Week 29 - Norway - the conundrum

Norway I find a challenging place. It has some of the most concentrated beautiful scenery in the world  - every corner you turn seems to give you another wondrous sight, and with much variety; beautiful snow covered mountains and glaciers, villages hiding in gaps between the crags, wonderful fjord side roads and glorious ferry crossings, tunnels and bridges to marvel at (my favourites being the bridges that leap from tunnel mouth to tunnel mouth barely giving you time to see the valley or fjord below), idyllic villages each with seemingly not a thing out of place and every item freshly painted sitting in lush valleys,  waterfalls, forests - scenery- wise, you name it, Norway has it and in abundance. What it lacks is people;  most of the places I pass through the locals seem missing, hidden away out of sight, often the majority of people visible are tourists be they Norwegians or foriegner. I know Norwegian hospitality can be fabulous (witness last weekend) but it can feel very hard to connect with people. I assume it's the impact of the harsh climate for most of the year, people just get used to doing things indoors, out of sight.  After Africa, and to a lesser extent southern and eastern Europe, where life is lived on the street, this is all a sharp shock (and I feel for the African immigrants here, of which there are a surprising number, they must find it very hard to adjust and settle ).

Maybe I'm here just a little to early in the year when the memory of winter lingers too much, I suspect come June,  July,  August I'd see another Norway, one where many of the locals are living outside in all the cabins I see in forests and especially fjord side, plus in the tens of thousands of small boats that must be about to occupy the currently largely empty moorings dotted in every shoreside village.

This week's travels took me initially to Bergen and then all the way down to the southern tip - wild camping most of the way before ending the week by catching the ferry to Denmark.

Bergen in spring - beautiful mix of quaint old town and working harbour 

Travelling further south there still plenty of snow up high

Norwegians build tunnels everywhere to avoid the snow - they vary from very short and simple to this one at 10 kms long and containing two roundabouts (and its no good looking at your GPS to work out which way to go, no satellite reception in here)

In contrast, the older simpler style - a black unlit hole of unknown length - these can be nerve wracking as often they contain corners and one I found one even cork screws up a mountain

One of the most visited spots in the south,  Pulpit Rock - only 690 metres down. 

Not getting too close to the edge

Down south the landscape got softer

2518 kms from Nordkapp - the southern tip of Norway

Sometimes you meet interesting people as you travel.

Gaby from Switzerland - she'd just walked the 750 kms from Oslo to Trondheim in under 4 weeks. That's serious going

And finally in this rather grab bag of a post, in case you were wondering what I've been eating as I've been wild camping down the length of the country. ..

Breakfast - a dozen quails eggs (I kid you not). A gift from a Norwiegan biker the previous day

And dinner, fresh salmon and pasta for tea (salmon is cheaper than the beer!)

Some envious watchers at my last nights campsite anxiously waiting for any leftovers