This Bird Has Flown

It hasn’t stopped raining since we arrived in Norway. Wine costs £40 a bottle. Our supplies are getting low …

Some travellers we met last week told us they had left Norway because of the weather. Being Scots, we have always subscribed to the notion that there is no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes. We brought all the right clothes with us but we are still starting to feel drookit and depressed (and that’s we who spent 6 happy weeks in Ireland, of all the wet places on earth, last year!). We are also feeling that Norway is overselling it’s “picturesquity”. It looks like the photos I have seen must have been taken on the same sunny Thursday twenty years ago, from the air. We have trotted round the recommended locations to find nothing there at all. We haven’t taken a fjord trip because of the wet and the mist – it’s impossible see the scenery. We haven’t visited the Viking Village for the same reason. So – we haven’t seen anything much and have decided to give up and go. Much of the scenery is very like Scotland, and I am thinking the same rules apply – gorgeous for the few moments when the rain stops and the mist lifts (which is why in our optimism we keep returning to Skye). Another disappointment has been the lack of cafés or inns at which to stop off for a refreshment and a leg-stretch en route. The journey to Kristiansand for the ferry will take a couple of days. TMWTM is having a hard time with the tunnels – we went through around 20 yesterday and he doesn’t like them one little bit! Still, we found a lovely little campsite (no electric) by a lake for the night, and the rain was off in the morning when we awoke. Let’s see how long it stays like that!

Now I am going to do what everybody else does, and post some photos they make it look prettier that it actually is!