Monday 14 January 2008

1997 Land Of The Midnight Sun - North Bound

There is always something exciting about being in a new place. Waking up with just a few scraps of food left over from the previous night for breakfast as the panniers are repacked and we ready ourselves for todays adventure.

We board the 9.00 ferry from Vangsnes to Hella and then travel up to Gaupne, where Gussiesue spies a roadsign that leads to a glacier and because all of us have never seen one before we decide to go and take a look. As we travel up the road the temperature falls and we ride alongside the glacieral river. We eventually reach a visiters centre where my friends have a quick warm up inside. The joys of having fur!

The end of the glacier is some distance ahead with a footpath leading up to it, however due to the time we have to admire it from a distance. One to remember for the future perhaps?

Winding our way back down to the main road the temperature once again starts to rise, where again we push on northbound.

Once again we start to climbup into some mountains to a height of 1200 metres above sea level and into snow that was six feet deep in places of the road. There were amazing views and plenty of wonderful hairpin bends for Ian to throw the bike into.

Stopping at Lom to fill up my friends were gobsmacked to find that we had only used 11 litres to cover 139 miles, which equates to 58 miles to the gallon! The moto guzzi had never done this before, but then with a national speed limit of 90 km/h we were not really speeding.

From Lom we headed on to Dombas where we stayed for the evening. A meal was eaten at a Kaferteria. These are subsidised government run restaurants that have exactly the same menu all over. Nothing great but the meals filled a hole. Outside the restaurant Guzziesue took the photo of the two Nortons at the top of this entry.

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