Our day started with the sun shining. The campsite we had stayed at was slowly filling up with teenagers who were on some kind of holiday camp. It was quite interesting to watch them all learn how to use wooden stilts and play outdoor team games. Very different to the UK. Unfortunately our curiosity was short lived as we had a long drive ahead of us to Odda.
Johns leg had improved overnight, the compression socks were doing the right thing and were bringing the swelling down. So much so you could really see the indentation of where the tumour, bone & muscle was removed. We now needed to keep it that way.
Being quintessentially British, we all had a cup of tea before packing the cars and started our journey through Norway. We headed back towards Kristiansand before we found the road which would take us to Odda.
The journey was fairly nondescript for a while. That was until we realised we were out of the town and making our way through the forests to mountains and fjords. We had never seen scenery like it. Each turn of the road gave us something more spectacular than what was behind us.
In awe of our surroundings we kept moving on until we needed fuel. We knew Norwegian prices for diesel were not to dissimilar to UK prices, even with the crappy exchange rate but we were definitely on the wrong road to find a petrol station.
Eventually we found a small town which had a petrol station. We all stopped & filled the tanks with as much as possible and one by one we wandered into the shop to pay for the fuel. What we hadn’t accounted for was for none of our cards to work. Trying seven different debit & credit cards we could not get one to work. Thankfully we were not alone as the locals were also having difficulty but as they were Norwegian they were able to still use the old school way of signing for their purchases. Us on the other hand didn’t have that option. The cashier told us the nearest ATM was about 13 miles away so that wasn’t really an option. Luckily I was fortunate enough to be able to obtain enough Norwegian Kroner before leaving the UK so we used all of this to pay for our fuel.
Back on the road we continued to wind our way around the base of the mountains still in awe of everything around us and to be honest we didn’t really know which way to look. A short while later we found our first big waterfall. What better place to stop for lunch.
After the human refuel was complete we headed off to Odda, the starting point of our hike to Trolltunga. On our way we found mountains still covered in snow and probably one of the most spectacular waterfalls we have ever seen – The Latefoss Waterfall. A twin waterfall that cascades down the mountain with spray covering the road underneath. The photo’s below don’t really do it justice and we are currently collating the video footage which will be posted soon.
