Road Trip on the Wild Roads of Norway – Part 1

This is What We Came to Norway For

It was June 2008, and the fuel prices were the worst they’ve been for years. At that point it was £1.31 per litre for diesel. Not good when you’re running a 1994 LWB (long wheel base) 2.8 litre Turbo Intercooled Mitsubishi Pajero. Unfortunately, I’d bought the Pajero in January 2008, just as fuel prices were unexpectedly starting to rise quickly, thus dropping the resale price of them to almost nothing, so I had to keep it.

Pre-trip. The Pajero waits for the big drive around Norway.

I’d been running it mostly around town, and going off-roading only occasionally, but using it like this made me feel like I’d bought a Husky dog and kept it in an apartment, not letting it stretch its legs.

The months went by and it got to late April, when fuel was hitting £1.29 a litre, and I was stuck with a vehicle that was only getting around 55 miles to £20 worth of fuel, and one that I couldn’t use to its full potential, so I was considering cutting my losses and getting shut of it. I felt like it would be a real waste, as I had spent weeks and weeks trying to find the right one for me. It was the right colour, the right condition and had low milage too.

I was moaning about this to my Dad, and he suggested taking it to a place where we could really use it properly. On a road trip in other words. Great idea! For me, road trips are fun, and it’s exciting not knowing what’s around the next corner or what stunning piece of road or scenery you’ll drive on or through.

I was thinking Scotland – beautiful, rugged and wild. But we’d been there and done that before, we needed to be in another country altogether for this adventure. We planned for a while, suggesting Switzerland, Spain, France and other places, and eventually landed on Norway. It’s got some of the most amazing scenery in the world, and great roads that lead off into huge valleys and mountains – just what we wanted in fact!

The campsite at Gilja

We booked the ferry that runs from Newcastle to Stavanger, on the West coast of Norway, and arrived there in mid June. Contrary to common belief, Norway isn’t freezing all year round and actually gets quite warm at that time of year, and it was around 23 Celsius when we got there.

After arriving in Stavanger our first port of call was to find somewhere to stay the night. We drove 30 miles (48 km) to a place called Gilja, and found a campsite there. The next the morning we awoke to the sight of the beautiful scenery around us. We were next to a fjord (which means a long, narrow, deep inlet of the sea between high cliffs), that was so still that the reflection of the scenery in it was almost mirror-like.

The weather was sunny and hot in the valley and we set off driving. We planned on visiting a waterfall that was not far away, called Manafossen. We had to walk about 20 minutes from a car park up a mountain to visit the water fall itself. The walk was well worth it, and it’s certainly a thing to behold. Water rushes out a hole in the side of the mountain and drops 92 metres down. The noise is spectacularly powerful, almost like a permanent roll of thunder.

Manafossen Waterfall

After that, we set off back on the road again. Our first real impressions of the roads there were that they were in excellent condition and that there was virtually no traffic to be seen. The only real thing congesting the road the road up for us that day was a herd of goats.

We drove 78 miles (127 km) to Flateland, winding through mountainous roads over 900 meters high that had ice still floating in the lakes and packed snow by the roadside. We then dropped back down into a valley again, where the first inhabited place we came across was the funnily named Nomeland. After laughing ourselves down the road for a few more miles we came to our destination, which was Flateland.

Rush hour traffic

We noticed that on the campsite there were a few smallish wooden huts, and we decided to take a closer look at them. It turns out that the Norwegians are very trusting, as on the door of each hut was a notice in English (which is their second language, and is widely spoken), asking people to just take the key to an empty hut and give them the money for it the next day. It’s generally about £23 a hut, per night to stay in these, and they are always clean and tidy with comfy beds (you provide your own duvet and pillow), and cooking utilities.

After a decent nights sleep, which was only disturbed by the noise of my dad throwing up due to some strange hot chocolate drink, we awoke to another glorious sunny day. We were in no rush, mainly because we wanted to enjoy the amazing scenery, but also to get the best mile-per-gallon possible. To do this we tried to keep the revs at around 1800 rpm, which meant travelling at about 40 mph. In fact, if I went over 2000 rpm I was verbally beaten by my dad, who was paying for the fuel. This happened a lot on the more hilly sections, even though I tried to explain to him that a 2 and a quarter tonne truck needs a few more revs to climb a mountain.

The destination this day was 90 miles (144 km) away, called Hildal, near to a large town called Odda, which has around 7,000 inhabitants and is very typically Norwegian and picturesque. To get to it we again drove on some magnificent and deserted roads that wound past huge ice covered lakes and high cliffs. Some of the scenery was very much like the Rockies in America and Canada, and you could imagine bears wandering about between the rocks and water.

In Hildal we stopped the night in another wood hut, and used the same procedure as the others before. ‘Key in the door, pay tomorrow please’. The view from the hut was excellent, being situated opposite a huge waterfall that cascaded all the way down a mountainside, through massive boulders and clumps of trees. The waterfall is fed by the Southern Folgefonna glacier, which is the third largest in Norway at 65 square miles (168 Km2).

Read Part 2 of Road Trip on the Wild Roads of Norway

Hildal - Another Breathtaking Campsite

All photos taken with a Canon Ixus

Thanks to the Pajero Owners Club UK for the inspiration.