NOTE: The Norwegian language contains a lot of letters that are not on my keyboard. In most cases, I have typed in English without them.

Wednesday, June 18th, 2025
Ovre Ardal, Norway to Kinsarvik, Norway
Distance travelled 321 Kilometres

We have all, I am sure, at some point, had exactly the same dream.
We are falling and, at the precise second of impact, we wake up, unscathed. Well, I began the day with that.
I was falling, I hit something with my head and shoulders (the body parts, not the dandruff shampoo) and then I was lying on the floor with things falling on me.
The key difference is that this was not a dream. I had somehow contrived not simply to fall out of my narrow little bed, but also to fall against the table, dislodging my charging iPhone and iPad so that they both fell upon my head. Not the usual end to the dream and not the best way to start the day.

I glanced at my iPhone which, having mercifully bounced off of something soft (my head) was undamaged. It revealed it was a couple of minutes after five in the morning.

Lucie, having been raised from her own slumbers by the fairly unmistakable clonk of iPhone on cranium, helped me up off of the floor and back into bed. Maybe she was hoping that I would do it again so that she could film it for YouTube or maybe she was just being nice, who knows ? Anyway, I must have fallen straight back to sleep because, the next second, it was a few minutes before seven.

With no sumptuous breakfast to anticipate, indeed with no breakfast at all in prospect, there was no reason to linger. Aided by her coffee, Lucie came to life and soon began packing up. As ever, it really was best for me to merely stay out of her way and let her do it and, by adopting that course, we were ready to leave before eight-thirty.

While we were packing, the sun was shining and I could watch it glinting off of the roofs of cars negotiating the serpentines above the town – an exercise that our direction of onward travel would negate the need for me to do, at least. The second we came to the car park with all our bags however, it began to drizzle. At least our waterproofs were on top of everything, so we put them on and the folks in the ISS were, no doubt, able to visually track us heading out of town after a brief stop to fill up the tank.

We have good rain gear, so riding in the wet is more a question of watching the corners than anything else. Not that we actually rode a lot in the wet. Our route took us through an endless series of tunnels that must have accounted, over the day’s riding, for around half of the distance we travelled. We were more like luminous yellow moles than motorcyclists !

The effort that Norway puts into its tunnels is simply mind blowing. They are, I suppose, a practical necessity for the people in the widely scattered Komunes. The people in Ovre Ardal, for instance, would probably never go anywhere if it meant crossing the two barren moors at the top of those serpentines – and it would take hours, even in Summer. In Winter, it would simply be a case of stay at home and pickle some herring or something similar. A huge amount of work has gone into joining these remote communities together – and it is still ongoing.

Anyway, using tunnel after tunnel, we quite quickly got some distance into our day. After an abortive attempt at breakfast in a petrol station (it did have stuff you could eat, but I hope never to be that desperate), we found ourselves riding on a road designated as the E16.

Straight after a roundabout, we came to what it later transpired was the “Big Daddy” of all the tunnels we had thus far encountered – and, I subsequently discovered, the longest tunnel in the whole world (at time of writing). This was the 24.5 kilometre long Laerdal tunnel which connects the municipalities of Laerdal and Aurland. It even had a sign, deep inside, telling you when you changed municipality ! It is a strange thing to be underground for so long, the walls and lights can be a bit mesmeric. To counter that, there were wide, blue-lit plazas at the six, twelve and eighteen kilometre marks to change the aspect.

At about 60 kph, it took around twenty-five minutes for us to make the transit. That was long enough for us to forget about the rain, but it was still there when we sped, blinking, back into the soggy daylight.

The tunnel/drizzle sequence continued throughout the morning. There were dry periods, particularly when our tunnel took us under another really high mountain, but it was predominantly damp everywhere.

We came to the first of the two Fosses (waterfalls) that Lucie had factored into our perambulations. This was the Tvindefossen cascade.

I have been a bit scathing about the previous waterfalls, but this one was an absolute delight. Gigantic amounts of water plunged over the edge of a basalt cliff and down onto a complicated lattice of rocky channels – before being almost magically re-united at the bottom and then flowing away in a rushing river. Now we were talking !

We watched for a while. The whole “Why does it flow THAT way and why does it not wear away those outcrops” thing is extremely hypnotic. It was raining quite hard, but we scarcely noticed. Eventually, we pulled ourselves away, had a couple of hot drinks and then went on our way, glad that we had seen the falls.

The damp journey continued. As I have said, we were not damp ourselves, but some more twisty parts of the route continued to demand more than just a simple modicum of caution.

Then, between the towns of Vossavangen and Eidfjord, we were introduced to a new level of the tunnelling “art”. Not content with a mere conventional tunnel, the guys with the pick-axes had dug a spiral, within the mountain, that dropped level of the roadway to meet with a suspension bridge that crossed the fjord. There was even a beautifully constructed underground roundabout in case you wanted to go to the nearby town, instead of crossing the water.

On the other side, the bridge disgorged into yet another tunnel where another subterranean roundabout offered the option to continue south, or to branch off via another elegantly curved tunnel which emerged above the suspension bridge. We took this and it carried us in the direction of Eidfjord.

The bridge, incidentally, was a very elegant double-span suspension type about 1.6 kilometres long. Great engineering, no doubt, but the spiral tunnel beat it hands down !

There was always so much general maintenance being done to transport infrastructure wherever we went. The road we were then on was beset by holdups caused by tree trimming. We sat, in drizzle, earnestly watching the man with the red light and waiting for his signal to go. At least he was being paid to be on a road getting soaked.

Eidfjord was “hosting” (if that is the word) an enormous ship on a fjord cruise. The town was a bit cheesy to be frank, with knitted stuff garlanding the trees along the waterfront and a plethora of souvenir shops. The streets were thronged with people whose clothing and actions trumpeted the fact that they were, as they say, fresh off of the boat. We drove through without stopping in the town, but we did halt briefly for a tiny lunch of buttered pitta bread that we had saved from the Greek salad, in Mama Mia, the previous evening. The first food of the day, it tasted gooooood !

We were nearing our second set of waterfalls, the Voringfossen, by then but, before we got there, the art of the tunnel builders was raised by yet another notch. First we entered a tunnel that, by its length and curvature made, by my estimation, a double loop in a long climb. Then we popped across a short straight and into the next mountain, where the whole thing appeared to happen again…. We then still had to make a still significant climb up a twisty road before Lucie directed me into the upper parking area for the Voringsfossen waterfalls.

There were a lot of cars and coaches in the car park and a lot of tourists milling about. We could see spray rising beyond a specially constructed walkway around the edge of what looked like a significant chasm, but turned out to be a long U-shaped valley. We walked to the edge and, as I like to say “Goodness me !”

There was a pair of waterfalls falling into a deep valley. One was smaller and, exiting from the rim at some pressure, cascaded to the depths below leaving, during the drop, a lot of itself in the air. Hence the almost steam-like spray that hung over the falling water.

The second cascade, on the other side of the U was far broader, and rushing down a long slope, under three bridges, one old, one a modern walkway and one the road. Then, at the edge, it expended its momentum in a huge flow of white, rushing water that, because of its enormous volume, made the journey to the valley floor almost intact. Again, its sheer immensity was simply breathtaking.

The drop, it seems, was 182 metres.

Here is a video that in no way really captures the spectacular beauty of these waterfalls.

We walked around and  took a lot of photos. Then we retired to the cafe where we availed ourselves of some very tasty tomato soup.

The weather was so changeable. We left the cafe in a downpour, got on the Harley in drizzle and left the car park to start our descent in weak sunshine.

As we were going, at least part of the way, on the same route we had come by, we now descended the spirals. I just let the Harley roll in third, it was like being on a fairground ride.

On the fringes of Eidfjord, we stopped for something sweet in a cafe, but nothing appealed, so we drank an espresso and a chocolate and moved smartly onward.

Then it was back through the tree trimming, with the inevitable waiting in the drizzle.

We drove towards the suspension bridge, but not over it, this time.

 

Inside the mountain, we took the exit heading (nominally) south, on route 13, when we came to the underground roundabout.

The final part of any journey is usually the worst and this one was no exception. Despite being a fairly major, national, route towards the capital, Oslo, the way was so narrow that, in places, traffic lights forced the flow of vehicles to alternate. In other places, it was too narrow for bigger vehicles to pass each other and they had to take turns.

Finally, in a rare clear spell, we came to Kinsarvik, which sat at the head (hence the “vik”) of a wide bay, the Kinsarvikbukti, in Hardangerfjord.

Our hotel, the Kinsarvik Fjordhotel (Kinsarvikvegen 45, 5780 Kinsarvik), sat right at the front of the town, overlooking the bay.

We were informed that, once again, we had been upgraded. We did have a lovely room, with a fjord view, a terrace and a kettle to make our teas and coffees. The restaurant unhesitatingly gave me some milk. Life can be grand.

There was a good restaurant, in-house, but we liked the sound of a place called Gloyp (Kinsarvikvegen 45, 5780 Kinsarvik) which, Google ™ cheerfully informed us was 23 seconds walk away. We could see it from our terrace and it took way less than 23 seconds to walk there.

It was a tiny touch pretentious and the menu was slightly limited, but boy was it good, tasty food. Lucie had duck breast and I had halibut. Whoever was in the kitchen certainly knew what he was doing, it was way beyond simply delicious.

We had space for dessert, which was a beautiful chocolate mousse with fresh fruit and ice-cream. We washed it down, as it were, with a good local beer and an excellent alcohol free cider actually produced in the next town. Lucie again professed her espresso excellent and the best that she had so far had in Norway. The overall standard of coffee, in Norway, regardless of where you got it from, did seem very high. For what we had eaten and so roundly enjoyed, the bill seemed very reasonable. We would have paid the same money for the same food in Prague without a thought.

Then it was the few seconds walk back to our hotel and, inevitably, goodnight from me !

 

As usual, here is the day’s ride !