The Return Trip - A Two Day Tale

When we awoke the rain was absolutely hurling down making us ponder our clothing options for the relatively short walk to the light rail station in readiness for our journey to the airport.

Breakfast was a chance to eat up all the remaining consumables, but we had been fairly accurate in our planning so we only had a slight excess of fruit to get through and ended up leaving some milk, butter and muesli.

By the time we had a clean up around the flat, the weather had brightened to the point of only needing a T-shirt for the trip (one of us anyway) and the rest in the luggage.

An interesting installation at Danmarks Plass rail stop.

We are called to the gate but Eric is concerned that there is no plane in sight.

A little later it turns up, apparently snow in Oslo had caused some delays with other services into Bergen, and Heathrow had been congested this morning, which had also held up our aeroplane.

The flight takes off just a few minutes after the scheduled departure time and we are on our way home.

Plenty of views as we take off  

The steward comes around to take orders for food and the necessary bacon roll is requested. He informs us that cold orders will be taken as the trolley comes down the aisle. The bacon roll appears quite quickly but the drink and cold snack trolley takes a long time to get to us, even though we are only in row 14 of 32. Unfortunately by now all the requested edible items are sold out, and the hot chocolate and tea are only luke warm. Customer service a little lacking today, even though the staff are pleasant enough about the shortcomings. We debate whether a tweet to either BA or M&S would be the best approach.

The flight was otherwise uneventful which is always good. Next challenge is to make the connections with the services out to our daughter's house. Find the Heathrow Connect service was not as straightforward as billed, but we get to it eventually. It may be the cheaper option to make it to central London but it's only for those not in a hurry.

After two more train connections, which are all very quick, we wait for the final leg by local bus.  It takes a while to discover the correct ticket to buy as we find that our discussion with the driver over the location we are headed to is confused by us each talking about different Tesco stores on the route. He ends up just giving us a fairly cheap ticket, I think to get rid of us.

The bus sets off, but 30 seconds in to the trip, at a pretty busy roundabout, a car runs into the side of the bus.  This could be the cause of some delay!  The bus driver remonstrates with the car driver wondering if the guy's eyesight was good enough to spot the large blue vehicle he had just hit. As one can imagine a bus parked across a mini roundabout starts to create major congestion and quite a few drivers start hurling suggestions, most of which are not printable here, but were generally relating to moving the bus out of the way. It ends with the bus driver seeming to say "call the police if you want or I'm just going" and we leave the scene.

A meal out and then it's to bed

A casual start and then a happily uneventful bus/train/train journey to Reading to wait for The Intercity back to Bridgend.

Whilst waiting at the station Eric spots the work being undertaken for electrifying the rail link to South Wales. He thinks, whilst the change from steam to electric may make things a lot quicker and maybe less polluting, aesthetically, a plume of white smoke is much prettier than all this metalwork.

Food shortages seem to be the order of the return trip. One of us was looking forward to the "cheap" British Rail bacon roll, obviously only in comparison with our recent experiences on the cost of food in Norway. Alas, no bacon rolls, they were sold out and the train had only made it from Paddington to Reading.

It looks like we may have a bit of work to do in the garden and it's even a bit too scary to go down the allotment today.

Home at last.  Where to next Eric wonders?

Knitwear and Grieg

As we had such a long day yesterday a well-deserved lie-in and a leisurely breakfast were taken today.  As we have used up most of our food, the plan is to eat out today - extravagant as that may be. We have another Bergen Card, but this time only for 24h and we want to use it for travelling to the airport tomorrow, so timing today's travel was crucial. You have to write the date and time on it to activate it, although we have only had it inspected the once, on our way into Bergen from the airport.  However, not wanting to be caught out travelling on the tram before the allotted time, which typically might have happened if we had not filled it in, we decided to have a stroll into town today.  It even allowed us enough time to call in at the KODE museum shop for some souvenir purchases before continuing our journey.  Earlier in the week a scarf with a print of a painting by Nicolai Astrup on had been fancied, and the intention was to possibly purchase it later in the week.  We made the mistake of not asking the price the first time, it turned out to be 1200 Krone, which is nearly £110. Even I am not that much of a spendthrift so the scarf stayed in the museum!  

Our day now carried on by bus, to The Norwegian Knitwear Museum.  

Sounds exciting doesn't it?  

Eric thinks these buses are very comfortable.

In fact it involves two buses, the first of which runs every ten minutes, but we find we have forty minutes to wait for the next as we had just missed one.  Never mind, this gives us the opportunity to visit the supermarket, buy some lunch and sit on a concrete slab to eat it - believe it or not this was the better option than eating it in the bus station, which was not very salubrious.  Fully fuelled up we jump on the next bus.  The ride is very pleasant, with some good views, although it looks like it is not a well used line. Make a note to check the return bus times before we go into the museum!

View from the bus.

Salhus Kai where the museum is situated is a very pretty little village, so worth the waiting around. 

The Knitwear Museum is not very far. It was founded in 1859 and the original building was wooden but was replaced with this one when they expanded.

We are the only people there, but are still given the full guided tour. First there is a film about the history of the factory, and then a tour of the actual factory itself. 

A carding machine. The wool was very soft. There are two different grade of rollers, the later ones being finer. The wool would be fed into the machine, travel through the rollers and then transported as a sheet to the next set of rollers.

Following this the wool was separated into loose threads.

Eric takes a closer look - it's a good job they're not switched on or he may have had a nasty accident.

Next came the machines that made the thread stronger and finer, winding it onto bobbins.

From the bobbins it was wound onto cones, 

or sometimes into skeins for selling to home knitters. Much of the equipment was imported, but this one was made in Norway.

Originally the knitting machine were worked by hand.

Eric has a go with a hand-powered sock making machine.

This is another hand-powered machine. The worker using this would have to have kept turning the handle for about thirteen hours a day! 

Surprisingly (to us anyway), all the fore-runners for the knitted garments came off the machines as a tube.  

They were then cut and sewn together.

That's a funny looking sewing machine.

The factory originally made the finest wool underwear, garments were such high quality that they would last a long time.  They no longer make these here but we were able to feel a sample.  They were very soft and warm.  They sold under the brand name of Krone Maco and were much desired in places such as Japan and the US.

Surprisingly all the machines are kept in working order and we had demonstrations of them running. They even still make a number of items for their souvenir shop.

Similar to (but nowhere on the same scale) as Port Sunlight in Liverpool the factory was the life of the community, with the owner providing housing, medical care, pensions, schooling, various activity clubs such as music and gymnastics, and a church.

This is the first house that was built for the workers.  Just behind it is the schoolhouse. 

As by this time we had missed the one bus we decided to have a cup of tea in the cafe. It had a very good outlook over the harbour.  Unfortunately, the tea was on the lines of Canadian tea, i.e. not made with boiling water.  Luckily it was Earl Grey and was quite refreshing when luke warm. The very helpful young ladies in the cafe did offer us some newly boiled water but we needed to catch the next bus or we were worried we might not get back to Bergen, and we were twenty miles outside it - so a long way to walk! 

The bus stop is on the quay, and we notice that we are close to the bridge we had seen from the boat on our first fjord cruise. Even from this angle, it still looks like they suddenly remembered they needed to let the boats pass through.

A direct connection at Asane terminal allows us to be back in Bergen and out again on the tram to Hop. Making the most of our Bergen Card benefits we are on our way to Troldhaugen to find the summer home of Edvard Grieg. Unlike the last museum, which was free, in this one we will only have a 50% discount.  There is a twenty minute walk from the tram stop to the museum and it just starts picking with rain as we arrive. 

The museum has an exhibition housed in a very modern building and some outbuildings with grass roofs. 

The composer's house itself is very small, but also has a very cosy and comfortable feel to it, with lovely views from the house and garden.  It is situated on a peninsula by a lake.

The house is wooden planked, both outside and in and the garden full of tulip beds.

Inside the house there were also several wood-burning stoves - but not as we know it. Have a geek at these.

The Steinway piano was a silver wedding present. Lots of the wooden furniture also had lovely carvings on them, and there was a solid silver tiered 'Lazy Susan' with gold lined bowls - this was in a thief proof cabinet for obvious reasons.  It was so unusual that in admiring it and talking to the guide about it, we forgot to take a photo.

Eric admiring the garden and views.

And some ferns

Back on the tram for dinner .  Our last day in Norway is coming to a close.  

To finish:

Some trivia relating to the number of electric cars we have seen since being here:

There were electric cars everywhere and I discover that 40% of new car registrations last year were all electric. It helps that the government provides free charging at public points and all manner of other incentives. At one point we saw 5 Nissan Leafs (or should that be Leaves) at a single roundabout. Most manufacturers were represented with Tesla being in great abundance and a model by Kia that look like a set of Duplo blocks on wheels called a Soul. I think I recall seeing them in the UK, but not as an electric car. 

Now we have to pack for the return home. 

One last sunset from the apartment. 

FjordCruise #2 May 9

An early start, as we said last night - to be at the bus station by 07:25 means being away from our attic by 06:45 (that still sounds painful and we're back now). The dip in temperature doesn't help but we are on our way. 

Eric is raring to go. 

Do you notice something - Eric is in bus shelter in the bus station, which is actually undercover anyway! We do wonder why they felt the need.

On the bus, in the pound seats at the front with the driver, and we pull off 5 seconds ahead of schedule, but we are happy with that. Almost as soon as we hit the outskirts of town it's straight into a tunnel that seems to go on forever (actually it's 3.8Km which, at about 2.5 miles in real distance, makes the Brynglas tunnels on the M4 at Newport even more pathetic). 

Our destination is Norheimsund, which is on the Hardanger fjord. We have to go over a high part of the Bergen hinterland, and consequently it also passes through a lot more tunnels (I could provide the lengths of all these too but will resist - boring I hear you scream). As we are able to see the driver's dashboard we spot the temperature is dropping from the balmy 7 degrees at the bus station to just 2 degrees as we pass the plateaux. It's very obviously cold, as through the trees we see a lake and on second glance we note is actually just a sheet of ice. Doesn't quite look thick enough to skate on though, or at least we wouldn't like to try.

From here we quickly drop down to sea level and are soon aboard the boat. The weather has brightened and we are in cold sunshine again. 

Eric has a quick check of the harbour before ensuring the captain knows where he is going

As is generally the case on these Norway Nutshell tours, we are using the regular fjord transport and so it has a number of ports of call. 

First up is Herand and then to Utne below.

Another  check on the directions and we are into the Sjorforden arm of the fjord heading for Lofthus. 

Along the shore here are the apple and cherry orchards that this area is known for (not by me, but I'm sure other people may have paid more attention to the marketing department). It's pretty amazing that they can grow anything other than sheep on these steep slopes, and are even using tractors to spray the crop. I bet the health and safety guys haven't been told about this practice. 

At Lofthus

 we stop at the regular quay to collect a few stragglers and then next it's to a swanky looking hotel that has it's own dock where we pick up a party of about 60 travellers of fairly advanced age. We think it's going to get crowded at the waterfall viewpoint but discover they are not going that far as they have to have lunch at a restaurant opposite the Hardangerdidda visitor centre, which is where we are due to stop first when we eventually disembark from the boat and jump on a sightseeing bus at Eidfjord.

Back momentarily to the watery bit; as we motor along the villages on the shore all look very smart in the sunshine - this one is Kinsarvik.

Further on we have a view of a new suspension bridge, which we are reliably informed (and with great pride) is longer than the Golden Gate Bridge.  As interesting as that fact is, there seems to be a bit of an issue, the bridge appears to have no roads accessing it, it just stands between the two sides of the steep-sided fjord. As we approach we can see that the roads emerge straight from their respective tunnels out of the cliff onto the bridge. Doubly interesting is that on the northern side we are told there is a roundabout inside the mountain where 2 roads meet. Useless fact  - one arm of this tunnel is 7.5km long. 

As we head on to Ulvik and then the final port of Eidfjord we pass some splendid views that I doubt our pictures do justice to. 

The boat docks and we once again bag the front seats on the first leg of the sightseeing tour to the nature centre.  

Passing some very grand scenery along the way, at the visitor centre a guide welcomes us in and we are directed to a cinema to watch a twenty minute film about the area.   It's on a wrap-around wide screen in several sections, and it is as if you are on the helicopter flying over the landscape, all set to some stirring music.  The 'flight' makes our stomachs drop away at times as they fly over the cliff edge following a waterfall and other such jolly japes. Good job we hadn't had our lunch yet.  We are then herded through three exhibition halls with some interesting bits and pieces (but generally too many people for the amount of space). 

There was a room full of fish tanks, some of which were very pretty.

Eric photo bombs our first reindeer picture but we manage to exclude him from the next. Eric says he just wanted to say hello to the local wildlife even though we did inform him that they are in fact, stuffed. 

We finally manage to escape through a gap in the people and head outside. Unlike the people from the posh hotel, who are going to the restaurant, we have to slum it outside with our picnic.  Really we think this is preferable as it is not raining and the sun is still making a breakthrough, but we are glad that we put four layers of clothing on for just such an event.

Back on the bus it's up to the Voringsfossen waterfall at the Fossi hotel. They are making some serious alterations to improve access to, and visibility of, the waterfall, as it is supposedly one of Norway's premiere attractions. To be fair it is pretty spectacular even though the water is rather a dirty brown colour where it's coming off the top of the plateau.

It starts snowing! A quick retreat to the warmth of the bus and a return journey to Eidfjord then the boat to Ulvick, where we get off this time. 

A view of our fjord boat from the bus.

We are told our bus will arrive shortly, which it does.  However, about ten minutes into what was billed as being a fifty five minute ride, the driver informed us that we would have to change buses in a place called Granvin, and that would be in about ten minutes.  This was a bit of a surprise to all the 'nutshellers' on the bus, and especially to the American family who had all their luggage with them (and boy did they have some luggage!).  Not only that, but the snow had turned to rain. Consequently we arrived at Voss, where we were to pick up the train back to Bergen, a little later than expected.  Given their tight scheduling we thought we might miss the connection, but as usual, needn't have worried.  

As we had done this journey in the opposite direction on Fjord Cruise #1, we remembered to sit on the right-hand side for the journey back, and were rewarded with some of the views we'd missed last time.

Another long day. Dinner is a delicious omelette with tasty new potatoes.  Soon to retire to bed.