Jeff: Cycling the Telemark Canal

Bright and early the next morning we headed out to the Vitlcke rock carving museum in Tantum and as we were there before the museum opened we wandered up the hills to look at the carvings. There were many carvings in the hills near the museum and helpfully they are painted red which helps you see them but there is controversy about painting them red as while it does help you see them and provide some protection to them it also damages them. Once the museum opened we walked around inside to learn about the carvings, including the different types and saw a replica of an old farm (with live sheep) before heading off to another set of carvings just up the road at Aspeberget. Again we walked into the hills and found lots of the carvings but I do have to say they were just a variation on the themes we saw at the museum and while it is impressive to see them, you can probably see too many. After a walk around the carvings we decided not to visit any of the other locations and instead head on north to Norway (with a brief stop to get some essentials for the van).

We soon got to the boarder and we weren’t sure what to expect really and as we were getting close we saw the customs signs and this isn’t something we have seen on most of the boarders in the EU and as we got closer it appears all the cars have to go through the customs section and the officers there will randomly signal cars to pull over. While we had nothing on-board that we shouldn’t we were hoping to get through without being pulled over and the officers signalled to a car about three ahead of us to pull over and waved the rest of us through. Once we were safely in Norway we headed to a motorhome service point for a quick service of the van. We then found out that the place we thought we were wasn’t the place we actually were and found that places appear to be named very similarly. We were near the Fredrikstan fortress but this wasn’t the old fortress town in Fredrikstan that we wanted so we continued on and found a nice park where we could spend the rest of the afternoon and head to the fortress town in the morning. The park was a lovely large park with three lakes, one of which you could swim in and paths all around the area. We soon found the lake you could swim in but were not sure how, if you didn’t know there was only one you could swim in, how you could tell as we only saw small signs on one side of the other lakes when we really looked for them.

The next morning it was run time again as we hadn’t done it for a few days. So we did a few laps of the lakes then Rich had a swim, which I politely declined, before showering and heading off to the old fortress town of Gamlebyen in Fredrikstan. This was a lovely little town to stroll around and had some very old building, some chickens wandering the streets and a lovely duck pond with some young ducks, cygnets and adult ducks and swans all milling around. After strolling around for an hour we headed on to Drammen where there was supposed to be a lake to see which was supposed to be beautiful but we soon realised that the lake was a lot further south than the town Drammen. We headed to the town any way and parked up about a 10 minute cycle out of town, however the cycle from the car park to town was 10 minutes but the cycle back was going to be a lot longer as we were up a very big hill. Despite this we got on the bikes and got some good speed flying down the hill (I got to 54km per hour) and were soon in the town and we had one place in our sights – Café Criollo Sjokoladebar which is a purely plant based chocoloate café – heaven right! So we thought we should indulge ourselves for the run and the soon to be killer ride up the hill with hot chocolates and a cake. They really were divine and worth the ride. We did consider riding around the town before heading back up the hill but it had started to rain a little so we thought we would get it over and done with. It was hard, even for me on the E-bike but we made it and headed ontowards our stop for the night which was near Heddal a large Stave church (the largest in Norway and the only one with three towers). We saw the chuch as we got close and decided to go for a walk around it (it was closed and wouldn’t be open until late the next morning). It was a beautiful church and Im sure we will get to go in one but the outside was good enough this time. We headed down a long bumpy road to a riverside stop for the evening.

The next morning we were up early as the plan was to cycle down the Telemark canal and while the cycle is 114km one way we planned to do a good proportion of it and potentially about half (the incline profile shows a large hill at this point so a good place to turn around). So we headed towards Ulefoss where we planned to park and begin the ride. Once we parked up we were just about to head out on the bikes when a very old boat came sailing past on the canal. We then headed out on the bikes but struggled to find the bike path, the cycle route 2 heads parallel with the canal for most of the time. We soon found the path and quickly stumbled upon the Eidselva sluice (canal lock) and it was very impressive as there were 4 locks next to each other to move the boats up and down and we got to see a boat start its assent up (but it takes awhile so we headed off) and then we started the route which turned out to not be like the canal routes back in the UK but a very hilly and winding route on the roads. For the first part of the route we struggled to see the canal but it eventually came into view and we then cycled next to it (and over it a couple of times) for most of the route we actually managed. Given we had prepared for a flat long route the hilly route killed us as we only made it just over 25km before deciding to have a lunch break and then head back. It was as hard coming back and by the time we got back to Jeff we were done for. It was a lovely ride and we saw several sluices and boats travelling up and down the river but it was a lot harder than we thought it would be. We managed to have a dip in the river/canal near Jeff which was a lovely way to cool down and have a chilled evening planned before continuing south tomorrow.

We have learnt already a lot about Norway – check place names, cycling is hilly (and often on the road, unlike Sweden) but we still don’t know how to check where we can swim (but you should do what the locals do)