Talk about lucky! More sunshine than you could shake a stick at today. Although, I didn’t have a stick 😂
The morning began with a visit to the centre of Stavanger.
An imposing sight is the Norwegian Oil Museum. I’ve been in there before and it’s a fascinating place. Outside the museum are various oil industry artefacts. The red item in the foreground is a blowout preventer used on oil pipelines.
Next was a short ride through the edge of Gamle Stavanger, or Old Stavanger. There’s a Lithography and also Canning Museum in there. I’ve visited those before too, and they are well worth a visit. This area of Stavanger is really charming.
Near the waters edge is Sandvigå. From here you can see across to the bridges in the distance, and the harbours over the water.
There were even fish in the water ☺️
I headed back to the main harbour.
I parked up outside the Stavanger Maritime Museum. I’ve not actually been to see the exhibition before, and unfortunately today I didn’t have time.
I did make time for some food and to do a sketch. It’s the first one of the trip.
I had really hoped to do more. But it was really nice taking some time to watch the harbour and draw.
A guy walked over, looked at the bike, then had a chat. He was interested in where I’d been, and recommended some places to see in Kristiansand.
I was really proud of my visit to the Maritime Museum. Mainly because I spoke the most Norwegian in all of the trip. I ordered food, asked where the toilets were (and I found them 😂) and some other little phrases.
When I was about to leave I had a chat in English about the trip. I got a selfie, but completely forgot to ask their names 🤦♂️🤦♂️ But it was fun to share details of the trip ☺️
Then it was off to see the Sverd I Fjell, the swords in the mountain.
The bronze swords really do look impressive.
While looking around I chatted to Victor, from Mexico after offering to take a photo of him in front of the swords. We chatted about places we’ve been in Norway. He also explained the significance of the monument; it commemorates the Battle of Hafrsfjord in 872 between three clans. King Harald Fairhair won and united Norway under one crown.
I mentioned that I was blogging about my trip and this piqued the interest of Paula who is also a fan of travel. There in Norway with Alistair to support their rugby-playing sons it was really lovely to chat.
Then it was time to head off to Kristiansand.
The route to Kristiansand was straightforward but memorable for two reasons. Firstly, the landscape was brilliant. It has a different “feel” to the other parts of Norway I’ve seen. Often it felt like moorland, compared to the forests in earlier parts of this trip.
The golden yellows and bronze browns of the scenery looked spectacular in the sunlight. Oh, second reason it was memorable, it was cold! Most of the road was in shadow for the last two hours of the three hour trip. And boy was it chilly!
Nearer to Kristiansand there were some truly impressive bridges, often revealed after riding through a tunnel. Norway really knows how to get a road through mountains and over gorges!
In other news, my Sat Nav went a bit weird about fifteen minutes from Kristiansand. So I pulled over to unplug it from the power lead to see if resetting it would help. In doing so, the connecting feature (that I 3D printed a while ago) snapped in half 😂
Some cunning method will be needed to mend it. I’ll let you know how I get on with the bits from my mending kit😂
Thanks for reading Day 14!
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