Ok, trying to get back on track. Yesterday we arrived in another new country, Norway. It was a fairly short stop as we arrived at 0800 and departed (in theory) at 1530. We may have been a little late!
As you should know by now we are attending the 50th anniversary of my graduation from ATC college next week. One of the course members got married to a Norwegian girl while on the course. He emigrated to Norway 40 years ago. Unfortunately his wife is have problems walking so they had to cancel, fortunately they live in Kristiansand, so we spent the morning with them. They have a beautiful apartment about 10 minutes from the terminal overlooking the water. We had a good time reminiscing!
We had a quick trip back to the ship for lunch, then off on our final excursion. Again, a simple sight seeing tour round the local area, then off to a vintage steam railway for a short ride through the country side.
Leaving Kristiansand there were still areas that had the old wooden houses, other areas were brick after fire consumed many of the wooden structures.
Below is a church on the outskirts
We followed a river for many miles, the scenery here was very similar to the Scottish Highlands
Of course as we approached the railway station the rain started! The railway is about 120 years old, it used to connect the valley area with the town, a distance of around 48 miles. Since it closed in the ’60’s about 8miles of the track have been saved to allow the train to run.
Today’s useless trivia, for the 8 mile journey the train consumed 1000 liters of water and 250kg of coal.
All carriages were 3rd class!
The picture above was typical of the many rapids we passed. At the bottom of the picture running right to left is a “flume”. It is a wooden channel constructed to hold flowing water down which trees are sent to the lumber yards. Today all the trees are transported by road, and the flume has been converted to a walking path.
For some reason at the end of the journey they gave us 45 minutes free time. We were in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to do!! As it turned out this didn’t leave us enough time to get back to the boat before the “all aboard” time. We were about 20 minutes late. As this was a tour organized by the boat company we knew we were not going to be left behind!!
This pretty much brings the cruise part of the trip to an end. We’ve enjoyed the trip, a smaller ship would have been preferable, but we survived! Visiting the Nordic countries had been on our bucket list, and we weren’t disappointed. Overall the weather behaved, let’s hope that continues. A serious diet has to start soon!
Tomorrow morning we dock in Southampton, and then take a train to Gatwick Airport where we pick up a rental car. We then spend a couple of nights with friends, a couple of nights at the reunion then it’s off to the Cotswolds next Wednesday. I’ll start the blog again in the Cotswolds.