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.

Tuesday, June 17th, 2025
Sylte, Norway to Ovre Ardal, Norway
Distance travelled 281 kilometres

After not really having done a lot, the previous day, I finally woke up early. It was light, but in Summertime Norway it almost always is. I have been told that it does go quite “dull” between midnight and about three in the morning, but I will have to take that statement on trust.

I quietly opened the door to our little outside terrace – and stepped from there onto the hotel lawn. The grass was very short there, the little robot mower lived right under our window, so wherever it went, it would always pass that point. The lawn was quite damp from overnight rain but, at that moment the skies were clear. I walked to the water’s edge. Away from the onrushing river, the surface was like a piece of dark glass. Again, I noticed how absolutely quiet it was, the only sounds were from the river and from some sort of gull calling in the distance.

I decided to walk all around the hotel. On the front lawn of the hotel, two fat Canada geese were supplementing the robot mower’s endeavours. Their fat, green faeces were already decorating the concrete path ! I bet the little robot mower would be glad about that !

As I was up early, I was able to get Lucie an espresso from reception together with a tea for me – so both of our days started well.

Next up was breakfast and, after our cheese and biscuits of the previous evening, we were neither of us exactly ravenous. However, we both tend to follow Jack Reacher’s maxim of “eat when you can” and we could, so we did ! Lucie did peck a bit sparingly, but I went for it with cereal, the salmon and herring ensemble and, as they had bacon, a bacon sandwich with the added five-star bonus of HP sauce ! I was now ready for whatever the day threw at me and, as it turned out, that was probably just as well.

We packed slowly as we were in no great hurry. We had only about three hundred kilometres to go and nothing more exciting than a couple of waterfalls to see as we headed south. By the time we checked out it was raining, nothing serious, just a persistent drizzle. Nonetheless we put on our rain gear and treated the inhabitants of Sylte to some fairly serious luminescence as we headed out in the same direction as from which we had arrived.

We needed to cross the fjord quite early on and it was only about fifteen kilometres to the ferry. Luck was on our side as the ferry was arriving as we rolled onto the ramp. As we had seen other bikers do on previous crossings, I immediately pulled forward so as to be at the front of the vessel. Of course, a car in the next lane moved forward about two millimeters at the same second, so WE got a telling off from the deckhand for “being dangerous”. The Norwegian concept of danger is obviously a bit different to that of elsewhere, but, if the ferry had possessed a “naughty step” we would have had to sit on it for the whole crossing !

Nothing is flat in Norway and immediately after we left the ferry we climbed, by way of numerous serpentine curves and hairpins to the very top of the hill and then repeated the process, in reverse on the other side. It was still raining lightly, so the corners were slick and dragging the long, heavy Softail around some of them was quite an effort. We dropped into the next fjord and quickly found our first planned Foss of the day, the Geiranger falls. Whilst one could not fail to be slightly awed by the volume of descending water, the only real difference from thousands of others we had seen was that you could stand right next to it and get well moistened by the spray – and we were damp from the rain anyway.

We moved on, which involved another precipitous, hairpin filled climb.

Standing at the top (not near the edge, Lucie will not let me do that) and looking back at our route up from the bottom was breathtaking.

We moved on and soon came to yet another high, barren and snowy plateau. I think it might have been called Blafjell, but I would not swear to it … Whatever it was called, it was very wild and forbidding and, in the rain, it was not exactly a fun place to be.

Having gone up, you can guess what came next and I thought those saturated downhill hairpins would stay with me for a long while. We descended far enough for it to go a bit green and then needed to take a tunnel through the mountain to our next Foss, at Hjelle.

Sadly, there was maintenance being carried out inside the tunnel and that had rendered it alternately single-file, with each file being led through by a van with a flashing light. We managed two wriggle our way into the first waiting file – but the pace was so slow I spent most of the journey precariously balancing in first gear and had to stop completely twice.

The line to go back the other way was already kilometres long – and we would soon need to retrace our steps – that did not look good.

In theory, we were now quite near to Hjelle, our second “Foss” destination of the day. Sadly, when, at length, we emerged from the tunnel, it was not into the light but into dense, blanketing fog. It was hard to see the van in front, so the chances of viewing the falls, even though they were supposed to be close to the road did not look good at all.

We pulled into a lay-by to think and, lo and behold, there was a huge cascade almost at our feet.

You can also see videos of Hjellefoss below.

As we imagined that, in the fog, that was about as good as it was likely to get, we decided to retrace our steps. Lucie pointed out that we could avoid the congestion in the tunnel by taking a side road over the top which, it would be no further and, without the holdup, would probably be quicker ….. We found the side road, route 258, and off we went.

Well, when I said “off we went”, of course I really meant “up we went” and a long, long way up into the bargain. More hairpins, more crawling in second gear and, truly an ascent into the clouds.

What we came to was Strynefjell, a snowy, high altitude plain that stretched into the far distance and, by snowy, I do not mean the odd patch, I mean deep drifts as far as the eye could see in some places and by deep, I mean taller than I am.

The road was clear though and it had, at least stopped raining, but it was very hard to believe that it was June. At one point, we came to a Stryn, a small ski resort – the lifts were working and people were skiing and snow boarding ….

We passed the resort and a new nightmare began. Quite abruptly, the road became un-metalled but heavily gritted.

The Softail slithered ominously every time that its wheels strayed out of a safe(r) zone about fifteen centimetres wide – and that went on for almost thirty kilometres. I have been told the scenery was magical, I do not think I saw any of it. There was snow, frozen lakes, mountain peaks and so on but all that I saw was one very blue lake because a treacherous descent took it right across my eye line. It was another of those places that, however picturesque, you do not really want to be on a loaded Harley-Davidson.

All good things come to an end and so, luckily, do bad things. In that typical Norwegian way we slowly descended until we were in “normal” countryside again and I could, at last, use the gear labelled “3”.

We emerged at a place called Grotli, where on the route 15, we found the Grotli Hoyfjells Hotel. This was a venerable building with a nice cafe where we enjoyed coffee, chocolate and a couple of cakes, served by a delightful young waitress.

Outside the cafe was a long line of BMW dual sports, all from the same town in Germany. Inside, their riders were a group of Japanese bikers, obviously on some kind of organised tour. It must be different in Japan, they acted as if we did not exist.

We drank up and set of towards Lom and, in terms of that day’s ride, the next sixty kilometres were the good bit. It had stopped raining, the road was wide and smooth and we were able to cruise along at 80 kph. I even discovered that I had a gear called “6”!

On the road, my mirrors were soon filled with headlights and the Japanese haired past us in a tight phalanx, only to pull, en-masse, across my line and into a petrol station, almost before the last one completed his overtaking move. Not cool, guys !!

Lom came up quite quickly and we left route 15 for route 55 in the direction of our night’s stay in Ovre Ardal. The cute town of Lom is right on the banks of a picturesque river and we climbed out of it through lush greenery.

As we climbed, our neighbourhood kamikazes caught us up, streaked past and disappeared. The vegetation slowly became sparser and sparser before vanishing entirely and we entered yet another bare upland plateau which may have been called Mefjell. Of course, it began to rain. This plateau, if it can be believed, was big to the point of being vast and snowy to the point of being almost arctic. Deep snow was on all sides but at least the road surface was good – or would have been had it not been so wet. It was not flat, either. The route rose and fell continuously but kept climbing higher and higher. In places, the rain became sleet and there was a ferocious, gusting wind.

My hands became completely frozen and there was no sign that the plateau would end any time in the immediate future. We were really high up, I also felt a bit breathless and the Softail made quite hard work of some of the climbs. It was most unpleasant and it was hard to believe that thirty minutes previously we could smell newly mown hay.

Finally, we began to descend, but it was a slow process, made slower still by drifting fog and our visors fogging alarmingly in the slightly warmer air.

In the fog, the road forked so I obeyed the SatNav and went left.

Immediately, Lucie was shouting “No ! No ! No! No !” through the intercom. I stopped, laboriously turned around, rode back to the junction and took the road down the hill. More serpentine curves followed, where the brakes seemed to fade a bit or maybe I was just tired.

There was a straight bit, followed by another set of serpentines where there were sheep helpfully sleeping in the road on, naturally, the bit I wanted to use.

Finally we came to flatter terrain at the town of Fortun. It sounded good, but it obviously not good Fortun, as that was where Lucie suddenly began to shout “Stop ! Stop ! Stop !Stop !” because she had been “Wrong ! Wrong ! Wrong ! Wrong !” about me taking the wrong turning …..

We needed to go all the way “back, back, back, back” up that hill ….

So, all we could do was retrace our steps. At least the upward serpentines were easy on the brakes. The sheep were still lazing in the road and, although it is quite difficult to tell with sheep, I swear they gave us a quizzical look. Just before our turn off, who should come down the hill and past us but the Japanese. I cannot begin to imagine where they had been hiding ….

We made (or is that re-made) the turn and entered a narrow road that ran across the hills.

In my mind I already knew where this was going – and I do not mean Ovre Ardal. A large sign announced we were now on a toll road, called Tindevegen and that we had to stop at the booth, when we came to it, to pay. We had no choice but to go on anyway. We entered the inevitable barren wasteland, dotted with snowy areas, but it was not at the altitude of the previous three and, with a fairly good surface on the road, we motored steadily. It was very up and down, with a few dubious corners.

Visibility was good enough for us to see, well in advance, all the steep climbs and descents we would have to make.

Inevitably, as we were staying by a fjord, we came to a long, descent and the first part of it was a quite exhilarating series of gentle downhill curves. The map watcher on the back seat advised caution however – and this time she was right ! We came to a group of genuinely heart-stopping hairpins and then, at the very death (which almost seemed apposite), a seemingly unending series of fifteen consecutive hairpins that were so tight I very nearly hit the wall on the exit from one of them – and then we were on the flat. My relief was a palpable thing.

After a couple of false starts, we found our lodgings, the Sitla Hotel (Tyinvegen 3, 6884 Øvre Årdal), which, with all due respect, was about twenty levels below the place we had left in the morning. Still, it had two beds, albeit very narrow ones, a shower, a kettle and a heater to dry our clothes. We had what we needed but nothing much else.

We wandered a few hundred metres down the road and found the restaurant Mama Mia (Storevegen 1, 6884 Øvre Årdal). It was totally unfancy, but the fish and chips was good, as was the Greek salad. As it was a Tuesday, we took a photo of me with a beer and Lucie with her sparkling water to send to our friends in Prague. They responded in kind, but we bet they were not as tired as we were. Our paltry 281 kilometre ride felt like twice that to me.

We took the short walk home, I found my narrow little bed – and you all know what that meant !

 

Here is today’s ride …