The Norway Recap

All in all at the end of our Norwegian odyssey, we had been in the country for 52 days, riding on 31 of them. We had covered a distance of 1,573km around the coast between Bergen in the west, to Oslo, down to Ski, and then across the western border into Sweden. We had averaged a daily distance of 51km on the days that we rode. Of our 52 days, we camped on 46 nights, and an impressive and beautiful statistic – it rained on 26 days, half our time in the country!

I had a great time in Norway, starting in the amazing Fjordland area around and to the south of Bergen. We then learned a bit of the Viking history in the Avaldsness region. The 2 weeks of waiting in Stavanger gave us our best weather and a good chance to recuperate, as well as checking out the area. The crazy hills around the Flekkefjord region quickly put us back into riding mode, and put Nadia into the doctors to receive her first stitches ever.
At Kristiansand I said goodbye to Nadia for a week of her own travels, leaving Jon and I to slog out the remainder of the ride along the North Sea, meeting a Winter Olympic skating champion along the way, picking untold kilos of veggies and berries, having everything drenched in the rain, spending a night in Helle, and having a great time.
We had a few days of riding up the western side of Oslo Fjord, managing to camp for free all the way even though we were approaching the capital city. When we reached Oslo we unloaded our bikes and gave everything a slightly overdue clean, before relaxing for a few days, with Nadia rejoining the party after her week in Denmark. The way from Oslo to the border was straight forward and we had the good fortune to meet Rune and receive his friendship and hospitality.

We learnt a lot, including enough basic greetings and politeness to get through most language difficulties. The level of English that the Norwegians have is very high, which makes it so easy to travel.
The worst thing about Norway is the cost of everything. It was depressing to see how much we were spending just for basic camping food. We picked a lot of berries, found a few vegetables and even caught a few fish, which helped us to save a bit of money. Chocolate was left off the shopping list due to the extortionate cost, which was very unfortunate, as we love chocolate, and it's good for energy.

I think Norway had some very nice ideas that Australia could implement. The free camping was great, and fairly simple – not within 150 meters of a house. Norway has houses all over the place, but we still managed to 'wild camp' every night. The second part of the law – that you are not allowed to stay more than 2 nights – is also fine. I'm sure in Australia, with its wide open spaces, and all its outdoors loving residents, could allow this.
Another cool thing was the bottle and can recycling system. It was country wide, it was in just about every supermarket, it was a machine, it only took a few minutes, it was a damn good reason to keep your cans and bottles, and it was so bloody easy! Why the hell do we need to drive all the way to South Australia just to claim a refund for recycling? An easy to fix problem – whack a 25cent tax on all bottles and cans that are sold, and make it a 25cent refund for whoever takes the empty bottle/can to the recycling machine in the supermarket. I'm pretty sure most Australians would be doing that just so they can 'stick it up the government'. And the only people who wouldn't recycle are the rich variety who don't want to lower themselves to recycling. And they don't need the money anyway, and then the poorer person who picks the bottle up and takes it back gets 25cents. Brilliant!
After my limited travelling around the world, and working with tourists for many years at home, I have already seen that Australia is a long way behind in recycling practices than a lot of other countries. Over here they even have a box in the supermarket to recycle your household batteries. What do we do with them in Australia?

The scenery along the way was simply stunning. The Fjords area would hold me spellbound for many a year, both on the mountains and in the fjords, preferably seen from a sea kayak. I guess I haven't gone into too much detail in the blog in terms of describing the nature we were amongst and the views we were treated to, but I'm sure I've crapped on enough already anyway. And of course the next part of this adventure is getting home, making some photo albums, and then answering all the questions that my friends have of all our adventures. So when you come around for a beer and a bbq, you'll hear a bit more about it all I'm sure.

Anyway, that's it for Norway. It was great, and I really would like to go back with a sea kayak or yacht in the future. I'll get the first Sweden blog entry up soon, but for now we still have a long way to go on this slow way home.