Day 7, and we picked up our hire car. Road trip!

After getting out of Oslo, I set my little GPS (which is actually my bicycle GPS but has a mode for cars - brilliant) to avoid highways, which makes it route us through random villages and whatnot off the beaten track.

Before long we started seeing these "fart" signs. After the initial humour wore off I thought I should probably find out what it actually means hehe. Speed :)

More off-the-beaten-track goodness, and more fart dempere. I should probably point out that the road-trip part of this trip was the main part for me. The cities were something of a formality since we were in the area, but back-country Norway including the fjords is what I really wanted to see! So far, despite the grey skies, it wasn't failing to impress.

This is a tradtional Norwegian stave church. Back in the day there were hundreds of these things dotted all over Northern Europe; in Norway alone it is believed up to 2,000 were built. Many were destroyed over time, and in Norway just 28 historical stave churches remain standing. This particular church is Heddal stave church, constructed at the beginning of the 13th century and Norway's largest. Ah-mazing!

This was our accommodation for the night: a bed and breakfast (nice change from those friggin' hostels) properly in the middle of nowhere but in an absolutely stunning spot across from this lake. Note the fire exit in the centre shot there hehe - I slept soundly knowing that sturdy-looking thing was outside. This is somewhere between Bø and Seljord in the county of Telemark.

Very cosy :)

And across the road was Uncle Buck, polluting up the neighbourhood.

For sale - get in touch if you're interested.

We drove through to Seljord and raided the local store for picnicky lunchy type stuff, and had our B&B host ring around the village to see if she could hunt us out a canoe we could hire. She couldn't. So instead she sent us up the road to her mate's place and offered us the use of her mate's private beach on the lake, all on her mate's behalf since she wasn't home hahaha! We felt very uncomfortable about it all, literally helping ourselves to this person's backyard, but hey we weren't going to turn down a private lakeside beach under the sun!

B-e-a-utiful!

Day 8, and I tell you what, the Norwegians sure know how to put on a breakfast! Bloody hell this was nice!

We eventually left and hit the road again. Before long these were the sort of roads my GPS put us on - good winding fuckers!

And I'm obviously not the only one who loves them ;)

We passed through several more gorgeous wee towns and villages that I doubt see many tourists. Here's a local gang ;)

Then we hit the mountains and found this guy busting his ass up a huge bloody hill, and man was he struggling! I offered for him to hang on to the side of the car and I'd pull him up but he declined hehe. We started chatting with him though, and found out he's French and on day 47 of his ride from Switzerland to the top of Norway. As you do.

This was our little beasty by the way - Grandma's Peugeot 207. This thing really did run on just the smell of an oily rag. I screwed its wee balls off and yet it barely guzzled any gas (diesel) at all. In fact it was probably the cheapest part of the whole damn trip hehe.

This was our lunch spot for today, the side of a frozen lake, though it was starting to thaw out. It was absolutely silent here, only a single car passed by, but not our cyclist friend so I can only assume he'd finally keeled over back up the road.

I've taken a leak in worse places. Videos here, here, and here (not of me pissing).

How's that for a view?! Not bad.

As we continued on we passed countless spots that enticed me to pull over and park dangerously (but we really were the only thing on the road, it was weird). Random waterfalls...

Random rivers...

Random lakes...

And just stunningly beautiful spots, but this was nothing compared to what was to come :)

Then we got to this point of the route. Those orange lines mean those places are inaccessible due to road closures. In other words, this mountain road was not yet open for the summer. Bugger.

We therefore had to take a 200km, two-hour detour out of our way through more villages...

More mountains and frozen lakes...

More tunnels (much to Kristina's delight)...

And past this. Bummer.

We then found this awesome spot for dinner (which was essentially left overs from lunch hehe) under the road and beside this river. Goddamn that's nice! First two days of the road trip and Norway was proving to be amazing already. Another video here.