Norway Day 4: Definitely Norway!

So at last, this morning, I made Norway!! More about that later.

Sweden is stunning! As simple as that!

It’s the first country so far where there is a large discernible change of culture as you move into the Scandinavian Countries. Travelling through Europe and into Denmark was a bit of a change, in the way that you move from county to county in England.

Sweden however, is clearly another country!

The houses change, no more brick and concrete, now they are bright red or vivid yellow wood, as are the barns, sheds, and outhouses that surround them. The roads are wide and empty, and the landscape is breathtaking.

It’s somewhat disappointing that photos taken with an iPhone in the car do not do it justice.

I very much envisage that I’ll return soon to take a journey around the whole of the country.

One of the things I’ve noticed with the increase in road size, is also the increase in car size. Many large Chevy and Dodge pickups and Wrangler Jeeps are to be seen around plus a lot of Harley Davidson choppers and cruisers. It seems that the easy cruising on the highways suits the bikes, and the long distances from place to place suit the large cars.

Trundling along, I could imagine that some of the places in USA are similar; wide open roads and easy cruising. It clearly helped that the sun was shining again today so everything seems fine!

Unexpectedly a border checkpoint was signified, there had been no signage (that I could tell!) notifying that one was coming up, only a few hundred yards before, I passed a ‘Toll / Customs’ sign. No stopping this time however, the guards just waved me through and I was in Norway to the sound of ‘have a nice day’ by Stereophonics on the iPod.

I was met immediately by a sign however, ‘Automatic Tolls In Norway’.

And boy do they love ’em!

I can’t comment on the taxation system or the full manner in which Norway fund their roads, because quite frankly I don’t have a clue!

I will say that the Toll system they have seems quite smart, I’d read about it before leaving the UK but I did double check again today.

everyone gets charged by the Automatic tolls, there’s no getting away with it! Either you can pre-register a credit card, pay at designated service stations and shops within a day or so of passing the toll, or, simply wait until you get back home and an invoice will drop on your doormat with instructions on how to pay online! There are agreements in place with companies in each country to manage (and ensure they get) the payments.

And there are a lot of Tolls, they seem to range from about £1 to £3 and I’ve been through six already.

If it works, then it works. I encountered my first roadwork hold up today where it seems that a beautiful winding road that follows lake Mjøsa is no longer adequate and a motorway is being built instead. A massive job involving carving tunnels through the mountains. The roadworks lasted about 10 miles and there were at least 4 new sets of tunnels waiting to be opened.

If it’s the tolls that pay for that and the roads and tunnels on the rest of the highways then it’s money well spent (Taxed!).

For some reason however, I managed to take a different route than planned to head north in Norway. Probably due to being a bit early, I decided to skip today’s waypoint, and plugged tomorrow’s into the satnav whereby it promptly rerouted directly to Trondheim via it’s ‘quickest’ route.

This has been fortuitous however, I’m off the main E6 Toll highway, and on a road simply named ‘3’. This must be the back route that doesn’t get seen much, it’s mostly wilderness and forest with small hamlets containing only a handful of dwellings with many miles in between each hamlet.

The road is more solitary here and starting to rise into the National parks. Fuel stations are less frequent, relatively few cars are around but it seems a favoured route by trucks. Probably 2 to 1 in favour of trucks, but bear in mind that maybe 5 vehicles pass in 5 minutes if that.

I’m at about 1000ft as I write this, beside the river Storsjøen a few miles north of Koppang. I can see the last remnants of snow on top of the mountains, but considering how warm it is here I doubt that will last much longer.

This is how I expected Norway to be.

Norway Day 3: Still Not Norway !!

Today felt like progress was made!

I moved from Germany into Denmark today and was surprised to see that the quantity and quality of roadside parking places continued, not just a German frame of mind it seems. Maybe just UK has the lack of a frame of mind?

A lot of Motorway / Autobahn miles trundled by this time which, whilst a bit laborious, was so much easier driving than yesterday. Time passed easily, all through Germany and most of Denmark the sun was shining, right up until I got to the first landmarks of the journey, then, it rained, and it hasn’t stopped raining yet!

This is why today felt like progress, I’ve been looking forward to crossing two huge bridges which connect Denmark and Sweden; Great Belt Bridge and, Øresund Bridge

A bit disappointing when you have the thought that you’ll be crossing them and be able to see for miles!

The links above should take you to the wiki pages about them, they are both great feats of engineering, one even has an artificial island made halfway to enable the span to stretch far enough.

The Øresund Bridge is the gateway into Sweden where after paying the £40 toll (yes you did read that correctly, the first bridge was a modest £23) I was greeted by the first Border Control since getting on the ferry in Dover.

The guard pulled me over, I think clearly planning to give me a rigorous questioning of my intentions for entering Sweden, he looked the car up and down, and then it began;

Guard: where are you going?

Me: Norway

Guard: For Business or Holiday?

Me: Holiday, I’m taking three weeks and going to the Arctic Circle.

Guard: have you been before?

Me: No.

In the 3 second pause that followed, he must have deduced that I was neither a terrorist, a criminal, nor Immigrant as, with a perfunctory “ok”, he turned and wandered off.

I put my un-inspected passport back away.

As I drove away, thinking to my self ‘it never quite seems like this on the tv when folks are crossing borders at gunpoint and guards with mirrors are checking the underside of cars’, I decided to fill up with fuel.

Now, filling with fuel had become a bit of a problem for my British psyche to deal with. I had found by experimentation that the unattended fuel garages along the way, do not accept my bank cards for some reason. That means I’d need to talk to someone in the garage if only to tell them what pump I was paying for. And there was my issue!

I don’t know the languages.

I have a Norwegian travel Book with phrases in it, but as for the other countries, not a clue!

There’s the half of me, that says ‘well, they all speak English anyway’ and the half that says ‘I don’t want to be the stereotypic English tourist on holiday shouting to make themselves understood, I really should make the effort’. I failed at making the effort, each time.

Then at the said fuel filling station in Sweden, the person in the queue in front of me clearly said ‘number 6 please!’ I thought ‘ooh another English person’, looked at their car, and saw it had Danish plates. In that instant, the most obvious thought hit me; even the neighbouring countries that are no more than a few miles apart, don’t speak each other’s languages, so they use the language common to all, English! Duh!

With my British psyche, well and truly put back on the pedestal where it belongs, my problem had gone. Normality restored!

Tomorrow I should reach Norway, however tonight I’m in a picturesque stop over, a few hundred yards from the motorway, it’s grey, it’s raining, and it’s bliss!