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...
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Monday - Museums and heading inland
Now we can slow down - the big driving, getting to Norway, is done (until the journey home at least). Time to start actually enjoying the destination.
A quick word about toll roads. Norway has a number around Oslo, and a few others in some new bridges and tunnels further west. It is a fully electronic system - no toll booths. You sign up and register your vehicle and credit card in advance. The first time you go under an e-toll gantry the electronic license plate recognition debits around £30 from your credit card as a down payment - it then subtracts the cost of each toll from that £30 and debits another £30 when you run out of money. Any balance is refunded a certain number of days after your stated return date.
And now to museums...
Warning: Many Norwegian museums are closed on Monday; though the big ones clustered together just to the south west of Oslo are open 7 days a week.
We chose to visit the Viking long ship museum first, and leave the camper parked there for the morning, walking to the other museums. The car park wasn't particularly cheap, but I guess that is what you can expect from a prime tourist location in a major European city. We had been in Norway less than 1 day and already seen more Tesla electric cars than I have ever seen. In the museum car park one was already present, when another turned up. From spending 2 weeks in the country I would say the proportion of Teslas compared to regular cars was about the same as the Ford Focus in the US or Britain.
The Viking long ship museum contains several 1000 year old long ships, used to bury chieftains. They had been crushed and distorted by the weight of soil on top of them, but have been rebuilt and installed in the museum. They are remarkably preserved:
Doing the Viking long boat museum first, just as it opened, was exactly the right thing to do. This seems to be the most popular museum. It was pretty much empty when we arrived, but by the time we left the coaches were disgorging crowds in the car park and school parties were rushing around the ships noisily.
We walked onto the end of the peninsula and visited the Thor Heyerdahl museum, which was very quiet, but very interesting. It contains two of the reed vessels he created and sailed to test theories of ancient population migration.
A breather at the water side:
Looks like they still make boats the same way:
We were getting pretty museumed-out by now. I only have so much tolerance for walking around exhibits. We skipped the maritime museum, and were in two minds about the Fram museum, but decided to go in after all - museums were around £10 per person, so the cost was racking up as well.
The Fram was Amundsen's ship. Ironically I think more people remember Scott of the Antarctic for his heroic failure, than Amundsen who achieved the South Pole first and returned alive.
The museum contained his ship, the Fram. Now that is a immensely strong ship. There were a lot of displays around the edge on multiple levels, but we didn't have the time to read them - we wanted to see the main attraction - to explore the explorer's ship.
You can get a feeling for the strength of the ship from the massive bulk of the internal structure:
I was keen to get moving. I wanted to get inland, away from the traffic. As nice as the outskirts of Oslo are, I am more at home in the hills and mountains than cities, and anyway, manoeuvring around tight European cities in a truck camper can be wearing.
After half an hour on the highway I could turn inland onto regular roads. I set the GPS for a campground in the Telemark region, stopping for a picnic at a small town bisected by a shallow waterfall.
We refilled with diesel. Sally grabbed a large container of liquid saying we should take some fresh water, because the water in the tank didn't taste right. I had to laugh and pointed out that she probably didn't want to be drinking AdBlue diesel emission fluid :S
We didn't get as far as the campground. We followed the west side of the long Lake Tinnsja. We pulled in at a large picnic spot by the side of the road. A quick look around identified the smaller picnic spot opposite, and directly overlooking the lake, could be a good boondocking site. You could pull far enough away from the road and out of site of the traffic coming in at least one direction. It also had a picnic table and rubbish bin.
Time to get the disposable BBQ out:
This turned out to be a pretty stunning spot:
In the distance, on the lake, is the spot the ferry Hydro was sunk by saboteurs during WWII - for details look up the story of the "Heroes of Telemark".
We were joined during the night by a truck who parked nearby. As our first boondocking site by a road we were a bit cautious. Is this the sort of place teenagers come by and do donuts in their cars and drink? Is it the sort of place locals will come by and complain? Thankfully it clearly wasn't.
It was another warm evening, and we were parked in the sun, so the fridge had solar power until late evening. The road soon quietened (it was a quiet road earlier) and the only sounds remaining were the occassional ping of the sun-bathed crash barrier as it cooled and contracted.
Stay tuned for more Norwegian history...
Now we can slow down - the big driving, getting to Norway, is done (until the journey home at least). Time to start actually enjoying the destination.
A quick word about toll roads. Norway has a number around Oslo, and a few others in some new bridges and tunnels further west. It is a fully electronic system - no toll booths. You sign up and register your vehicle and credit card in advance. The first time you go under an e-toll gantry the electronic license plate recognition debits around £30 from your credit card as a down payment - it then subtracts the cost of each toll from that £30 and debits another £30 when you run out of money. Any balance is refunded a certain number of days after your stated return date.
And now to museums...
Warning: Many Norwegian museums are closed on Monday; though the big ones clustered together just to the south west of Oslo are open 7 days a week.
We chose to visit the Viking long ship museum first, and leave the camper parked there for the morning, walking to the other museums. The car park wasn't particularly cheap, but I guess that is what you can expect from a prime tourist location in a major European city. We had been in Norway less than 1 day and already seen more Tesla electric cars than I have ever seen. In the museum car park one was already present, when another turned up. From spending 2 weeks in the country I would say the proportion of Teslas compared to regular cars was about the same as the Ford Focus in the US or Britain.
The Viking long ship museum contains several 1000 year old long ships, used to bury chieftains. They had been crushed and distorted by the weight of soil on top of them, but have been rebuilt and installed in the museum. They are remarkably preserved:
Doing the Viking long boat museum first, just as it opened, was exactly the right thing to do. This seems to be the most popular museum. It was pretty much empty when we arrived, but by the time we left the coaches were disgorging crowds in the car park and school parties were rushing around the ships noisily.
We walked onto the end of the peninsula and visited the Thor Heyerdahl museum, which was very quiet, but very interesting. It contains two of the reed vessels he created and sailed to test theories of ancient population migration.
A breather at the water side:
Looks like they still make boats the same way:
We were getting pretty museumed-out by now. I only have so much tolerance for walking around exhibits. We skipped the maritime museum, and were in two minds about the Fram museum, but decided to go in after all - museums were around £10 per person, so the cost was racking up as well.
The Fram was Amundsen's ship. Ironically I think more people remember Scott of the Antarctic for his heroic failure, than Amundsen who achieved the South Pole first and returned alive.
The museum contained his ship, the Fram. Now that is a immensely strong ship. There were a lot of displays around the edge on multiple levels, but we didn't have the time to read them - we wanted to see the main attraction - to explore the explorer's ship.
You can get a feeling for the strength of the ship from the massive bulk of the internal structure:
I was keen to get moving. I wanted to get inland, away from the traffic. As nice as the outskirts of Oslo are, I am more at home in the hills and mountains than cities, and anyway, manoeuvring around tight European cities in a truck camper can be wearing.
After half an hour on the highway I could turn inland onto regular roads. I set the GPS for a campground in the Telemark region, stopping for a picnic at a small town bisected by a shallow waterfall.
We refilled with diesel. Sally grabbed a large container of liquid saying we should take some fresh water, because the water in the tank didn't taste right. I had to laugh and pointed out that she probably didn't want to be drinking AdBlue diesel emission fluid :S
We didn't get as far as the campground. We followed the west side of the long Lake Tinnsja. We pulled in at a large picnic spot by the side of the road. A quick look around identified the smaller picnic spot opposite, and directly overlooking the lake, could be a good boondocking site. You could pull far enough away from the road and out of site of the traffic coming in at least one direction. It also had a picnic table and rubbish bin.
Time to get the disposable BBQ out:
This turned out to be a pretty stunning spot:
In the distance, on the lake, is the spot the ferry Hydro was sunk by saboteurs during WWII - for details look up the story of the "Heroes of Telemark".
We were joined during the night by a truck who parked nearby. As our first boondocking site by a road we were a bit cautious. Is this the sort of place teenagers come by and do donuts in their cars and drink? Is it the sort of place locals will come by and complain? Thankfully it clearly wasn't.
It was another warm evening, and we were parked in the sun, so the fridge had solar power until late evening. The road soon quietened (it was a quiet road earlier) and the only sounds remaining were the occassional ping of the sun-bathed crash barrier as it cooled and contracted.
Stay tuned for more Norwegian history...
