Lofoten

The trip is made by 4 in a camper van and is the continuation of the Sweden stage

Sunday 30.07.95 Departure from the campsite at 8.30; today we reach the destination of the journey: Å. The route is very beautiful and varied; we pass from one island to another with a bridge, with a ferry and with a paid tunnel under the sea. In Leknes, a town with shops, we find everything closed because it is Sunday. At 14 we stop where the road ends, in the sense that beyond there is only the sea, and we visit Å. It is truly worth it, with the typical red houses with immense piers, with the seagulls and the calm sea: it feels like being in a postcard! On the way back to Borg on the island of Vestvågøy, about thirty kilometres from the campsite, we discover a reconstruction of a Viking king's house on the hill, complete with a museum inside, and, following the route, on the lake a Viking ship with sail and oars.

In the evening at 21.30 return to the campsite at Svolvær, Sandvika campsite. We take back our place on the harbour. 264 Km. Monday 31.07.95 We leave the campsite at 8.30 to make the ferry trip to the Trollfjord. We change a few lire because here the exchange rate is very unfavourable: they consider the lira a risky currency. The ferry (a fishing boat) has a capacity of 20 people, very nice. A tip: cover up with jumpers and a k-way. On returning to the car park, a stop for lunch and immediately the return road begins with a ferry for the Vesterålen. In an area near Narvik we stop to have dinner and then to sleep. 275 Km Tuesday 01.08.95 We leave at 6.30, or rather my father drives and we still doze a little. We have 1 and a half hours before reaching the boarding of the ferry to Bognes, a beautiful fjord crossing on a bridge in the fog.

At Fauske we take a tour along the main street with few shops, we buy the famous and very good strawberries. Stop at the area after Rognan to refuel diesel. We reach the Arctic Circle (80 Km from Mo i Rana), and here we stop in the large square where we have dinner and spend the night. 380 Km Wednesday 02.08.95 At 7.30 departure from the Arctic Circle, the whole route between the mountains and the snowfields is beautiful. We cross Mo. Suddenly from the sea we climb with hairpin bends up to 700 m. Arriving on the hill we stop to take photos of the goats and to give them some bread: they have a thick and bristly coat, hardly soft little clouds! The landscape is beautiful with small lakes, pine woods and pyramid-shaped mountains carved by glaciers.

At Grane, south of Mosjøen, we visit the granite formations in the river bed with rock carvings, and birches so prostrate they look like bonsai, immediately after the beautiful Lakfoss salmon waterfall. Stop at the Region change area complete with an arch from Nord Norge to Trondheim where we make some small purchases. At the end of the day campsite at Snåsa. 411 Km. Thursday 03.08.95 Departure from the campsite at 8.30 under pouring rain. We cover about 90 Km without finding petrol stations; at Stenkjer we fortunately manage to fill up at the filling station of an immense supermarket that really has everything inside, including tropical palms. It is almost like an American shopping centre (or maybe the comparison...). We take the toll road to Trondheim.

The houses are really beautiful in this area: all in carved wood painted white with a matching gazebo in the middle of super-tidy gardens. After travelling for several days in the company of a small camper of Austrians, we part ways. In the Lom valley the river is very swollen. The river's boiler is stupendous and impressive for its size and flow. We stop at a lay-by to have dinner, close to a slope with grazing cows; the next picnic area to sleep, there are already 5 other campers of all nationalities with whom we exchange impressions: two Danes, a Finn, a Dutchman and a German-speaking Swiss. The area is in a rocky gorge near the river, we are at Kleppe, 30 Km from Lom. 468 Km Friday 04.08.95 Today the crossing of the Alps on road 55 and the Jotunheimen national park are planned, leading to Krossbu and the Sognefjordane fjord. In the morning we leave at 8.30 and tour the shops of Lom.

We buy the classic jumpers and a few souvenirs. Then the route begins: the first village Roysheim indicated by the guide consists of wooden houses from the 1700s but is not visitable because it is part of a hotel. Shortly after we find a reconstructed centre, Sagasoyla, with payment for parking, a 33 m obelisk erected to commemorate Norway's independence. The original in wood was at Lillehammer but it deteriorated despite restorations; for this reason a copy in stone was made; the 13 blocks that form the column represent the 13 centuries of Norwegian history. The village is made up of inlaid wood houses, very pretty and well kept. We continue climbing but the time taken is in reality greater because of the many photo stops. The upper part of the Jotunheimen route up to Krossbu is very beautiful and you run between snowfields, glaciers and lakes on which icebergs float.

The part on the fjord, on the other hand, is a bit disappointing and the road is very narrow. At Kaupanger there is the ferry for the fjord crossing, 109 NK; we buy a tray of very good cherries which we eat during the crossing. After Revsnes the road and the landscape are interesting. We stop to have dinner in the car park of the most famous stave church (wooden church with steeply pitched roofs) in Norway, the one at Borgund, complete also with a bell tower, after visiting it. When the square is closed by the custodians, we continue the journey. The road, unlike the others that lead to Oslo, never climbs abruptly; we presume it is the fastest road to Oslo. In a lay-by on the lake after Øye, and before Vang, at 2130 we stop to sleep near two other campers.

297 Km Saturday 05.08.95 Today we think of leaving Norway and looking for mushrooms in the woods, where years earlier we had found many, before the Swedish border. At the car park we stick the reindeer stickers on the camper. Departure at 9.15, stop at Vang where we park in an enormous space. In a market we buy a nice variety of 'øg' beers, white beers. We cross Oslo stopping only to fill up and, a little before the border, we turn off to look for mushrooms. We find only a few porcini. At the border we get back 130NK for the purchases made in Lom in the tax free shop. In Sweden we stop to have dinner in an area on the motorway. Then a further stop for the night in an equipped area indicated on the motorway; it is 22 and we are now close to Göteborg. 663 km Sunday 06.08.95 In the morning we leave the area.

On the motorway we look for diesel but it is 7.30 and the filling stations are still closed. With the help of a very kind Swedish gentleman we find an open station and fill up. We also discover that in Sweden on Sundays you pay more. We take the ferry at Helsingborg, including the 2 (also Rødby) 0.5 h + 1 h, stop in Denmark for lunch, then in Germany we find some queues around Lübeck and Hamburg due to the Sunday return combined with roadworks. We sleep at a campsite at Heidenau between Hamburg and Bremen, in what seems to be a German holiday resort. The caravans have their own little garden, apparently built up over time, complete with gnomes and Snow White, concrete fountains with plastic ducklings, enormous fibreglass swans, etc. It is so kitsch as to be worth touring.

587 Km Monday 07.08.95 Departure at 9 from the campsite towards the Netherlands; on the motorway there are no petrol stations, in the end we exit at a town, Leer, to fill up after nearly running dry. At the D-NL customs, a stop in the service area to have lunch and change currency. We drive along the great dyke between the inland sea and the outer sea, with stops for photos and filming