Norway

Things to note for next time (if there is another next time)

+ Everything is expensive!
+ You can rough camp pretty much anywhere - it is the norm.  If you look at a map, look for a view point or the end of a fjord, that is where you tend to find great rough campsites

+ Map - you need hardcopy map - way more info than sat nav, and can see the bigger picture.  The Cappelen Kart one was best by Kümmerly & Frey (www.swisstravelcenter.com)

+ Supermarkets - the Norwigans seem to like to have lots of supermarkets.  As a result most of them are small.  The national dish is frozen pizza and the supermarkets reflect this - meaning there is very little anything else.  Prices are extremely high.  I liked Rema 1000 as they tended to have a 10kr area and more offers than other supermarkets.  You have to shop smart.  If you see something cheap / on offer in a supermarket buy it there and then, as it might not be there again.  Some supermarkets have morning only offers, so best to go in the morning if you can.  A deli roast chicken is suprisingly cheap.

+ Panting.  You should ‘pant’ your empty pop bottles and beer cans etc.  Each time you buy a bottle of drink you pay a pant price.  This is redeemed at a supermarket when you hand it in for recycling.  Average 2-3Kr a bottle - so well worth it.  We didn’t realise this at first and probably forfeited a good Kr40.  

+ Everyone sticks to the speed limit and no-one seems to want to overtake you.  Apparently the police have a zero tolerance approach to speeding, so you will get fined if you are 1km over the limit!

+ Fuel is cheaper at the weekend.

+ Mobile signal amazingly good even in the middle of nowhere.

+ Signage is terrible - not every town has a welcome sign so very easy to not know where you are, it is very easy to miss parking spots due to lack of signage.  

+ There are lots of lay-bys on all types of roads and good number have WC or tourist info or bins or all 3.

+ Alcohol is prohibitively expensive - £8+ a pint if you go to a bar

+ Hotel breakfasts are amazing. So much food - fruits, yoghurts etc with all the trimmings: granola, muesli, raisins, nuts etc.  Smoked fish, hot food:eggs, sausages, bacon, beans, mushrooms etc.  Make your own waffles, a huge selection of bread, cheeses, hams, pastries, and every other breakfast food stuff you can think of (except avocado).  We stayed in a Scandic hotel in Oslo and Radisson Blu in Tromsø.  The Scandic did a better spread and a nicer atmosphere - ie more Norwegians.  (The Radisson Blu was too full of posh tourists with grumpy faces, but their hotel rooms were better equipped and bigger!)  Certainly you don’t need lunch afterwards and only a small tea!

+ Living in a motorhome was fine.  We all got on and we all enjoyed it - quite fancy our own now! 

Norway is a very easy country to visit.  Everyone speaks English, everyone is relaxed and chilled out.  Certainly can see why it is at the top of countries to live in: standard of living is high, wages high.  Alcohol is expensive but apart from that it's a great place.  Lots of people own second homes / cabins in rural / fjord locations, property is reasonably priced.  There is a lot of space.  By the end of our stay there, it felt comfortably like home - didn't feel foreign at all.  

Back home

So we didn't sleep so well in our large hotel room last night, too hot, too quiet and I had a headache after my 1 pint of beer!  Oh hum, never mind, we had something to look forward to, a Norwegian hotel breakfast.  We feasted ourselves on all the goodies - still not as good as the Scandic in Oslo, but can't really complain - much better than anything you get in the UK.  We all managed a good 3 courses before our stomachs started to complain.

Then upstairs for showers and to sort out bags before counting up our money and going around the Tromsø souvineer shops to spend it.  We didn't do too badly - a last patch for Tom's blanket, a half price T-shirt for Matt, a half price jacket for me, a couple of fridge magnets (turned out one was a business card holder) and some danglies.  We still had a bit of money left, but felt we had done justice to Tromsø.

We then got the airport bus back and checked in our flights.  Had to do everything ourselves - and managed to screw up - I operated the touch screen and didn't see any questions about bags for the hold and therefore we had no tickets to put on our bags, so we had to stand in line and get an operator to do it all again for us!  Oh hum.

Tromsø is a small airport so security took us about 30 seconds, how lovely.  Then Tom sat and watched planes arrive and depart, Matt did some work (he has a workshop coming up this weekend in Edinburgh) and I read a book.  Flew from Tromsø to Oslo with no incident and then had to wait 2.5 hours for our flight to Manchester.  Got some food, then counted up the Krona again and went to duty free.  Bought a box of red wine and a mini chocolate bar for exactly the amount we had left.  Yay, not often that you use up every last penny of your holiday currency.

We got back to grey, rainy, miserable Manchester on time, got the car and headed home.  Matt was freaked out the by the car - it was too low, too quiet, too fast and on the wrong side.  I was quite scared as we were going really fast.  The average speed we went in Norway was probably 70km an hour which is 43mph, so 70mph on the motorway felt VERY fast in deed.  Also there was so much more traffic than we were used to.  Oh hum, and we live in an 'empty' part of England!

Got back around 10pm, so pretty much went straight to bed.

to the top of Tromsø

Looking north from Tromsø

We woke up to sunshine today - yahoo!  We had breakfast and then set to pack up our van into the two bags we brought with us - didn't do too badly, considering we seem to have gained quite a few new soft toys!

Mountains

We then waited for Tomasz to arrive to sign us off.  He was very thorough - took a good half hour going through the van to check that we hadn't added any bumps / dents / scrapes etc to it.  It was like taking a test and although we knew we didn't do anything to it - we were still a little nervous!  Anyway we passed - phew!  Tomasz then drove us back to the Radisson Blu.  We were all quite sorry to say goodbye to Bert, and although we have loads more room in the hotel, it felt wrong to go there! In all we drove 2,961km in Bert (1,840 miles).

Tromsø Bridge and the Arctic Cathedral

Looking Over the City

Anyway, we dropped our bags off and then walked along the harbour to the big bridge, across the bridge to the cable car which we got to the top of a mountain looking over Tromsø.  We had lovely clear blue skies and no wind so the view was AMAZING - we could see the whole island of Tromsø, turquoise waters all around, fishing vessels and cruise liners coming and going, the airport and planes coming and going and jagged snow capped mountains all around.  We couldn't have asked for a better view.  We stood taking it in for quite a while.

Nik and Tom enjoying the view

After a quick ice lolly each, we decided to climb to the top of the mountain, På Toppen.  It didn't look that far, but as tends to be the case with mountains, it is always much further than you think.   And it was hot.  And we didn't have much to drink with us.  Oops - we never learn!  Anyway, we set it as a challenge to ourselves, also because we haven't really walked much / done huge amounts of exercise this holiday.  We made it to the top.  The view was amazing, but we knew that.  We weren't the only ones doing it - there were lots of locals in Lycra doing it too - and who wouldn't on such a magnificent day.  All the shops and lots of restaurants and bars are closed on a Sunday, so you might as well.

We were quite hungry after all that exertion, so walked back down to the cable car station and stood in a long queue.  Managed to get 3 x hot dogs and a portion of potato wedges for £21 - a bargain and filled our water bottle with water 3 times to rehydrate (no point paying for soft drinks - they are extortionate in this environment (£5 each and that includes mineral water!)  The food was actually very good and we all felt much better.  We decided to walk back down the mountain - we headed to the Sherpa Steps and headed down.  There were 1,200 (ish) steps (built by real Sherpas from Nepal last year) and they turned your legs to jelly.  Down, down, down they went jarring your knees as you went.  It was a relief to get to the bottom.

Hurtigruten boat arriving

We then walked back over the bridge to the hotel for a much needed shower and relax.  Matt was in need of a visit to a bar and next door to our hotel was Rorbua, which apparently is Norway's most famous bar, not sure why?!  Anyway we had a pint each and Tom an apple juice - it came to £31!!!!  Was good beer though and strong!

We then went in search of food.  Our first choice was closed for holidays, so we went to our second choice, Huken Pub which was very funky and quite small.  We were worried initially that they might not do food, but the kitchen was open - yay.  The prices were reasonable - double yay.  Matt went for a burger and chips, I went for a taco pancake and Tom for a blueberry and bacon pancake.  We were all very happy with our choices, it was all high quality and very tasty.

We then went for a walk around the harbour - looking at the various boats.  A very pleasant evening after a very lovely day.  Home tomorrow - humph!

Polaria

We woke up to better weather this morning and had a nice slow morning getting breakfast, having showers (immaculate bathrooms) and heading back into Tromso where it was misty and raining again!  Oh hum.  

The gang

We had given Tom lots of options of things to do in Tromsø today and he chose to go to Polaria where there is an 180 degree cinema showing various films and more importantly an aquarium and a pool with 4 seals.  Give him an activity which includes animals and he always chooses it, so off we went.  I was on map duty trying to get us there - easier said than done when the main roads of Tromsø are being dug up.  We did eventually make it but we used a lot of fuel up!  We parked up and headed in.  As we headed into Tromsø today we noticed a huge cruise ship, Queen Elizabeth, was in and when we got to Polaria, the first thing we heard was an English accent.  We then realised that we had hardly met any Brits at all over the last 2 weeks - just one couple in a motor home in Alta and the military man in Alta who is now Norwegian via passport and family.  Felt strange to hear someone else speak the same language as us with the same accent, but I think always the sign of a good holiday when you have got away from fellow countrymen and especially now, don’t want to know what is happening at home politically - it is too depressing!

Anyway, there was a queue to get in and then we noticed lots of other English accents - we had got swamped with cruise ship passengers!  Oh hum, never mind, can’t complain, we have had almost every museum to ourselves so I guess we now needed to share.  We first went to the cinema, where someone confirmed to us that they were passengers from the ship - apparently 2,000 on board a cruise from Southampton to Tromsø and back - stopping off at other Norwegian ports.  We settled down to watch a film about Svalbard which was very bleak but scenic.  The cruise ship passengers were then asked to go to a certain exhibition to continue their tour, we took note and went in the opposite direction!

Climbing wall at Polaria

We had noticed there was a cafe at the site, so thought we would go and see if they had anything we could have for lunch as we have run out of food in the motor home.  We were in luck - they had cheese and ham rolls and for only 42Kr which was amazingly cheap.  We immediately took them - they were good too - on really nice bread and they were heated up for us, meaning the cheese went all gooey.  Fantastic.  We enjoyed them and even went back for pudding - a lovely slice of apple pie.

Next we headed for the seal pool as they were feeding them.  They have 4 seals: 2 Harbour Seals and 2 Bearded Seals.  The Bearded Seals were especially impressive, they were large, rotund and had fantastic white whiskers.  Anyway, the trainers put them through their games and they were all rewarded with fish.  The people from the cruise then headed to their next stop and the museum emptied.  Yay.  We had a look around the aquarium, then Tom had a play in the children’s area before we went to the cinema again to see a film about the northern lights.  They did explain how the northern lights manifest - can’t say I completely followed the explanation - physics is not my strong subject, but the cinematography was amazing and we recognised some of the places they filmed.  Must say it whetted our appetite to come back again in the winter when we can see the place in snow and get a chance to see the northern lights.  Not sure about driving a motor home in the snow and ice though?!

Harbour seal being "instructed"

We went back to say goodbye to the seals, just as the museum announced they were to do a show with the seals in the auditorium, so we stayed to watch that and then we left.  Our next job was to get some fuel - we had run the van down to fumes only as fuel is cheaper at the weekends here.  On the way in we tried to get fuel at 2 separate places, but neither of them would take cash and we need to get rid of some cash so we drove away.  In the end we had to put 10 litres in via card just to be sure of getting somewhere without running out!

Our next plan was to drive round the island which Tromsø is on to find a rough camp for the night (the island isn’t that big, in fact the city spills on to the shores of land either side of it as a result of growth.  I had had a look on Google Earth last night to find some places, and had found 2 spots that looked good candidates.  Hummmm, the city council certainly do not want motor homes in the city.  Both parking spaces had been blocked off with concrete blocks to stop any vehicle entering - meaning that there were parking spaces with picnic benches etc that no-one could use (unless they went on foot!).  We gave up, but what to do - there is one official camping place in Tromsø but every review said it was very overpriced and facilities are awful.  Did we want to spend a lot of money on a rubbish place or do we travel 30km to go back to the campsite we stayed in last night?  Then Matt had a bright idea - why don’t we call up the company we hired the motor home from and ask them if we could park up and stay overnight?  He did that and they said yes.  So in the end we get a free camping place with free electric hook up.  Fab.  Not the most glamorous place to camp, but hey, it was free and close to where we were.

Queen Elizabeth leaving Tromsø

We then realised we needed to buy tonight’s tea - so we headed to a shopping centre we spotted yesterday and went for a mooch around the shops.  Glad to report that Norwegian shopping malls are as dull as English ones but more expensive.  Needless to say, nothing got bought.  We ended up in the supermarket and bought some prawns and sweet and sour sauce to go with our remaining pasta for tea.  We then finished our lap of the island, found a place to fill up with fuel with cash and then went to the motor home lot to park up.  Wow!  When we picked up our motor home it was one of about 5, on arrival today there must be 30 or 40 parked up.  In fact there was only just enough space left for Bert to fit in.  Most of the motor homes were exactly the same as Bert, although there were a couple smaller and 1 bigger.  We had a good mooch around.  To our surprised, loads of the vehicles were left open, some doors were open, there weren’t even any gates on the lot, gas bottles on view etc.  If this was the UK there would be electric gates, CCTV and a huge security risk!

Anyway we parked up, watched the Queen Elizabeth sail past and then had tea.  We will have to say goodbye to Bert tomorrow - we will miss him, he’s been good to us. 

Here's a video clip of us doing a walk around explanation of out motor home: https://youtu.be/jV52q5DGV0M

Back to Tromso

I didn't have the greatest of sleeps last night, but the boys did OK.  We had a lazy morning getting ready, no need to rush as we didn't have far to go and it was raining outside.  In fact, when we woke up, we couldn't seen any mountains at all it was so foggy!

I decided to start the driving today, so we headed in the rain back to the main road.  We were going to drive up a new road to Tromsø today, but there was no point, we couldn't see anything and it was a toll road and a slower road!  We got to Tromsø in good time and as it was still raining, we thought we would search out the local swimming pool as we had such a good time in Alta.

Husky on a go-kart

Well...what can I say.  Another AMAZING pool.  Get this - it was brand new, only opened on 24th August!  It had a 50m pool with professional diving blocks, huge clock and diving boards at 1m, 3m, 5m, 7.5m and 10m - some concrete and some spring boards.  It also had a current pool with donuts to laze on as you whizzed round, some water canyons, a wave pool and a stream that took you to a lovely hot outdoor pool.  Also included was a climbing wall above the wave pool. a HUGE jacuzzi, another swimming pool, another hot bath and a sauna, steam room, cold plunge pool and hot grotto pool.  Upstairs there were two slides, one of which you could time yourself on.  

Wowzers!  It was going to be a good afternoon.  It was a good afternoon.  We splashed, jumped, slided, relaxed etc.  As the local kids are at school, we pretty much had the place to ourselves.  It was fabulous.  We had put enough money in the parking machine to give us almost 3 hours in the pool.  We thought that would be enough, but in fact we were quite sad to have to leave.  

The pool was part of a huge new sports complex.  In with the swimming pool was the largest collection of climbing walls I have ever seen - full of wirey fit people leaping up.  Next door was a huge new sports hall - would love to have seen what was in there. 

Now, we had to come up with a plan of what to do for camping tonight.  We had scoured books, magazines and apps trying to find some parking places within a reasonable radius of Tromsø but we hadn't come up with anything concrete.  There is one camping site in Tromsø but it had got very bad reviews from all that had used it.  There were roads we could have tried out to find a parking space, but the fog was so dense we weren't sure we would find them.  Eventually I found a campsite 30km away which had good reviews, so we decided to head that way (we needed one last laundry visit anyway), however, if we found a good rough camp on the way we would rough camp.  

Sunset over the fjord

We drove out of Tromsø - we got caught in a huge traffic jam by the airport, ended accidentally going down a bus / taxi dedicated lane but we did get out - only just.  We then drove up towards the campsite - there were no parking spaces anywhere so we ended up in the campsite.  It is the most expensive one we have stayed in - but we didn't really care.  The weather was better here - visibility had got remarkably better and it had stopped raining - all good in our books.  We got booked in and then got our clothes in the washing machine asap.  Then we managed a game of frisbee before making tea and then finishing Harry Potter.

Need to decide what to do tomorrow... only one more night left in Bert after tonight, shame, we will miss him!