The Great Atlantic Road

The next day we got up and knew we needed to hit the supermarket as our fridge was empty and tomorrow is a Sunday so nothing will be open. Once we did that and serviced the van we headed to a paid camper stop for the day. I know crazy, right! However there was good reason for this. Not only has it been raining lots, meaning washing will not dry but our little washing machine has died – RIP! So we really needed to do some washing and clean the van and this camper stop had a free washing machine and dryer, free hot showers and even a little washing up area. We used the day as a rest day and managed to clean the van (including the outside), do three loads of washing, have a long shower each and generally get ourselves back in order.

 The next morning we got up fairly early and headed out to a local hike called Trollkrykja (troll church) which was a 3km (each way) hike up a steep hill to a set of caves with waterfalls. It was a really steep climb so it was a slow pace for us and did include a couple of ropes to help scale the rocks. We made it up there in just over an hour and then we started to explore the lower cave which was really dark and had many different passageways to explore.  The rocks within it were limestone which made them bright white (and also very slippery) as there was water covering most of the floor of the cave.  The caves were really quite chilly, especially compared to the heat outside (and our body heat from climbing up the hill). After exploring this cave for awhile we headed up to the higher cave where we had to step across the drop and climb down a ladder into the cave. Once at the bottom of the ladder we again had to step across the water and gap to get into the cave. As you can imagine this did my fear of heights no good but I did make it down. We were lucky to be in the cave by ourselves as the hike was still fairly quiet so Rich decided to have a quick dip in the water under the waterfall and I even dipped my feet and found it was bloody cold! Once Rich was out of the water all I could see was steam rising from him. Once he got dressed we headed back out, up the ladder, and carried on up to the top of the hill to get the great views and see if there were any more caves up there (which there wasn’t but there were some holes where water has obviously eroded the rocks).

We headed back down which took about an hour (these walks do not make going down any easier than going up) and drove to Haga which is about 30 minutes away. This area is the start of the Great Atlantic Road which is a 7km road which spans the Atlantic and crosses several different islands to get to Karvag. It uses a couple of tall bridges but also has sections which are not much above the ocean (and when the ocean is rough then sea water will end up splashing onto the road.

We parked up at one end and jumped onto the bikes to cycle down the road, stopping at the different sections to admire the views and take pictures. The bridge was taller than it looks (and the incline on this side was steep) so was hard going on the bike but the views along the road were worth it. Once we got to the other side we cycled back to Jeff back across the road. Once we got back to Jeff we decided we would stay there for the evening and went for a walk to explore the area we were parked in. On the footpath we found some sections of marble scattered around in the small lakes and once we googled it we found it was an art installation representing how Norway has communicated with the outside world using the seaway.

 The next morning it was dry and we had a bit of time so we did a short run, not over the Atlantic road due to that steep bridge but in the area around where we parked for the night. Afterwards we headed out to cross the Great Atlantic road but the weather was a bit cloudy so we were glad we had managed to ride it in the sun. Once we crossed it we continued north to our next destination Kristiansund (not to be confused with Kristiansand where we went to earlier in the trip – see what I mean about place names being very similar!). We parked up and walked into the town to have a little explore and while we were there we picked up some bits of food including local strawberries, which is always a nice treat. On the route to the city from our parking we had to pass through the maritime museum which is an open air museum and had lots of old ships (or part of ships) and people restoring older boats. It was fairly interesting as was the whole town but after about an hour we headed back to Jeff for a quick bite of lunch then onwards towards Trondheim. We decided to park in a forest about 7km outside of the city and planned a ride in the next day. We had a walk around the forest to get the blood moving as its been a lot of driving today (over 3 hours) before having dinner and chilling in the sun for the evening.