Sunday, June 13, 2010

Day 3 - Go West ... to the Land of the Norsemen!

The Dream

Today we invaded Norway as Modern-Day Vikings sailing from the South ... for a bit of rape, plunder and pillage.    Ok, so the reality was that we arrived by land in our plastic land-ship ... for a bit of eating, sleeping and sight-seeing.  



Much as we liked the notion of being a modern-day Ingvar the Far-Travelled making his way to the Caspian Sea in the early 11th century, our travels to far, far away were a very pleasant affair ... empty roads, dry weather, low speed limits ... enabling us to arrive in Oslo by 1:30pm (after setting out just after 7:00am).

The Reality
The journey was completely uneventful apart from the encounter with an old original Mini-Cooper ... which was also on Swiss Ticino plates ... heading in the same direction to Norway.   However, the young girl driving the Mini looked a bit aghast when she noticed us waving ... perhaps it was the fear or rape, plunder and pillage ... who knows!

Also noticeable were the array of wind-driven electricity blades ... enormous ones every so many kilometres.   Oh, and those deep red barns on the farms, with the funny shaped roofs ... I'm sure they must have borrowed the design and colour from the Mid-West of the USA.

The Arrival
On arrival, we had lots of time to wander the streets and check out the harbour, but not quite enough time to visit the old Viking Ships Museum, not to the mention the Polar Exploration Ship or the Kontiki Tour Museum.  

On the positive side, the physical exercise was great, and the late afternoon dinner was a treat.   Karen had Oslo fish and chips from one of those white tents in the background ...




... while I had whale stir-fry from a different white tent.   It looked and tasted like beef or buffalo, but the girl promised me that it was whale, and the sign said whale in Norwegian.

What do you think?



The other good news was that this meal sold at a ocean-side stall only cost $10 per head ... whereas a medium-sized pizza in a local restaurant was anywhere from $30-40!!!!

Tomorrow, we head over the mountains to Bergen ... on the west coast of Norway.   Then the real journey will start ... after we spend a day with Vincent Wall's mate, Erling.



Day 3 - Alps to Arctic


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5 comments:

  1. Oh Pete I can't believe you ate whale meat :-(

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  2. Am I reading your graph right?? Do you get up to 3000 mph? WOW! warp speed ;-)

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  3. Wow- Hi Peter and Karen - this whole adventure is phenomenally exciting and brave! good luck! will keep following the journey so keep blogging!

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  4. Gretz, I wondered when someone would spot that. I've been racking my brain for some days about it. And then a serious consideration of the "when and by how much" gave me a clue. I think it's the effect that tunnels have on the GPS. The longer the tunnel, the more intergalactic the apparent speed required to catch up on the other side. Does that make sense?

    Next I will get into the gpx file itself and see if I can edit out the tunnels. Watch this space.

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  5. Thanks for the encouragement Avgi. It's more of a job than I expected ... especially at the end of each day when tired and poor wifi conspire against unbridled enthusiasm.

    Don't know how the serious long-distance people have the energy left to keep it updated.

    To that end, I am helping some UK friends to maintain their endurance blog in Sept-Oct. Their event, a car rally from Beijing to Paris over 10 weeks ... the driver will use a satellite phone to leave me an update each day, and email or MMS some photos ... and I'll write it up and post it (complete with editorial variations as I see fit!!).

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