My first adventure, a 3 day trip to Norway

I´ve been reading a lot of great ride reports on this awesome forum for some time now and now it´s time for me to contribute with my own.

I´m new to riding and have only had my license for about a month now but I have bought a nice 1997 Super Tenere so I´m ready to hit the road! Unfortunately I haven´t had the time to get to know someone who drives a bike so I had to do this trip solo.

At first I had my mind set on going to North Cape and the Lofoten islands but I realized that I didn´t have the time nor the money for that trip this year so I´m saving it till next year.

Instead i took a more moderate 1350km trip to some really nice places in Norway that are closer to home (I live in Sweden).

Let´s begin!

I drove in to Norway from Funäsdalen in Sweden so my first stop was in the lovely old copper mining town Röros that is on UNESCOs world heritage list. It´s really nice to walk around in the town but unfortunately it has turned in to kind of a tourist trap and it´s hideously expensive to shop here but hey, thats Norway in a nutshell. I payed 150 Norwegian crowns for an ordinary burger with French fries and a soda, thats over 25$!!!


There are a lot of these old Norwegian houses with grass roofs in the town.




The old mining days produced a lot of slag and these big piles are now a popular tourist attraction.


A picture of the river that runs through the town.


I pushed on to the west towards the mountains and passed by this old gas station from BP:s golden age...


I tried to gas up the bike with some SUPER but the pump just wouldn´t work.


You can pack a lot of shit on a Super Tenere if you got proper bags.




Coming closer to the mountains the rivers turns green from the melting water of the glaciers.

I was heading for Hellesylt where I was going to take the ferry to Geiranger which means that I had to pass the town Stryn. I then had two choices, either I could take the new paved road with several long tunnels or I could take the old gravel road over the mountain.

Tough choice...

The old road is really nice but is quite narrow and the turns are often obscured so I couldn´t push it to hard considering all the German campers and caravans that I met.


You do NOT want to hit one of these rocks along side of the road!


A lake filled with glacier water.




As always in Norway you have to look out for sheep on the road.


At the end the old road is paved and goes down this valley with quite a nice view.


A bit further down the road.


Eventually I made it to Hellesylt and boarded the ferry that was gonna take me to Geiranger through the Geirangerfiord that is considered as the most beautiful fiord in the world.

The girls just can´t seem to be able to take their eyes of us adventureriders.


There are a lot of old farms along the fiord, they are all abandoned now but some were in use as late as in the 1960:s.


It is really amazing that people lived there all year around with no roads so all transportation had to be done by boat and to get down to the fiord they often had to climb ladders and walk on narrow trails. Some farms had as many as 100 goats and in some winters they did not have any water so they had to row their boats over the fiord to get fresh water from the other side and then climb up to the farm with it.

Going through the fiord I passed the famous waterfalls called the seven sisters.


And around the next bend is?


Yep you guessed right, we have now arrived to Geiranger and the next stop on the journey will be the mountain peak dalsnibba 1495m above sealevel (the peak on the right in the picture).


More to come...

Why are my pictures in different sizes? I have resized them all to 800x600 on photobucket but when I open the thread some are bigger and if I refresh the page some other other ones are too big

I'm using firefox and none of your pics cause any left to right scroll bars - so it all looks good on my end if thats any help.

Great pics - Norway looks awesome! Post some more.

beautifull pictures indeed!
keep posting and welcome to the marvelous world of two wheels

enjoy and always have safe and awsome Km!
regards,
George

The road up to the Dalsnibba peak is full of very sharp turns and the last part is gravel road (exept the very last part that is paved nowadays).

Once you have climbed the 1495m the view is breathtaking.


A view over Geiranger from the Dalsnibba peak. You can see the serpentine road called eagle road on the other side of Geiranger, thats where I´m going next.


I also have to throw in a picture where I am posing.


Another picture of the eagle road that I took from the ferry.


Going down the Dalsnibba road I stopped to take a picture of the lake Djupvatnet where the water has a very unique dark blue color.


I didn´t stop in Geiranger because I could not find a parking spot due to all the tourists so I have no pictures to show you from there.

This is the closest picture I have of the village.


I´ve been here many times before and the whole village is built around the tourist industri with lots of luxury hotels. All the big cruise ships come here because of the fantastic scenery.

So I just passed through and went up the eagle road.

The only stop I made on the eagle road was in the famous curb called the eagle turn where the view over the fiord is really nice.


And if I turn my head to the left I get a last view of Geiranger.


Next I´m heading for Trollstigen so stick around.

beautiful area. looking forward to the rest.

Hello and welcome to the madness, Jochen . Nice report and fantastic photography. Keep it coming. Norway is still on my list of "must do"

I lived in Norway as a young boy of 12. We lived outside of Oslo in a small town Sandvika. My grandmother was from Bergen.

Your pictures bring back good memories. Thanks for the RR efforts.

Congrats on your buying the motorcycle and welcome to the biking world Jochen. Beautiful pictures and thanks for sharing your ride.

Riding from Geiranger towards Trollstigen I stopped at a place where the river has cut down deep into the mountain.


A nice place to rest my tired arse.


They have used both stainless and ordinary steel to create a cool effect.


Some serious welding.


I parked the bike for the night just before I reached Trollstigen.


A strongly exaggerated HDR picture of the bike in the Norwegian evening sun.


It was a nice evening but I was tired as h*ll from a long day in the saddle.


So I set up camp on the mountain.


It got pretty cold during the night so the helmet hood stayed on.

Always good to see a Swede representing
More!

Thanks for the report and the nice pictures!

I visited Norway and Sweden last year and had a great time there. Looking forward to read more.

The next morning I went down to Trollstigen but the whole place looked like a construction site.


At least the new lookout point was open.


I took some pictures before I rode down.






The road is famous for its curves. Guess why?




The damn taggers has even found their way here.


A picture from further down the road.


My next goal was the big city Trondheim and going there I took road 660 wich was the best bike road on the trip! The asphalt was old and worn but hey thats no problem if you´re on an adventure bike. Many of the other roads had too sharp curves so you couldn´t keep the pace up but the part of this road between Nerland and Eresfjord was just perfect.

The scenery wasn´t too bad either.


The same pic in a different version.


And another rather extreme HDR picture.


In Trondheim I checked out the old catholic church Nidarosdomen wich is the most impressive church in our nordic countries. It´s built in gothic style and is covered with funny faces and creatures cut into the stone.


The front of the church is full of statues of saints.



That was the last interesting thing of this trip, hope you enjoyed the report.

Absolut fantastisk.

Great ride report.

Mikael
Denmark

Thanks for the comments!

Unfortunately I did not see too many adventure bikes on the trip. I only saw two KTM Adventures, two Africa Twins and a bunch of germen GS bikes on the whole trip.

The weather was great except the last 150km when the rain was pouring down.

I've been to most of those places and they are indeed beautiful.

Thanks for the great pictures, brought back a lot of wonderful memories.

Thanks for sharing

I updated the RR with some more pictures, hope you´ll enjoy em.