Norway fjord flying: Sogndal to Bergen

We stopped for a breather after the mountains at Sogndal and the stop was a bit of a mission.  The people there were lovely, but....  The card reader would only take Norwegian cards.  (This is quite a large airport)  Then there was a 100 Norwegian kroner charge for paying in foreign currency.  And how could I forget the 25% VAT on the charge.  So all in all we paid €43 for the landing, €15 of which was fees, making this the most expensive airfield of our trip so far (speaking from 3 weeks in the future) and hopefully only to be topped by Rome.

So since we knew how expensive everything gets in Norway we opted to continue down the fjord whilst the weather was good and go in to Bergen.

Somewhere over the rainbow

Light beams

Nice huh, but I still prefer the mountains!

Finally we got to the metropolis that is Bergen, I'd spent some rainy time in the clubhouse in Klanten looking up all the interesting things to see, but of course it was after 8pm by the time we touched down.  Bergen is again a major airport.

Bergen

So we set out to find somewhere to stay.  My prior research had shown that hotels start at around £150 per night for a double.....  So it was time to get out the trailer.  The airport security guy who came to say hello looked somewhat shocked when I came to the conclusion that we would not need our tomahawk that night & pulled it out of our duffel bag and threw it back in the plane.   Luckily Julian talked really quickly about planes to distract him.  We spent the next hour pootling around trying to find somewhere we could pitch our tent out of view.  This was before I discovered that my bicycle Garmin has all sorts of normal GPS features (like find the nearest campground / local museum etc.) so I just scoped a largish area with no driveways marked & headed there.  On the way we found a marginal spot.  Hey sleeping on what felt like a 20 deg slope is worth it when you save that much.  The tough thing was was once I'd prepared the corn, carrots & cabbage for dinner, we discovered that our stove had blown a seal and was definitely not going to be cooking us dinner.  Raw carrots & corn ok, but we baulked at raw cabbage :-(  So we retired with our fly off for reduced visibility (yellow tent not such a good idea under the circumstances).  But Odin or Thor or Loki was smiling upon us and we were given a night without rain (an unusual occurance for Bergen).

Attack sheep, that stared at me & baaed as we put up our tent.

The next morning we packed up and got out of there as quickly as possible.

Ju with a trailer full of camping gear

As always the weather was looking pretty good, but set to get worse.  So goodbye Bryggen, and Stave church, maybe some other time (when we're rich)!  We're back to Denmark.

Flying the rugged Norwegian terrain

Eventually it was time for us to depart Siljansnaes, which was really sad as we greatly enjoyed it there.  And there were so many more places to investigate in the region.

Goodbye Siljansnaes!

Swedish lakes en route

Well hello Norway

But the weather looked ok for Norway so we thought we'd better take the opportunity.  So we went out to Reinsvoll.  And landed uphill on a very strange texture.  When we got out of the plane our feet sank into a mix of gravel and fine clay and water.  Hmmmm.

Note the slope & the rivers on the runway....

No one around so considering the miserable weather we decided to keep going to Klanten.  At Klanten we were very lucky that Arne was able to come and see us after work (9.30pm!) and help us out with petrol.

I love the aeroplane cut out from the Klanten aeroclub's shutters!

The next day the weather was still not so fantastic, so we got to meet some club members and a whole group from flying for the disabled.  I have to admit that this seems to me to be a much more exciting excursion than riding for the disabled....

Just a short discursion into the differences between Sweden & Norway from the air.  Sweden is predominantly a land of forestry, it appears to be divided into a patchwork of fields with pine trees of different ages.  As soon as we crossed the border to Norway all the land was covered in yellow wheat fields.  Which we initially attributed to the harshness of most of the land making people make the most of any arable land, but in fact turns out to be due to large subsidies paid by the government to the farmers, as Norway is a country very wealthy from its oil fields.

Klanten - we camped next to the trampoline

And again off topic - loved the pine clad bathroom, when you have a shower it smells like the sauna, mmmm.

In the afternoon the weather had cleared a bit and since the forecast was not improving over the next few days, we decided to see if we could make it over the mountains to the Sogndal fjord.  We kept a good eye on the wind direction (as it causes up- and down- drafts on the mountain faces, and the last thing you want is to be blown onto a Norwegian mountain peak!) and approached with great caution and always an eye to being able to turn back.  I have to say that it was incredibly stunningly beautiful, if incredibly harsh and unforgiving. On many occasions I wished I could zoom out further to capture the amazing views.  I've been to the South Island of New Zealand and seen their fjords, whcih people say look like Norway.  And I have to say that Norway looks a lot more like Norway.  Amazing.

check out the mist in the next valley

Awesome terrain

steep drops into the valley

Bad weather out the left window, inc snow

more hills

and here the fjord is starting

crazy mountains