...I ate it...

And Umberto Paid!

A nice prize from the blonde German lady too

It's a shame about the weather.
Hopefully, it will be a little better down here, but I wouldn't hold my breath

Absolutely cracking drive down from Aalesund to Haugesund - a mere twelve and a half hours for six hundred and sixty kilometers... In convoy with Bob and Trish down to Geiranger and the Seven Sisters waterfalls, then well above the snow line to over a thousand meters as we went south. Somehow, on the second ferry crossing, we managed to meet up with Sander and Mrs Sander - completely by chance since when we spoke last they didn't know where they were going!

Loads of waterfalls, loads of mad goats blocking the road, two ferries, loads of tunnels... the longest tunnel was 25km long, complete with three 'moonlight effect' dogging trysting places every six km or so. We thought that one was the bees knees until we met a complete Carlsberg of a tunnel: drive in, and after ten km discover - still in the tunnel - a roundabout. Take the right exit, pop out of a cliff face above a fjord and discover you're on a suspension bridge, then straight into another tunnel with *another* roundabout! Stunning, and worth every one of the 150kr charged by the toll machine.

Now at the Best Western in Haugesand, Kristian, so if you want to meet up give me a bell or a pm. Forecast says rain (though the hotel man says not a chance) so it could be a viking day. I don't think we'll be doing much walking...

http://s156.photobucket.com/user/nailed_...rt=2&page=1

Good to hear you made it to Haugesund in one piece.

I believe you'll have to do without me today. I'm stuck at work today with a couple of hefty deadlines over my head.

Hopefully I'll finish my work so that I'm available in the evening.

I hope you'll find something to do in the area anyway.

No worries, call us this evening? PM'd my phone number.

Will do Neil.

Our day was a bit less exciting than that of Mr & Mrs B. When we left them we headed up to a 1500m view, but the clouds were at 1300m ��

We then headed for another tourist route which took us south east through the Jotunheimen national park. There was some stunning scenery last night but this morning we were again in cloud with 20m visibility at best. So we headed through three hours of rain to a much brighter Oslo and the best hotel we've managed to find on our travels.

http://s156.photobucket.com/user/nailed_...rt=2&page=1

Some photos with distinctly dodgy verticals, horizontals, and/or focus - hand-held in very dark locations in (yet another) viking museum, this one at Avaldsnes, and a distinct lack of any pictures of the times I actually hit the target (poor wooden pig!). Spot the barnacle(s)...

Then down to the village of Skudeneshavn, a pretty place but sadly no sunshine.

Really enjoyed Oslo yesterday and found a cracking place for dinner too. Today we had a leisurely morning before boarding the ship to Kiel. Tomorrow we'll aim to see Bourtang if the weather is good.

Oh and get saving folks, next year the meeting is in Flam, much closer to the UK

Today, a guided tour around the Haugesund area, courtesy of forum member Kristian... the tall ships that we missed at Aalesund went past us, but really too far out to photograph.

http://s156.photobucket.com/user/nailed_...rt=2&page=1

And the long trip back in an increasingly grubby car begins.

The bottom left corner of Norway is different from the fjord country further north, but still incredibly pretty, and the sun shone for us. Stopped for lunch at a roadside place, and a vintage Porsche - early 911, aircooled I guess (I'm no expert) pulled up alongside and we chatted a while.

Made it to the ferry with loads of time to spare, so we watched a few of the tall ships we'd missed at Aalesund arriving.

The the ferry, from which some unfortunate fellow had to be medically evacuated by coastguard helicopter - all very exciting.

Nice easy day down to Hamburg/Quickborn tomorrow; maybe we'll go and play on the Reeperbahn.

Never a dull moment by the sounds of it

I've enjoyed the pictures, that locomotive looked tired but I'm sure with some duck oil and tinkering she'll run again.

We arrived in Kiel and headed for the Dutch border. We visited the village of Bourtange before taking an overnight in Gronau.

This morning we had plans to head for Bruges but decided to pass by and head for France. We enquired about taking the ferry a day early and a small charge had it done. All the P&O boats were running late today, seems the French fellows have been at it again. We were supposed to leave at 20:30 but our boat was almost two hours late, so they put us on an earlier boat which was over an hour late but left not long after we expected.

Dover was chaos for departing folks with huge queues leading to the docks. We got out ok but the torrential rain and standing water was causing huge problems. We saw so many accidents on the way home

Those of you who have me on Facebook are probably sick of the picture updates by now but rest easy.... I'm finished

I hope that the mess at the Tunnel is sorted by tomorrow night... we have a short trip today - four hours or so - and a final longer one tomorrow.

The weather is dreadful here today but yesterday was one of the nicest days.

Joe, I thought you'd like that little engine...

@b&b: thank you both for the fantastic Norway write-ups and pics.

@bob: did the coop ran sweet again after the small Autobahn mishap had been cured?

@neil: good luck catching the train.

It appears that not all the port chaos is French related. Today we had an email from P&O apologising for the delays at Calais and said the port delays were due to UK immigration! We did see HUGE queues at the terminal immigration yesterday afternoon but we encountered only a small delay of just 25 minutes or so.

Our main delay was the late arrival of the ships, which were being packed to the rafters UK side. For our trip the boat was barely half full!

.

Yes and no

We never encountered any more misfires but twice, when coming through Belgium, the car appeared to cut out. It was only for a split second or two but it had me worried.

Last leg today - 700km to the channel and then 120 miles home (way to mix metric and imperial!).

Yesterday's 'short' journey took six hours due to the weather which meant that at times we could go as fast as 40mph... Anita and I went to play on the Reeperbahn where we both wrapped our lips around eight or nine inches of prime beef.















At the Rodizio Argentine Steakhouse...

Hope you have a better run than we did...

Driving through Germany was fine. Oddly driving through Belgium was rather problem free too, despite slow traffic around Antwerp. France was only a small leg but was also not too bad.

Sadly though the leg through Holland was terrible. We were dumbfounded at the standards of driving in Holland on a busy Friday. We had Cars and vans driving just cm's off our rear bumper, then passing and pulling into the gap you leave to the car in front and then braking (HARD) because the gap wasn't sufficient for them to fit. Then just moments later pulling out again to pass the car in front and repeating the same action to them! The lane changing was just incredible. We saw several drivers just pull out to overtake causing other drivers to swerve or break - it was madness At one point we were passing a car with caravan and slow truck. Suddenly the Caravan driver indicated and pulled out, if I hadn't braked his caravan would have taken me out!

The road craft shown by the Dutch drivers on Friday was the worst we saw on our whole trip. It was worse than driving around London

Anyhow...

Having now returned home I have added some pictures to the Photobucket.

Norway and Beyond 2015

A selection of pics from the folder...

A pit stop to rectify a misfire and vibrating brakes.


Then the ship to Norway, a magnificent beast


Meeting up with Mr & Mrs B and then the others for our run to Alesund, two of us diverted via the Troll pass. Oh and who said PeteP wasn't going?


We then took a trip to the Atlantic (Not Pacific) road

Well, the international rescue and recovery squad can stand down; we're back too, with the only casualty one dead headlight which gave up in disgust overnight.

3,523 miles (5,670km) door to door, at an average consumption of 37.6mpg and a best sector of 41.5mpg (those Norwegian speed limits do wonders for consumption!).

I must have had faith in the recent rebuild; the only tools I took with me were a wheel brace and a foot pump, and I needed none of the oil I took just in case (ok, ok, I *forgot* the toolkit...).

Nice filling station you found there, Bob - nice pictures all round, though I would like to point out that in all those photos of me, I *am* sober. In spite of appearances.

Guys, thank-you very much for the stories and the photos. By all accounts you all had a great time without too many car problems.

Thought there would have been some older Fiats there (other than the Topolinos). I have a friend in Oslo who has several Fiats from the 1920s but he did not attend, although he did offer to host me if I had made the trek; maybe next year.

Nice to see that all of you survived the visit to Norway

Also Neil, great meeting you and Anita here in Haugesund.

Indeed, Kristian, and our thanks for your hospitality - above and beyond the call of coupeness! If you're ever over here...

Our mileage total for the trip was 2588. Some of it became a little tedious if I'm honest and we should have perhaps tried to split the Norway element up a bit more. I am now so pleased that we decided to take the Kiel to Oslo ferry or we would have been looking at between 1000 to 1400 miles, depending on route

This trip coupled with just over 2000 miles undertaken in the Mustang on our USA trip we've done just short of 4700 miles on road trips this summer The two trips were quite different though.

One trip was in a brand new Ford Mustang the other in a 16 year old 100,000 mile Fiat Coupé.

One trip was mostly extremely hot and dry (about a 15 minutes of rain at most!). The other was mostly sub 20 degrees and, in Norway at least, quite wet!

We've enjoyed both trips but the USA trip did feel more like an adventure than Norway trip did. In the USA we often left the road to investigate identified tourist spots. In Norway we discovered a Museum of the road on the way up and was pleased that Neil convinced us to break from the others and take our original plan to visiting the Troll pass. Other than this, and the detour into some fellows front garden fuel station, I feel that we didn't discover too many unusual things.

I suspect the weather is what really put a bit of a block on exploring. We did pay the toll to go up to the 1500m view point, only to discover it was in the clouds

This makes me think that we may have to attend the 2016 event in Flam. There is so much more of Norway to see and we really need to explore more. Sadly we may though choose to fly in and rent a car there, rather than drive again

Bob: if you're attending the Flåm-meeting, I'd suggest you fly in to either Stavanger, Haugesund or Bergen.
That way you get to experience some of our delightful west-coast roads.
Also, it should be possible to reach Flåm in one day from all of those places.
It will be a stretch from Stavanger, but still quite possible.

Just found a video of the road you discovered Neil... Hardanger Bridge