Visiting Atlanterhavsvegen and onto Lofoten – Norway continues to shine!
Our Europe Roadtrip continues, more mountains some with snow. Waterfalls. Fjords. 
Moose and farm animals, Norway continues to 
shine. So much nature and fresh air! There is a LOT to like about Norway and we have really enjoyed our time spent exploring this beautiful country.
Betsy (the campervan) has done well handling all the steep inclines, single lanes and long drives.
July 17
Making our way into Bergen on the light rail, once activated the tickets expire in 90 minutes. We parked Betsy at a parking spot that we found on Camper Contact, Slettebakken. More importantly, a place that had wild raspberries growing – yum! Restocked our container with wild raspberries.
Train ride was under 30 minutes but quite expensive. (AUS$19 for 2A 1C). A walk around the city and down along the water, a quick trip into the visitor centre. The town is famous for its timber houses which they have done a good job at keeping them restored. They have been burnt down multiple times with the whole town being burnt down in 1702
Not really a lot happening and there are a lot of tolls to get in and tolls to get out, we were wondering what all the fuss was about. We have since been told of an amazing interactive fish museum that looked really good.
Back to Betsy and on we went….
Aurlandsfjellet, famous for its ice roads that can, in winter tower over the vehicle on either side of the road where it has been carved out by snow ploughs. In summer, it is still beautiful but no ice tunnels to drive through.
Very skinny roads, hairpin turns and more traffic than we had thought made this a slow and a little tedious. The view
once at Stegastein lookout, jutting 30m out more than 650m above the Aurlandsfjord was beautiful. Great views up and down the fjord and amazing landscape as we have begun to expect from Norway.
Continuing up the mountain past Flotane spectacular landscape continued with snow lying on mountain tops and many people stopping to enjoy it. A narrow two way road made us thankful for nice weather and we drank it all in as we looked for a wild camping spot for the night.
July 18
Ferries, Mountains and waterfalls seem like the go every day as we head North in Norway.
Don’t let me forget to tell you to factor in budgeting MANY tolls and Ferries. There are also LOTS of speedbumps, sometimes is the strangest of places and lots of speed cameras!
Norway has around 1600 glaciers! Nearing the area of Fjaerland, to check out well known Glacier Boyabreen, we called in to the Norwegian Glacier Museum in Fjaerland, it has some interactive equipment outside for the kids use. The museum costs and on this occasion we
did not go in. The Norwegian Book town behind it, Mundal, is famous for secondhand bookstores and we loved walking around looking at various books in multiple languages and of course hunting for a miniature book.
They were baffled to begin with, why we would want such a small book and if there are actually books that small, but in one of the lovely huts we stumbled across a Norwegian miniature book on coffee!!
A storm was brewing very quickly and we stopped back at the climate centre to wait it out – boy are we glad we did. Lightning, thunder wind, rain and all over in about half an hour but we were tucked away nicely behind a building.
We were able to take photos of glaciers here but by driving to Boyabreen you get much better understanding of the size and better photos.
Glaciers form from accumulated snow and ice. Boyabreen is one of the fastest moving glaciers in Norway. It is a branch of Jostedalsbreen which covers 487km2 and is the largest glacier on the European continent.
July 19
More incredible mountains and then Atlanterhavsvegen, the most dangerous road in the
world (not
in summer). You can imagine as you make your way along the road what it would be like in winter or even if the wind was up as there is limited to no protection from the Norwegian sea.
It cost 122,000,000 Norwegian Krone to build, 75% grants the balance had a toll introduced that was expected to take 15 years to pay off but only took 10! Construction of the longest bridge pictured here, Storseisundet, was interrupted multiple times by terrible weather including 12 hurricanes!
From cold as ice to hot as Hell…… we entered the town of Hell. Yes there is a town called Hell in Norway, how could we resist.
Actually it looks a lot more peaceful, tidy and calm than you would expect with a name like that!
Stopping the night at Bolareinen, famous for its rock carvings.
July 20
Off on a short walk to check out the rock carvings dated at over 5000 years old from the stone age!
There is a Reindeer that is easily identifiable and a bear that is a lot more difficult to see all along the Bola river.
Food is really expensive in Norway make no mistake, a litre of milk will be AUS$4, a small loaf of bread can be AUS$7, don’t even get us started on alcohol or coke (1.5ltr around AUS$6) and they have tax on top which you give up if you don’t stay long enough to recycle the bottles.
We cook all our own meals and this saves us a LOT of money.
Onward to laksforsen waterfall. The falls are lovely and we sat for over an hour watching the fish jumping and some even trying their luck at jumping UP the waterfall!
Meeting up with other worldschooling families is lots of fun and forms 
lifelong friendships. We met up with 1 cat and four Bees at Laksforsen Falls and talked for hours and hours.
We tested the midnight theory in Norway where it was still so light you would of thought it was 3pm in the afternoon! Very cool.
July 21
Lot of talking by the adults allowed the kids to keep on playing till midday, the kids had a great time and were sad to part ways, but you never know where we meet again when you’re a worldschooler!
Heading further north a day filled with driving as we make our way closer to Lofoten Islands.
Wild camping by the river and a spot of rain clearing quickly. We went to bed with about 4 or 5 neighbours and woke up with about 10! So many people making their way by bike, motorbike, car, campervan and motorhome around Norway.
July 22
Today we hit the artic circle something we were pretty excited about! Not only because it
was the Arctic circle but they had free wifi at the Arctic Circle Climate Centre!!! Anyone who blogs will know how difficult this is to find at the best of times but we definitely did not expect to find it here.
Everyone was getting THE photo and who do we bump into but our friends again!
When you are in another country and someone yells out hello! You do not think it is you they are after LOL.
Managed to catch up with blog posts that I had written but could not get loaded due to the size of youtube videos that went with them, of all our treks we did the previous week. Yay!! The life of a blogger and the things we get excited about.
The ferry for Lofoten Island was already booked for that night at 6:45pm so we had to keep moving but really happy we got as much as done in the time we had available.
Driving through such incredible scenery you have to stop and remind yourself just how extraordinary it is! Our drive towards Bodo to catch the ferry was no different.
On the ferry and found front row seats looking out over the large expanse of water, great weather for our crossing which takes approximately three and a half hours.
July 23
We found a spot to camp pretty much straight away coming off the ferry due to it being
22:00pm and we were hungry and tired. It was easy enough and a beautiful view too. 
When we awoke today we headed off after brekky and it was a bit of a cloudy overcast day (insert sad face here) not so crash hot for photos but again and I know you must get sick of hearing it but – the scenery was beautiful!!
The Island is really easy to drive, there were a few larger rigs that had mirror collisions due to narrow roads and we saw them taping them back on w
here possible.
We spent the day driving and enjoying the island. Lots of drying racks for fish and one we were lucky enough (?? – very smelly) to have some on it so we could show Miss B what we meant when we said they were drying fish.
We were all wishing for some sunny weather for day 2 on Lofoten Islands…
Until next week….
What did we take
What we took, electronics, kitchen and all things we needed for the duration of our roadtrip click here. (we are slowly adding each week as we have data/time)
Having done a three and half month roadtrip last year in South Europe and 5 months in UK & Northern Europe in 2018 we were pretty confident in what we would need’this time. Also, what worked and what we would not bother taking again.
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