Trip report : Norway in the truck camper
Well, we had done a lot of stuff in our own country in our truck camper the past couple of years, and a lot of foreign travel in rented campers, so time to get our little camper on a ferry and oversea...
Forum Discussion
Sunday - Sweden to Norway
We head north. I was expecting just trees, but the scenery was very nice, including more modern bridges:
Near the Norwegian border is a 'stone ship'. A Viking burial site with stones places around it to form the shape of a Viking long ship:
We had a picnic there too:
Being so close to the Norwegian border Sally thought it would be nice to get some sort of Swedish souvenir before leaving the country. Rather than getting back on the highway I took the parallel road to see if there were some tourist shops. But there weren't. There were plenty of shops before the border - in fact a whole strip mall of them, but all they sold - every one - was alcohol and sweats, plus some general groceries:
It became clear that tourists didn't come here - only Norwegians looking to stock up on cheaper drink and cigarettes.
We crossed the bridge into Norway:
I wanted to camp before we reached Oslo, but soon was being sucked into the system of toll highways and tunnels heading for the city. I had some waypoints in the GPS for campgrounds and boondocking sites around Olso. Sally was hot and wanted a shower and a proper campground, so I reset the GPS for one in the north of the city.
Soon the traffic built until we were nose to tail in Sunday evening rush-hour (everyone returning to the city for the new week) and the matrix signs on the highway showed it was closed, and everyone was queued for the official detour. However, the GPS suggested we come off into a suburb, then routed us through that suburb and onto the highway heading down town to the water front.
This sounds perfect, but we discovered that Oslo had built a large matrix of fast highways in tunnels under the city, with many exits from the tunnels going in different directions. With the GPS rendered useless in the tunnel it was a case of just sticking with the central highway and hoping. We got it right though and were spat out on the west of the city. We made one wrong turn which the GPS then had to navigate us back through - unfortunately that meant going back through another toll gantry in the other direction, so we were charged again. But when on divided and elevated highways with fast traffic, there isn't much option but to go with the flow.
The campground, once we found it, was large and wasn't cheap, but that is what you expect from a city campground in an expensive country like Norway.
It gave me a chance to charge everything, including my 'box of electricity' which I had been using to power my private laptop, which unlike the company laptop, had a working power supply.
The campground had wifi, but it didn't seem to be working. So I powered up my 4G wifi hotspot. It took a couple of minutes, then it connected successfully and I could surf the internet with the megabytes coming off the 12Gb I had purchased in Britain rather than being charged roaming data rates, which can be very expensive and have got a lot of people into trouble, returning to huge phone charges.
I asked Sally if she wanted the camper parked closer to the showers, but she didn't - and she was right. The other side of the showers was a noisy group of teenagers looked after by a couple of young Australian guys who were discussing a female camp supervisor and what chances they might have with her.
This was our first campground of the trip, and it was a noisy contrast to where we had boondocked before.
Since we had paid for the luxury we also used the chance to dump the grey water tank and refill with fresh water.
Stay tuned for our move inland...
We head north. I was expecting just trees, but the scenery was very nice, including more modern bridges:
Near the Norwegian border is a 'stone ship'. A Viking burial site with stones places around it to form the shape of a Viking long ship:
We had a picnic there too:
Being so close to the Norwegian border Sally thought it would be nice to get some sort of Swedish souvenir before leaving the country. Rather than getting back on the highway I took the parallel road to see if there were some tourist shops. But there weren't. There were plenty of shops before the border - in fact a whole strip mall of them, but all they sold - every one - was alcohol and sweats, plus some general groceries:
It became clear that tourists didn't come here - only Norwegians looking to stock up on cheaper drink and cigarettes.
We crossed the bridge into Norway:
I wanted to camp before we reached Oslo, but soon was being sucked into the system of toll highways and tunnels heading for the city. I had some waypoints in the GPS for campgrounds and boondocking sites around Olso. Sally was hot and wanted a shower and a proper campground, so I reset the GPS for one in the north of the city.
Soon the traffic built until we were nose to tail in Sunday evening rush-hour (everyone returning to the city for the new week) and the matrix signs on the highway showed it was closed, and everyone was queued for the official detour. However, the GPS suggested we come off into a suburb, then routed us through that suburb and onto the highway heading down town to the water front.
This sounds perfect, but we discovered that Oslo had built a large matrix of fast highways in tunnels under the city, with many exits from the tunnels going in different directions. With the GPS rendered useless in the tunnel it was a case of just sticking with the central highway and hoping. We got it right though and were spat out on the west of the city. We made one wrong turn which the GPS then had to navigate us back through - unfortunately that meant going back through another toll gantry in the other direction, so we were charged again. But when on divided and elevated highways with fast traffic, there isn't much option but to go with the flow.
The campground, once we found it, was large and wasn't cheap, but that is what you expect from a city campground in an expensive country like Norway.
It gave me a chance to charge everything, including my 'box of electricity' which I had been using to power my private laptop, which unlike the company laptop, had a working power supply.
The campground had wifi, but it didn't seem to be working. So I powered up my 4G wifi hotspot. It took a couple of minutes, then it connected successfully and I could surf the internet with the megabytes coming off the 12Gb I had purchased in Britain rather than being charged roaming data rates, which can be very expensive and have got a lot of people into trouble, returning to huge phone charges.
I asked Sally if she wanted the camper parked closer to the showers, but she didn't - and she was right. The other side of the showers was a noisy group of teenagers looked after by a couple of young Australian guys who were discussing a female camp supervisor and what chances they might have with her.
This was our first campground of the trip, and it was a noisy contrast to where we had boondocked before.
Since we had paid for the luxury we also used the chance to dump the grey water tank and refill with fresh water.
Stay tuned for our move inland...
