Bergen had long been a dot on the horizon for us. The point where our route turns south. We studied several routes to it, but the city-in route proved unattractive to cycle (along major roads). Finding accommodation also proved no mean feat; campsites are far outside the city centre, airbnb’s are scarce and expensive, and Warmshowers providers indicated they were oversubscribed (logical consequence?!). Aided by huge predicted downpours, we therefore opted to take a more southerly turn already in Vossevangen and cycle along the Hardagerfjord to visit the town on the wettest day from Norheimsund by bus.
That was a good choice. The Hardangerfjord is beautiful (even when it rains); instead of drowning at the campsite, we sat there and back for 1.5 hours with beautiful views in a dry bus and, not unimportantly, we got a preview of the route to Osøyro for the next day with 6(!) long tunnels with no cycle lane. We held our hearts for the 2 cyclists we saw. Oscar immediately delved into the map again and came up with a new route. What it doesn’t take to realise that although Bergen can be a dot on the map, it doesn’t necessarily make it a goal 😁.
Bergen was originally called Bjørgvin – green meadow among the mountains. The town now connects the slopes and the rustic little harbour between them, which makes the name Bergen sound very logical to us now. Just outside the city centre, the streets rise steeply. On one mountain runs a “Seilbahn”, one of those sets of trains linked by a cable so that the one going down pulls the one going up. This is where the 2017 World Time Trial Championships were held that Tom Dumoulin won.
We walked a bit of that trail. Beautiful traditional Norwegian houses often with their front door on the street side and another entrance a floor higher or lower at the back. So steep, in other words.
We were fairly lucky with the weather, as it was really only raining hard for a long time as we sat at a luxury bakery for lunch; which we did nice and slow 😉 . After dinner at a nice little restaurant serving authentic Norwegian food, we took the last bus back to the campsite. There, 2 pegs turned out to have been dislodged/torn from the tarp, with no damage fortunately 🥵.
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