Taking the North Way

Welcome

 

Welcome to our holiday blog for 2025. It is great to have you on the journey with us and regardless if you are a regular 'follower' of our holiday blogs, or have just come across it by accident you are most welcome. 

As the image in the background to the blog (and below) shows, the plan this year is to do a tour of Norway, with a bit of Sweden included. 

One of the challenges of setting up a blog is to find a url that isn't to difficult to remember for those people who like to type the name in for themselves. I tried all varieties of Norway and its various names and found it was the Welsh language version (Norwy) that hadn't been already used, hence the url: norwy2025.blogspot.com/ 

The name of the country

Talking about names I was intrigued to discover that the English word for Norway has its roots in the phrase "way leading to the north" or "the northern way" apparently that is Norþweg in Anglo Saxon! Since the 880s this title has been ascribed to the country in English, the Welsh version seems to have been derived from the English. Norway itself has two names for itself: Norge in the Bokmål form of the language and Noreg in the Nynorsk form - it looks like there could be a whole degree course on the distinction between the two forms of the language - from those interested this Visit Norway page gives a clear (if lengthy) explanation.

So, in saying we are going to Norway it seems like we are going the North Way, and indeed from our starting place to our final location in the country we will be travelling almost 10° of northerly latitude - from 59.91° N to 69.64° N - a similar variation of that from Cardiff to Barcelona in a southerly direction. i.e. Norway is a long, if narrow country. 

The size of the country 

It is always a source of amusement to me, and other Welsh folk, when journalists (often English journalists) use Wales as a unit of measurement, this BBC article in 2019 explored this phenomenon . But in thinking of the size of Norway I felt it might be a useful comparison as it brings out some stark factors. 

In population Norway is 1.75 times the size of Wales (3.2 million and 5.6 million respectively) but in terms of landmass Norway is 18 times the size of Wales (8,192 square miles compared to 385,207 square miles) and in terms of coastline Norway is 31 times bigger than Wales (1,680 miles compared to 51,748). So, Norway is going to have a lot more space and a lot more coast per person than Wales does and, as one of the Welsh poets, Harri Webb, said: the centre of Wales is a green desert, due to its tiny population. I suspect Norway is going to be the same, but even more so!!

Our Route

The map below (which is also the background to the blog) is a representation of our route. I say a representation as this is the Google view of the route if we had been travelling by car, whereas in fact we will be travelling by train, coach, bus and boat along the route. 

Of course the map doesn't include the journey from Tongwynlais to Oslo or our return from Stockholm only the Scandinavian part of the journey. The full plan of our travel is as follows:

Norway Trip

Day	From	To
Thursday, July 31st	Cardiff	Heathrow
Friday, August 1st	Heathrow	Oslo
Monday, August 4th	Oslo	Bergen
Wednesday, August 6th	Bergen	Olden
Saturday, August 9th	Olden	Trondheim
Wednesday, August 13th	Trondheim	Bodø
Thursday, August 14th	Bodø	Tromsø (arrive 15th)
Monday, August 18th	Tromsø	Kiruna
Wednesday, August 20th	Kiruna	Stockholm (arrive 21st)
Saturday, August 23rd	Stockholm	Cardiff

Comments on the blog

As ever, I will really welcome comments on the blog, be you friends, family, neighbours or indeed any strangers reading this. I hope the blog will make you feel some of the excitement I feel for my travels around the Nordic powerhouse that is Norway. 

You are most welcome to join us on the journey and your comments, updates and corrections are always very, very welcome.

A gentle request: If you use the anonymous feature to comment please add your name to the message. I want to make the blog as accessible as possible, so won't limit it to people logged in to a Google account, but in the past I've ended up replying to someone who wasn't actually the anonymous person I thought they were, so if you aren't logged in to Google, please leave your name in the message!

The holiday feels like it has begun

With the setting up of the blog and the other preparations complete it almost feels as if the holiday has begun already. Even more so as I logged on to my emails this afternoon to find the following:

Yes, they are all holiday related with the bottom one being our booking for the meal the night before the trip, the middle one being the confirmation emails from National Express of our time of travel on Thursday and the top one being the airport hotel where we will stay on Thursday night. 

It feels like we are ready for the trip.

Tomorrow's Post

Before I answer a lot of questions like 'Why Norway?' or 'Why these places in Norway/Sweden?' Th thinking behind the trip will be the focus of tomorrow blog post and I expect to write another about the booking process before we actually start the journey. I look forward to seeing you all again then.