik ferry.
A few kilometres after leaving the ferry we turned left onto the 45 road at a point where I remembered having to don wet weather gear in 2016.
As the kilometres passed on the 45 the road climbed and became more and more barren. The only signs of life were smatterings of log cabin settlements presumably used by hunters and skiers.
Having wondered many times on this trip just how huge the Norwegian road maintenance budget was, we were amazed to come across a helicopter shuttling backward and forward transporting concrete to a remote site!
The skill of the pilot was amazing to watch, lowering the ‘bucket’ right behind the concrete truck, and speeding away with it metres from the ground.
We watched all this going on from a layby next to this lake.
We were delayed by more road works in Sinnes where the roundabout was being resurfaced. Shortly afterwards we turned onto the Suleskarvegen, the highest road connection in south west Norway. Closed between November and May, it is also a fantastic road on which to use a motorcycle.
We continued on before stopping for coffee in a layby just short of the dam at Rosskreppfjorden. We both become aware that the only sound you could hear was bells ringing. Further investigation with the binoculars revealed that there were several hundred sheep seemingly being rounded up on a distant hillside.
After a short break we continued and within minutes we were crawling along amongst hundreds of mindless sheep all over the road.
Kim attempted a video to demonstrate the cacophony of the bells as we passed through 🙂
Once clear of the woolly chicane the road meandered its’ way through the most spectacular scenery. Unfortunately there were very few places to stop with the caravan. We did find one layby on a long straight portion of the road.
After a long, picturesque, descent into Rystad we turned right onto the 9 road to proceed south to the campground.
Waterfall of the day unexpectedly came into view in the form of Reiårsfossen 🙂
With about 20km to go to the site we were brought to a halt by, you guessed it, road works. The road was closed further down the road before the site so we had to take a diversion down the other side of the lake down the narrowest of lanes. Fortunately for us an escorted convoy system was in force so we waited a few minutes before the convoy set off with us in tow.
Towing Kilometres – Today: 210 Cumulative: 23,286
Half an hour later we arrived at the site to a warm welcome. We chose a lakeside pitch with fine views to the south and intend to stay for a week and take a break from travelling and catch up with this blog.
Hi, We are following your journey with great interest. We would love to tour Norway and being in a caravan not a motor home as you are we have wondered how it would be. It has looked amazing. Hope you are enjoying it.
Hi,
We chose the caravan because you can set it up and use it as a base to visit places, go shopping, etc.
Norway is an amazing place with a wow! moment every hour 🙂 Enjoying every day, thanks
Ray & Kim