Mountains, fjords, wideness, silence, trolls, our bikes… and incredible lots of space for its own.
These are the ingredients for spare time after our fancy. And this we found in Norway this year.
Just the trolls, you don’t catch sight of them hard.
We not only looked for the adventure in a beautiful landscape, we also wanted to meet friends and
Therefore our route through South and Middle Norway emerges from its own: Oslo – Kongsberg – Geilo – Hardangervidda – Bergen – Sogndal – Geiranger – Fjørå – Trollstigen – Romsdalen – Isfjorden – Molde and somehow back again.
Who wants to be mobile, will probably have to use a car – we made the best of it and took the motorail train from Vienna to Hamburg first. So we made it, to push the first tent peg into the ground after we left Vienna 24 hours before. 24 hours afoot and a temperature drop of over 20 degrees Celsius – midsummer was over for us, but these are the perfect conditions for biking.
That was, what we did first: We met in Oslo with two locals. Colleagues of a friend, who made the contact with following words for us:” You have to go biking with them certain, they are as crazy as you!”In truth, crazy means super friendly. They served us their best trails of the Nordmarka on a silver platter and because it was so nice we arranged to meet them again on our return journey. In Oslo we made the acquaintance of granite: Stone is not just stone, but granite is the absolute hammer: maximum grip in each circumstances or weather.
The journey continues through the Numdal to Geilo. The Hardangervidda is a cold pole and the nights in the tent were cuddly just because of our down sleeping bags. We were surprised – mid of August this favorite place for bike parks was deserted, the lifts were switched off. The season was finished already. During a tour into the back country, a dairymaid told us with an alarming implicitness that it will be start snowing soon anyway.
Since Bergen the warm sun came along with us again and soon we headed for one of the highlights of our journey: Fjørå. Fans of Norrøna are maybe in the know: this label has named its whole bike collection after this place and chased a promising advertising spot. I researched and compared the map with picture details again and again at home before, until I was sure that I identified the mountain.
The trip was really incomparable beautiful. We started at the sea directly, and made it to the peak within a few hours over road and carrying passage and we were down longer on the way as up by combining hiking trails clever. Everything from the peak to the boat house at the fjord was ridable:
We had mountain and alp landscapes, meadows with Erica and blueberries, birch forests and in the lowest part the vegetation resembled the forests which we know of the Vinschgau. The view over the fjord and the surrounding mountains can amaze you while oneself on the top, too.
Afterwards we went for the second highlight: We were guest in the Villa Vengetind with Renate and Tommy Soleim from Romsdal Adventure. Both of them are dropouts, which moved from South Norway to Isfjorden even two years ago, mainly because they felt in love with this region.
As enthusiastic biker, hiker and ski hiker they meanwhile know every corner and made the passion to their job: Renate look after the physical wellbeing of their guests and runs a catering company, while Tommy on tour ensures that the hunger comes for sure. As we will have a co-operation with them next season, we were allowed to test the private “Gusto-Stückerl-Trails”. And we were stoked!
No doubt, Romsdalen will yet establish to the absolute bike Mecca. At this moment it isn’t known as other Norway regions. (Fortunately for us!)
We would have preferred to stay forever. For our last tour Tommy went with us at the coast directly.
With a view on the open sea and the Atlantic street we said goodbye to the region with a heavy heart.
On the way home we fulfilled our promise in Oslo, before we stored our bikes in the car to go back in the South. Every 100km we were happy that we moved a bit again – our dog is even waiting for us at home and one thing is clear: the next “troll search” will happen with our four-legged companion.
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