The Road to Oslo

On Tuesday, the 21^st of July, we got out of Helle as quickly as we could. Well, 10.15 anyway. The morning was uneventful apart from the collection of a heap more cans and plastic bottles on the sides of the roads. Now we are pretty good people, and do our fair share of community service, and it does disappoint me to see the beautiful countryside de-beautified by passengers in cars throwing rubbish out their window, but there was also the reason of cash for cans.
After our good collecting this day we decided it was time to cash all our dockets in that you get for taking the empties back to the supermarkets. With all of the cans and bottles that we had been collecting over the last few days we got NOK$ 34 (about AUD$ 6), which isn't too bad for a few quick stops on the way.
We arrived at the town of Langesund to be told by a young tourist info worker on her school holidays that there wasn't a ferry leaving town anymore. This was disastrous news, as we had come a long way from the inland road to catch this ferry, and the last 10 minutes had all been downhill. But a hunch told me not to believe everything you get told by a young kid forced to work on their summer holidays, so we did some research of our own and found that the ferry was still running, had always been running, and would be arriving in an hour. So lunch was taken while waiting for the ferry across to Helgeroa.
The ferry, when it arrived, turned out to be a boat, and a very popular one at that. Luckily we had chosen a picnic table right in front of the boats final landing place, because we were instantly surrounded by 40 other people wanting to board. Luckily once again there were many other bikes, so the crew decided it would be best to get all the bikes and their owners on first. At this announcement, that we couldn't understand, there was movement all around us as 12 other bike owners tried to squeeze past us and around us and over us to make sure that they got a seat onboard. And third time lucky for us, a friendly old lady who had also been waiting there for a long time voiced her disapproval of all these people pushing and shoving and declared that Jono and I should be the first on, and so we were.
This ferry ride took us on a meandering path amongst quaint looking houses atop their very own little rocky islands, through narrow passageways between steeply overhanging rock faces where the local kids entertained by launching themselves into the water, and past rickety old boat sheds and piers with no other access than by water.
In the afternoon session we made our way across land to Larvik, then back to the coast at Ostby, stopping only to replenish our potato and onion supply. This night was spent at a beautiful grassy picnic area sandwiched between 2 long rocks laying parallel to each other. At the entry end of these rocks was a little boom gate designed to keep traffic out, and at the other end was a little beach and a diving board, with yummy muscles living on the rocks. This beach turned out to be a closely guarded secret amongst the locals, with all the beach goers that afternoon enquiring as to how we found their 'private beach'. They were all happy when told we were just lucky, and that their secret would remain safe. After this they wanted to talk about our trip and told us of an old Viking village in the next bay around.

The lovely sound of a man and his mower welcomed us into the new day, as did some cracking weather. We were fully packed by 10.00, and were being joined by the first few locals who were starting to appear ready for their day in the sun. We joined in the early morning swim, had a friendly chat to everyone there, and headed on our way, stopping at the Viking village that we had told us about. We left the village with clouds visibly approaching in the southern sky. Half an hour later and the clouds had caught up to us, and then half an hour later again the rain started. It drizzled for a while, then was heavy for a while, then drizzled for a few hours more, and then put in 1 last effort around 7pm. So after a bright start this day gave us wet everything, again. We slugged it out though, spending 5 hours in the saddle, and getting us 84km closer to Oslo, which was now only very close to the north of us. This day's ride also took us past 2 massive fields of snowpeas, which tasted very nice fresh, and good with our potatoes and onions that night.

On our last full day of riding before reaching the capital of Norway we had a fairly easy day by Norwegian standards, with only 2 killer hills late in the afternoon. The weather had improved to just heavily overcast with only an hour of drizzle. The day was cold and there was thunder in the distance.
During breakfast we noticed our remaining blueberries were looking tired, so Jon mashed them up, added some water and sugar and put them on the boil for 20 minutes to make a very tasty, very energetic drink for the day. Once on the way we stopped in downtown Naersnes to let some young boys at the sports shop have a go at straightening Jon's ever increasing buckle in his rear wheel. The boys hadn't actually tackled a wheel this bad before, so they pointed us in the direction of a good bakery and we left them to it. An hour later we had seen the town and found the boys had done a decent job on the wheel. They didn't charge, as they put it down to a good training session.
After getting out of town we had a great tailwind for the first hour, but then swung 175 degrees to follow down the other side of the fjord. This meant we had the same wind in our faces for the next hour until we finally rounded back again and soon after rolled into Svelvik. In Svelvik there is a ferry that takes passengers to Klokkarstua. Klokkarstua is approximately 120 meters away, but with no bridge, there was no option but to wait the twenty minutes for the just departed ferry to return. The first of the massive hills was straight off the ferry and it took a good 45 minutes before breathing deep at the top and taking in a view that nearly made the climb worthwhile. It was our first view of Oslo Fjord, with the city of Oslo lying at the head of the fjord. In the afternoon we saw several enormous cruise ships moving up and down the fjord. On one of these ships was my cousin, who works with the stage show. I would hopefully be catching up with him the next day in Oslo.
Our camp for the night was found at another little grassy beach with a few 'no camping' signs dotted about the place. Already camping there were a few tents full of young Polish university students who had come up for some summer work. Once again we were entrusted with a secret. This time not the location, but the vocation; they were going door to door and hiring themselves out as professional painters and handymen, and good luck to them, as they were a friendly lot and gave us hot tea.

Our morning swim on Friday the 24^th was very short, with a swim out to the jumping platform to do a few flips, then back to the rocks to dry before a quick getaway from camp. This was the first time in a long time that we had any sort of agenda, and on this day we had 2. Firstly was to get to the port of Oslo before 2pm so I could catch up with my cousin, working on the Emerald Princess. After this we had to meet a friend of Jon's sisterat the main train station, as he had agreed to let us stay at his place for a few nights.
The ride into Oslo was to be as expected when heading into a big city. We had a bike path to follow most of the way which was nice, but even that got confusing as we got closer to the city, with more and more bike paths beginning and crossing each other, and then disappearing altogether. We arrived at the harbour a bit before 2pm, and raced around to the first big ship, which happened to be the right one, but unfortunately the gang way was already raised and even after telling them none of these millionaires would mind a half hour delay, there was still no way of getting on board, or even getting in touch with my cousin. So that was that, the first time I would have seen my cousin in about 3 years and the best I could do was get a photo standing in front of his boat. The photo's probably better looking without him in it anyway.
The next of our appointments thankfully went smoother. We caught up with our Oslo contact at the train station where we shook hands, introduced ourselves, and then he gave us the keys to his apartment, told us how to get there, told us he was off to Bergen for the weekend and jumped on a train. And that was our second meeting over and done with. With that freeing up the rest of our day we decided to head straight out to our new digs for the weekend. It was another 14km away and 1 damn big hill. After half an hour we finally had all our gear into the apartment and we were starting on the first of 3 loads of washing. Some shopping, another 2 loads of washing and some raiding of the fridge and the afternoon had left us behind. Our first night in a big city in a few weeks and we decided to give it a miss, as we were tired, we had a comfy mattress, and we were already reduced to our underwear anyway, as everything else had gone through the wash. Jon was still keen as he had a decent set of undies, but eventually we just fell asleep.