Driving to Andalsnes
Trip Start
May 01, 2009
1
17
44
Trip End
Ongoing
Andalsnes,
Western Fjords,
Norway
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
The next stop was only a short distance up the road, to the Lillehammer Olympic Park bobsled and luge track, where we had the opportunity to go for an optional wheeled bobsled ride. I (along with everyone else on the tour I think!) jumped at the chance, and it was great fun too
Driving through the country
! There was 4 people per car plus the driver, and there wasn't a lot of room to move - infact we were all tightly crammed in, sitting between the legs of the person behind, so it was slightly intimate and awkward!The driver told us to try and look up ahead and lean into the corners as we would be pulling about 3g, so it would make life a bit more comfortable. This, however, was rather hard as I was sitting second to the back (heaviest people went to the back), and had another helmet right in my face, meaning that I could hardly get anything more than a glimpse of the track ahead. I also found out the hard way what happens when you lean the wrong way - your head gets whacked against the cage really hard! The ride took around 69 seconds in total, and was a real blast - I'm glad I did it. The real thing must be incredible as they pull something like 5g! As it happens, this was the location of the Top Gear rally car vs bobsled challenge, so it was pretty cool to both drive on the road and ride on the track used for that.
Lunch followed our bobsled rides, then we carried on and stopped at a Stave Church next. This was a church built in the 1200s, and was sat up on a hill with quite a picturesque view of the valley below. I'll let the pictures speak for the rest of it.
Ski jump at Lillehammer
We had a shop-stop at a place called Dombas (which, obviously, we all called dumbass) where I bought some ludicrously expensive lollies, then we headed of to our campsite in Andalsnes.
Andalsnes is a mainly tourist town which was flattened by the nazis during WW2 as the Norwegian royal family made their escape to the UK this way. The scenery on the drive in was incredible, as we drove alongside a river with loads of waterfalls between the mountains flowing into it. I was allocated to a 7 person cabin, which at first I thought was bad news...until we arrived and found that we were in what was essentially a two bedroom house! We had two bedrooms, our own kitchenette, bathroom and a lounge with TV, AND we were right on the edge of the river amoungst some of the most beautiful scenery I've seen!
On this leg of the journey we had a viking olympics where we were split into four groups (Norway, Sweden, Finland and I was in Denmark) and we had various challenges throughout the trip. In the evening we had our viking olympics 'opening ceremony' where we all had to put on a little show type thing...despite not really being into that sort of thing, we all took part and had a bit of a laugh. Ours was basically just a bunch of us dressing up in curtains and mattress protectors and whacking eachother with foam weapons...nothing too exciting but it was a bit of fun. Earlier in the trip each team had been given an egg which we had to protect and carry with us everywhere, and Kate and I competed in a balloon inflating & popping race. This was all a bit of fun and made the long bus rides a bit more interesting.
