2017 Norway trip ("To Hejlle and back" / "Norway and how not to do it")

[snowy]

Another great instalment, but what an eye-opener! 
As far as Sat Nav's, I've an old TomTom rider4, use Tyre (aka My Route APP), export as ITN file and really works a treat.
Sat Nav wired into USB on the aux wiring, if you're out on Sunday it'll be there!
Used the "winding road" option for the first time in Northern Spain, some of the best roads I've ever ridden!
Still can't get over £460 for a few miles over!

[shaggs147]

Really interesting read, and some lovely pics thanks. The cost of everything does make me think twice about a visit though!

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[GTRpilot]

Been to Norway quite a few times in my previous life, it is VERY expensive, and the Police are very hot on speed.

[pross]

Another great instalment, but what an eye-opener! 
As far as Sat Nav's, I've an old TomTom rider4, use Tyre (aka My Route APP), export as ITN file and really works a treat.
Sat Nav wired into USB on the aux wiring, if you're out on Sunday it'll be there!
Used the "winding road" option for the first time in Northern Spain, some of the best roads I've ever ridden!
Still can't get over £460 for a few miles over!

Was that a fixed fee or would it go higher the faster you go  .
That's a shame blame the bike 

[PaulB]

£460 ???  ouch!!!

That reminds me why one of the main features wanted on my new bike (when I was looking to trade in) was cruise control.

Yes, I know, right hand controls the speed, but for big tours it (a) stops your hand aching and (b) stops you from accidentally creeping over the speed limit and incurring a huge fine.

Let's face it, 50mph on a GTR feels like walking pace after 5 minutes of sticking to 50mph. Or trying to...

(One sneeze and you're suddenly doing 70mph, such is the joy - and curse - of the GTR...)

Cheers

Paul B.

[PRD]

Looking forward to next instalment. I do hope the next one is cheaper for the author.

[Rynglieder]

Day 7 Stavanger [N] > Vossevangen [N] (195 miles)

Opening the curtains of the Victoria Hotel to check that my bike was still there in the morning revealed a massive change from the night before, it was as if someone had silently built a 10 storey apartment block next to us overnight. A cruise ship had entered the harbour and had somewhat obscured our view of the waterside.

After breakfast we set off again under an overcast sky. We were not intending to take the most direct route to our next hotel as I wanted to visit the port of Bergen further north along the coast. Our road therefore was the E39 which exited Stavanger and then "island hopped" by a series of tunnels and bridges, some long and some short. As I was now a Marked Man and Highway Desperado, I was riding very carefully again and trying to share my attention between my dials and the road signs. Something else was starting to nag at me as well, we kept driving under automatic toll gantries and although I had convinced myself in my research before the trip that they did not apply to motorcycles I was seeing nothing to confirm this. The only comfort I could take was that they all seemed to be forward facing cameras.

We edged slowly up the coast and soon we reached Mortavika where the expanse of fjord before us was too wide to have been tunnelled or bridged and the crossing was by a small ferry. No pre-booking was required as it runs very frequently and there is always room for bikes. By Norwegian standards the cost was very reasonable too at about £15 one way for bike, rider and pillion. To be fair the wait for the ferry and loading did not take unreasonably long and this crossing is only around 15 minutes but when it is all added up there was still an impact on time. There is no need to strap the bike down on these sheltered waters though.

After disembarking at Arsvegen we continued north between coast, mountain and fjord. In the right circumstances this should have been a stunning run but I was fighting back the throttle and the views were now being obscured by low cloud and light rain. There was no real joy in riding along here, basically being stuck in the same line of traffic that had come off the ferry with you which was all cruising along at the legal limit, not daring an overtake and not enough momentum to lean the bike into any curves. Along this section we were mostly crossing fjords by bridges but there was at least one long tunnel of over 7km which allowed a couple of minutes shelter.

Next up was the Husavik – Sandvikvag ferry. This one runs hourly so if you don't get your timing right you could be hanging round a bit. The crossing is around 20 minutes plus your wait and loading time and is something that needs to be factored in with your route planning.

From here Bergen should have been (metaphorically) in sight, but the time it had taken to get this far and the rain had somewhat dampened my spirits. I decided to scratch my visit to Bergen it was going to be too wet to enjoy walking round a city centre, the camera had hardly been out today as everywhere was looking too miserable. I was also uncertain about what speed I was going to achieve on the next section of the day's run to our hotel. And so Bergen became the first of many casualties on my itinerary and we skirted the city to head inland.

The run between Bergen and Vossevangen followed the pattern of the earlier part of the day; wet, dull, slow and watching, watching the clocks. I knew we were getting close to Vossevangen but our hours on the road had already eaten the battery on the Zumo so we pulled up a at a lakeside kiosk so that we could get a drink and charge the unit up for 10 minutes so we could be guided in. It is not as if it had been really needed for navigation, but that speed limit display had still been providing a double-check for me.

I was not expecting much from tonight's "hotel" and that is pretty well what I got. When I was booking there was a very limited selection in this area and I had taken a double room in what was basically a hostel. Most other rooms were shared occupancy and the clientele were mostly back-packers and hikers. The room was sparse, there was no television (not that we would have watched it, but it is the principal of the thing!) and at £117.00 was nearly half as much money again on top of the beautiful room we had had the night before in Stavanger.

There was however a shared kitchen available where we were able to make a cup of tea and that was pretty much where we wrapped up the day as a 10 minute walk into town in the rain did not appeal. Looking across the lake from the terrace at the back of the hotel we watched the low ribbons of cloud hide and reveal bits of snow on the mountaintops beyond, A bit of sunshine would have been nice but the weather sort of fitted the landscape. Today was a bit of a write-off and an early night may make tomorrow come sooner, perhaps it would be better.

[PRD]

Enjoyable well written account I'm sure motorcycle sport and leisure would print this .

[snowy]

Enjoyable well written account I'm sure motorcycle sport and leisure would print this .

and even the "painfully raw" bits are compulsive reading!   
Gotta wait for the next instalment now..........almost as bad as Game of Thrones!   

[pross]

Excellent write up and tips 

[O.C.]

Excellent write up, the accompanying photographs demonstrate just how wet the weather has been.

[nightrider]

Compelling reading this is ,, bit like Henry cole when he did Russia I thought we'll not be going there then ,,, as far as speeding goes if you are not going to go back then just forget about the fine they can not do anything about it , 

[davetherave]

As with all the other positive comments, brilliant just brilliant 

Like you I 've been one of those peeps who's been waiting (hoping) for the direct ferry route to be reinstated (I doubt it will especially with brexit).

A couple of years ago a chap on the zzr14 forum toured Norway and Sweden, he only mentioned the reduced speeds once where he said a traffic copper "had a word with him about his excessive speed and he thought it was 120 MPH !!"  with what your fine was for a mere 4mph over I'm surprised he didn't end up in jail.   

Really looking forward to the next instalment 

[Rynglieder]

Day 8 Vossevangen – Hjelle (195 miles)

Despite the budget nature of the hotel generally, we had a decent breakfast in a room overlooking the lake and a least there was a bit of sun on it now. We got back on the bike for no more than a couple of minutes as we needed to go into town; partly for fuel and partly to go in search of a cash machine. We had come away with around £150.00 in cash in each of the currencies of the countries that we would visit, just so that we had something on us as we crossed the borders and our day and a half in Norway had already eaten away a good chunk of what we had.

The original intention for the day was to head out to Falm, take in a renowned viewpoint and then on via a detour to see the stave church at Borgund before continuing north. It was going to be necessary to recalibrate though now I knew the rate of progress we were actually likely to achieve and I allowed the Zumo to pick a more direct route and resigned myself to missing some of the things that I had planned to visit.

We did still capture the first intended stop of the day though, the Tvindfossen waterfalls that lay at the side of the E16. We competed with the coachloads of Chinese tourists for a space to take a couple of photos and then continued on up the Vikafjellet mountain tourist road

OK, it was not the route that I intended but the scenery was not disappointing. I was starting to take it in a bit more now, listening to the note of the engine rather than watching the clocks so much and backing off the throttle whenever the big Kwak sounded like it was starting to enjoy its self. I'd generally settled into  riding in fourth gear most of the time, fifth was OK on the 50mph stretches bat as a lot of the roads were 43 or 36mph the lower gearing was necessary to "pick up" the bike in the bends.

We entered the Sogn Og Fjordane area with lakes, waterfalls and mountains at our side all the way, eventually dropping down the side of Sogonfjorde at Vikoyri. I knew this town also had a stave church, so that became a substitute for the one I had originally planned to ride out to and gave us another break from the bike.

In front of us now was the crossing of the fjord and another ferry, this time between Vangsnes and Hella. This one runs every half an hour so there is no real pressure to arrive for any given time and allows fifteen minutes relaxation watching the mountains float by before mounting up again.

A wile down the road we found a tourist sign to an attraction, as this was not my originally planned route we were not at all sure what we were pulling off the highway to visit, but we found ourselves at the foot of the Boyabareen Glacier. Yet another beautiful spot with the blue-white ice spilling down the mountainside and another excuse for a shot of the bike in the landscape.
As well as my own throttle control there was plenty to keep our progress in check, every few moments a new vista would open up and tempt us off the bike to pull out the camera. Just after one such stop at the Skjørbakkane utsiktspunkt (viewpoint) a bigger delay came as just above Utvik  we found ourselves at the end of a very long queue of stationery traffic extending from the village up through the hairpins on the hillside above. We must have been stuck up there for an hour or more but at least the sun was out and the view across Innvikfjorden was pleasant enough. We watched one or two other bikes filter down the outside of the queue, only to come back defeated. I really could not decide what to do, Norway is a vast landscape but like the highlands of Scotland there are a limited number of roads running through it and turning back would almost certainly result in a very lengthy detour. Soon word reached us that the village centre was blocked by an overturned lorry, it had just been cleared and they would release the southbound traffic first so we could expect to have to wait perhaps another half hour. They must have had a change of mind about which traffic to clear first though because minutes later we were on the move again.

We followed the side of the Fjord and eventually reached Stryn where we were able to take some fuel on for the last bit of the journey. It was time to look after ourselves as well though because we had not eaten much that day so as well as a coffee from the petrol station we decided to "go native" and purchase some sort of sausage in a bread roll. Not sure what exactly we were getting into we just bought the one and split it between us. A sausage containing cheese is a bit alien to me but it filled the gap a little.

We could not hang around long though as the low speed limits, my frequent stops to enjoy the landscape and the delay caused by the road blockage had resulted in the afternoon heading rapidly toward evening and I was not sure what the check-in arrangements were for the accommodation that we had taken for that and the next three nights.

We rode along the Stryn valley eastwards alongside river and lake and eventually reached the Hjelledalen Hyttesenter, a group of about 10 holiday chalets just off the main road. A note on the reception door told us that our name would be found on a card on one of the doors, they key in the lock, that chalet would be already prepared for us and the reception opened at 20:00. As it was about 19:45 it seemed that we were not late after all....

The chalet had plenty of room and everything we needed; a room with a double bed, another room with bunk beds where we dumped all of the bike gear, a mezzanine reached from a ladder in the lounge gave two further single beds so it would be an ideal base for a group of people who wanted to split the cost. It did however have knotted pine clad walls, knotted pine ceilings, knotted pine floor and knotted pine furniture. I hope I am not offending anyone but I am not particularly keen on the stuff, it was going to be like living inside a packing crate for a few days but I had no doubt I would cope.

All in all not a bad day, which I had enjoyed as a tourist if not as a motorcyclist.

[shaggs147]

Great write up again and stunning pictures. Brilliant

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