We woke up the following morning, which turned out to be a Sunday, had something to eat and got on our way. The weather forecast was dire!
Apart from the weather forecast, somehow my phone receives severe weather warnings, and we had this come through.
There's nothing you can do about this, so we geared up, Paul put on his waterproofs, I zipped up my Klim vents, and we headed off. I wonder if these people have to mow their roof?
It may be wet, and that brings alive another part of the beautiful scenery.
Although wet, the roads were mostly fine, they must use a different mixture over here because of the extreme climates in winter. My Givi screen was doing its' job and keeping me mostly dry too.
We has the Trollstigen planned for today. By the time we arrived at the base of it, it was well and truly pouring it down. Not to be deterred though, we snapped a few photos at the base and had a nice chat with a retired American couple who had just sold up their businesses over there and come to Europe for 6 months with a camper they bought in Germany. Good on them.
Spot the Troll!
None of my photos do it justice from the bottom, but you'll have to take my word for it. I didn't stop much either too as it was hammering it down and actually pretty cold.
We headed up to the top and to a visitor centre. They have a lookout spot that you can walk along and admire the scenery. This was one of those times that I didn't mind having bike gear on. Paul and I didn't even take off our helmets, they kept us warm and dry.
We hung around for about 30 mins, by that time my hands had frozen and I wasn't aware of it until we were just about to leave an a group of bikers on tour came up. About 10 of them I'd say, almost all of them on UK bikes from a UK tour company. I can't remember the name of the tour group now and the organisers seemed ok, but a reminder that I'll not go on a tour like that, not my cup of tea.
We headed down the other side and towards Geringer. Paul had done Trollstigen and Geringer a few years ago and told me it'd be nice. He wasn't joking. Geringer is a spectacular Fjord, often with a cruise ship docked in it. No cruise ships today and it was amazing. We didn't stop in the town though as it was a bit touristy (read: expensive) but it was very pretty.
We left Geringer and headed towards our destination for the day in Lillehammer, we were going to cut short some of the coast road as the weather looked dismal for the next few days.
There was a fork in the road. Paul had read about the 258 and said it was unpaved and we decided to split up, I'd take the unpaved road and Paul the main road and we'd meet up further down the road about 30km away.
Did I mention it was cold, this is about 5 foot of snow.
The road was like a hard, slippery clay surface and I daren't go more than about 15mph for most of it, That was fine though as the scenery was worth it.
Paul and I eventually managed to catch up with each other after some slight miscommunication. In fact I seem to recall we met at a McDonalds in Lillehammer and then headed up to our hotel about 10km up the road. The hotel was very, very odd. It used to be a upmarket hotel, photos with Hillary Clinton were on the wall from when she stayed there back in 1994 for the Winter Olympics. It's now converted into apartments and calls itself an "Apart Hotel" The only employee was a very elderly gentleman who was educated in America and still had a strong accent. He had Paul and I in stitches as every sentence started with "In regards to ...." It was grand inside and immaculate, but straight out of the 90's. We got the feeling that the owner just kept it ticking along and didn't have any money to invest in it. It was a little sad, a little quirky but all good. I'd recommend staying there.
Paul and I had a chat about what to do next. It was Sunday night and I still had a further week off work. The weather however was miserable and I wanted to do a Parkrun in Copenhagen but that was 6 days away but only a few hundred km. Making that stretch over 6 days would be a chore and expensive. We decided to start heading home and basically see how long it'd take us. This is what we'd done today.
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