From Olden to Trondheim - A taxi and two coaches

Today is a travel day and one where we are using a taxi and two double decker coaches.

This time we have booked the front of the upstairs, what was always regarded as the best seats when I was a lad.

More about that later, first the morning routine.

Waking up

I wake-up at 4.25am and check my Hargreaves-Lansdown portfolio, a weekly check and an update to Drew is part of our routine at home or away. That done I bring the holiday spreadsheet up to date with the spending for the last few days. 

Next, I make the advance payment for the hotel in Trondheim, as mentioned before in the blog I'd paid for the first night a month or so ago, but they ask, by email, for the other nights payment on the day of travel. This has worked well at each of the Thon Hotels. Making check-in just a matter of getting the room keys and not fussing with credit cards - plus paying at 5am or 5pm doesn’t really impact on cash-flow.

Drew wakes up at 5.20am and coughs gently, indicating it is time for me to make him and I a cup of tea. We begin the ablutions process at 6am and after we have both completed, we pack our bags. We now have one very full bag of dirty clothes and a much lighter bag on the remaining clean ones, but out next laundry stop is scheduled for tomorrow, so no panic. [Editor's note: Little did I know when I wrote this!!] [Co-pilot's note: Oi, spoilers!!]

Drew had been waiting to see if the next Cruise Ship (the Ambassador) arrives on schedule at 8am this morning. But it turns out it is ahead of time, so we see it from the balcony of our room before we go down to breakfast. 

The Ambassador is a much smaller ship (1,200 people) than the ones we saw earlier in the week (5,200) and a little more nimble in turning around in the Fjord.

Breakfast

Now that we are all packed and ready for the off we head down for breakfast, arriving as they open at 7am. 

I follow the pattern of the last few days, starting with yoghurt, dried fruit and walnuts

While Drew goes directly in with the sausage, bacon, potatoes and scrambled egg

I follow with Oatmeal

And Drew has more meat

Finally it is the delight of fish four ways, three forms of pickled herring and some peppered mackerel.

The first leg - A taxi from Olden to Stryn

We go back up to the room after breakfast and leave again at 8.45am and go to check out. How quaint to give a physical key and fob back. 

The taxi, booked for 9am is outside already, so we depart at 8.50am. One of the puzzles from the beginning of booking this trip was how to get from Olden to Trondheim as every time I checked with Google maps it assumed we would be on a bus overnight! It was only on closer inspection that it became clear that the first bus from Olden to Stryn each day is the one we were on yesterday. It leaves the hotel bus stop (Muristrada) at 2.10pm. So once I tried routing us from Stryn it became clear we had a reasonable bus leaving Stryn at 10.15am, just no way to get there on public transport, hence the taxi. Here is Drew looking out of the taxi window:

Leg 2 - Stryn to Otta

Of course, being us, we targeted being in Stryn well before the bus is due to leave and arrived at 9.10am, 65 minutes early. We settled into the very comfortable VY waiting room at Stryn and the coach for Oslo (our first leg is on the VY146 bus whose whole route is from Måløy terminal (on the West Coast) to Oslo. [Co-pilot's note: The time, dear readers, went quite smoothly due to the entertainment of overhearing a conversation a young man was having on his mobile phone in English. I was trying to come up with the average of the number of words he was saying. It seemed to me to be in the region of 15 to 16 words. I was able to confirm this as his words, not the conversation coming back, as he was on speaker phone, so we had both ends of the conversation - an interesting and complicated chap - we'll leave it there.] We will change at Otta Bus Station for the VY710 bus to Trondheim. 

There is a 8 minute gap between arrival in Otta and the coach for Trondheim, but the coach leaves from the same platform at Otta and will the app says it will wait for people with through ticket booking. 

The bus arrives at 9.55am and we handover our luggage to go into the luggage area below the bus and board, we have booked to sit in the front of the bus upstairs. For some reason I thought this journey might have more sights as we travel north, but it turned out there were some great sites along the west too, last Wednesday. Thankfully the views out the window weren't bad even downstairs, but they are really good upstairs. 

Leaving Stryn

Route details for the first leg of the journey

We follow the route of the E15 road all the way from Stryn to Otta. It is a single carriageway road, sometimes a little tight for traffic to pass both ways, but the typography is the cause of this as sometimes the gap between the mountain edge and the lake is very tight. We climb and climb into the hills passing through two long tunnels through the mountain, the first 3,100 meters, the second 2,700 meters and the third 3,700 then the surrounding view becomes more what I would have expected in Switzerland not Norway! Then we are on to rugged rocky terrain and a 4.6km tunnel! Following this we have the climb back down, not so steep as the switchback bends coming up. 

Here are some of the photos from the bus:

Both of us doze off for a while at different times, I'm not sure what about the motion of the coach makes it so sleep in inducing, but it clearly does for us. 

We are amazed by some of the bus stops that are no more than pieces of tarmac in the wilderness. This one was remarkably busy for a place where no human habitation was visible

We pass through the village of Nordberg where the church is one of the best examples of Norwegian Stave churches we have seen. So far this holiday

We pass through the larger community of Fossbergum, large by local standards, Fossbergum had a roundabout and about five hotels. It has an intereresting object in the centre of the roundabout, but we couldn't read it as the coach went around. 

The app is now showing we will be 5 minutes late into Otta, luckily we don't have to worry about the change time as VY are sorting that for us. 

We arrive at Otta at 13.17pm and the temperature has risen to 19c, not something we have seen while in the Fjords and mountains. 

We get off and there is no sign of the Trondheim coach, but panic not there is an email from the VY company saying it is running 20 minutes late and will be here at 1.40pm. 

It is bright and sunny, so we stand on the platform and wait. 

Leg 3 - Otta to Trondheim

The coach arrives as promised at 1.40pm. At Otta the E15 road comes to an end. When we leave we are on the E6, the Oslo to Trondheim road. 

The bus which has come north from Lillehammer is quite full, meaning it took a while to store the luggage for us new passengers into the storage areas along the base of the coach. Job complete, we departed at 1.55pm with profuse apologies from the driver who explained in Norwegian and in English that they had had traffic delays earlier on the route. 

We settled back into the same seats as on the last coach, heading for the North and check out the stops ahead.

There aren't as many stops on this route as on the previous one, only 10 in total and the first one is 45 minutes into the journey and the last five are all in the city of Trondheim and its suburbs. 

We make reasonable progress but the bus was still 35 minutes late when we picked up passengers in Dombas. 

The land around here is quite flat, very flat compared with the hills and dales of this morning's journey, more rugged too. Plus the temperature is reducing as we get further north. It is still 19c, which is very pleasant, but not as hot as when we left Otta at 22c. 

The route doesn't have a lot of fascinating sites, but farms and quarries appear at intervals on either side of the road which seems to extend for long distances 

Drew is impressed by the number of electric car charging places even on a route like this.

Though we do hit a few hold-ups along the way

None of them are for very long. 

When we reach greater Trondheim itself we see a lot more traffic. The district of Trondheim, but not the city itself, is the third largest in Norway after Oslo and Bergen districts. 

The urban sprawl hits us as a shock after the peace of Olden, there are things like traffic lights and, very usefully for us, bus lanes which means we don't get held up in the traffic. We arrive at the Trondheim Railway Station (where the bus station is co-located) at 5.45pm - 45 minutes behind schedule 

this is well within our planning tolerance to get to the hotel, shower and change and go out for the third of our four Michelin starred meals. 

Trondheim

Nine hours from leaving the hotel in Olden to arriving in the Thon Hotel Nidaros in Trondheim, seems a long time, but it has been a comfortable journey. Though it is pleasant to arrive.

Given that we are staying in Trondheim for four days, I paid an extra 200NKr to get a Business Room - rooms in hotels here seem to go, regular, superior, business - so we have a sitting/working area and a separate bedroom as well as a huge bathroom.

Captain Jack is happy with his large bunk. 

So we shower, freshen-up and head our for dinner at 7.15pm.

Three Buses through Vestland

As the title of today's blog post implies, today was a day of travel, specifically through the large county of Vestland which stretches from Vaga in the south to Honningsvåg in the North.

Apart from the feature of its fjords, Vestland (Westland in English) is one of only two counties in Norway that have Nynorsk as their official written language. 

But as usual the day begins with wake-up and breakfast, so let's get to that.

Breakfast

I wake up at 4.15am and hear that the rain is still pouring on Bergen. To be fair this may not be any surprise, as Bergen is the wettest city in Europe, with an average of 2,250mm of rain per year (that's just over 7.3ft) and it rains on 236 out of 365 days per year. This information provided by a guidebook to Bergen in the hotel room might have been something we had reflected on in advance, but rainfall averages aren't part of my pre-holiday planning! [Co-pilot's note: Weren't dear readers, weren't.]

I uploaded Tuesday's photos all 400+ of them and begin to edit them ready to send them to Flickr this evening. 

Drew wakes at 5.15am and I make us both a cup of Earl Grey before beginning our ablutions at 5.30am. 

We head up to breakfast (on the 7th floor) at 6.30am. A Japanese couple are ahead of us in the queue, see we aren't the only weird ones with early breakfast ways. With Norwegian efficiency the doors to the Frokostsal (Breakfast room) opens at 6.30am precisely. 

I begin with oatmeal, nuts and fruit

Followed by herring three ways, peppered mackerel and some Norwegian Blue cheese. Yes my breakfasts seem to be going native!

Drew has a more traditional fry-up for breakfast.

Leaving the Hotel

We leave breakfast at 7.10am and go back to the room for a final loo visit before departure. 

In the same way as happened in Oslo, check-out is managed by the Thon app, a reminder has just popped up on the mobile saying: 

you have access to the room until midday, when you are ready to check-out use the app and just drop your keys in the box at reception. Please note, once you checkout on the app your keys will no longer work.

On our way

The streets of Bergen are quite, and at least dry, as we leave the building.

We walk to the bus station catching more of the part of Bergen we've spent least time in. Including their council hall.

And some modern art in the park

Bergen to Nordfjord

We arrive at the bus station which is bigger than one might have expected in a similar sized British city, we arrive at 7.40am.

The coach is already waiting for us as they scan our tickets in the app and load our bags

We then settle into seats 24C and 24D on the lower deck, by 7.45am. The light in the bus makes Drew turn in Smurf Drew, or perhaps to a member of the Blue Man group.

Drew begins to sing I'm Blue for the rest of the journey. The seats are very spacious, certainly a lot more leg room than on a National Express Coach and we find those comfortable enough. 

The coach departs at 8.00am. and we take a photo a minute or two later with the weather a comfortable 16C 

The route of this bus is in this map

and also outlined on the VY app:

Drew, sitting next to the window has a good view (and is now less blue).

The bus is provided with usb points

electrical sockets and rubbish bags as well as a toilet and good wifi.

From the beginning of the journey until 9.30am the bus only stopped once at Åsane Terminal to pick up one person. I noted when booking the tickets it says that you must book for a particular journey at least 15 minutes before departure time. Unless the coach has a booking for someone to get on or get off it completely misses that stop. As I write these notes we have just passed Haugspaer Kriss and though we saw the town and its waterfront we didn't go in. 

So far the route has involved six bridges and twelve tunnels, one a very long one, the scenery varies from ranks of tall trees in a forest, to mountains, narrow fast running rivers and deep, wide Fjords. Amazing views, sadly the heavy tintn on the windows makes photographs very challenging, so I'm afraid you are going to have to imagine the beauty, or make the journey yourself.  

Not only is the coach really comfortable, but the gentle roll of the journey means it is easy to be gently lulled to sleep, both of us have dozed for a little, unusual so early in the day, but largely due to the coaches motion. 

At 9.45am we arrive at a stop called Oppedel Ferjekai where we are to board a ferry to Lavik Kai. Now it has happened, I think the names Oppedel Ferjekai (Ferry) and Lavik Kai (Quay) might have given us a hint as to what was to occur, but we had no idea a regular coach service would have a ferry ride included in the ticket. So, this came as a nice surprise.

We were able to leave the coach and take photos from the Ferry. 

Once off the ferry in Lavik we picked up two new passengers before heading onwards on the journey right on time. 

Narrow roads mean we have to give way to oncoming traffic at a few points so Drew uses that slot to take some photos. 

The Coach continues on its way and we continue to look out and snooze on and off. 

We arrive at Førde at 11.25 and have a 30 minute stop before our departure at 12.05pm. 

We go into the bus station and have a coffee each and a loo visit, there is a toilet on the ground floor of the bus but with the twisty roads I reckon a precautionary visit is wiser. 

We are back on the road at the targeted departure time.

The experience at Førde gives me some confidence. This is the first (of two) days of the holiday which I think of as 'high risk' both involve taking local buses quite long distances - local buses that can't be booked in advance. The fact that this coach shows as being at Nordfjord Bus Station 9 minutes before the local bus departs has always felt very tight - I looked for multiple options, but only overnight bus journeys met the need, so I decided to take the risk. If our coach is arriving well in advance of the time in the timetable as we did in Førde, I'd be very relieved. We are due to catch the 150 bus, but this is not like our local bus at home, the 132, with its 13 minutes gap between services. The next 150 after the 2.30pm one is two hours later, too late for a connection at Stryn to the hotel (it would be taxi time if that happened).

On the way

We continue to pass various villages with only three or four people getting on our off around Førde and we are still on time when we come to the town of Sandine. From there we travel to the next ferry ride from Anda to Lote. 

We arrive at the Ferry port at Anda as the ferry can be seen in the Fjord (the Fjord which has Olden, the place not the Drew, at its head) just about to arrive into the quay. The vehicles exit the incoming ferry and we embark at 1.55pm. and depart at 2pm. 

We arrive in Lote Ferjekai at 2.14pm just a seven minute drive to Nordfjordeid Rutebilstasjon arriving at 2.23pm. 

Nordfjord to Stryn

The Stryn Bus is right next to the VY one as can be seen in the picture. 

It also departs on time and has a clear location board listing the 38 stops from here to Stryn, which is also the end point. 

Leaving the national VY service for Skyss, the local bus service in Vestland, means we have a new app, this shows the rest of the journey:

Drew sitting comfortable on the 150 bus

There is plenty of space for luggage and it is only two seats ahead of us, so safe from the luggage stealers my sister feared!

Of the 38 stops between Nordfjord and Stryn the bus only stopped at 3 (7 people on 1 off, four of the seven exited at a quiet layby called Kjøs Bru, presumably it is an interchange with other buses.) Unlike the coach which only called into the bus stops where it had a booking, this bus is a standard service bus so it stops at any stop where it sees people, as well as for people who push the stop button on the back of each seat. 

By the time we get to Stryn, the final stop, the bus is almost empty

It has been a comfortable, uneventful ride with the Fjord either on our left or out right the whole way. We arrive in Stryn at exactly 3.20pm.

Stryn to Olden

We have a 30 minute wait for the onward connection, the 130 bus to Muristranda, the stop just before Olden where our hotel is located. I'm amazed that everything has gone without a hitch as, while Olden is a key Cruise port, it isn't a large community. 

At Stryn Bus station there is a sitting area with lockers and toilets (as with everywhere in Norway the toilets are gender neutral, I'm so used to seeing this I've forgotten to mention it until now.) 

We sit there until the 130 arrives. This bus starts here but goes down to Skei, a town we travelled through on the way up, it travels on the opposite side of the Fjord from the main road (E19) on which we travelled. Luggage goes under the coach on this Skyss route nice and safe, we load up and leave the bus station at exactly 3.50pm, noticing a trend here. 

There are 11 stops between Stryn and Muristranda, but the bus only stops at 2, one person gets off and one on at Loen and another person gets off at the next stop. Then it is our stop. 

You can see the hotel from the side of the bus

It is a short walk to the Olden Fjord hotel, our home for the next three nights. 

We settle into Room 327. 

Then we notice a loud piping noise from outside. The P&O Iona is about to leave Olden Kai. 

Our room gives us a great view over the Fjord, the shots of the boat/ship were all taken from the balcony of the room.

Mølla Gjestehus

When checking in to the hotel, the gentleman behind reception mentioned that dinner served in the hotel restaurant is a buffet. This was disappointing as I'd read about their new A la carte menu online! It was one of the things that made my choose the hotel, though in truth there weren't many alternatives, mainly backpackers bunk houses, which isn't quite us. 

It turns out the a la carte is only for off season and we are currently in the hight of the summer. Not being a fan of buffet dinners - it feels like others have been at your food before you - we ask what the alternatives are and he points us in the direction of two places one 0.4 of a mile away and the other 1.1 miles.

We decide to opt for the first, Mølla Gjestehus, the .4 of a mile felt much less than that, distances seem to shrink at the end of this fjord. 

Yes, a light drizzle has descended, perhaps it followed us up from Bergen as it has been dry from about an hour out of Bergen until just now.

The entrance was very welcoming.

We ordered drinks, in an advertising campain Coca Cola have begun to use personal names on their bottles. So tonight Drew was Fredrik.

More amusing to us was that the sparking water was called Olden. Indeed the full name Olden Med Kullsyre can, as Robin pointed out of Flickr, be translated Olden with Gas, it seems a fitting description (no I don't mean of the water!!)

The place is obviously laid out for larger groups than Drew and I!

Though the food when it came was more than acceptable.

My Laksefilet servert med poteter, gulrøtter, brokkoli, sellerirotmos og hjemmelaget senneps- og dillsaus, that is oven baked salmon fillet served with potatoes, carrots and broccoli, celery root mash, and homemade mustard and dill sauce

was delicious. A wonderful juicy piece of salmon with a dill dressing, crunchy little potatoes and el dente vegetables. As regard portion size, I think I should have ordered two, as they didn't have any starters on the menu, clearly Norwegian's eat less that Haydn's! I hear the comments already, that could be said of many people 😂

Drew had Møllas viltburger og chips that is Mølla's Venison Burger and Chips. 

The venison burger had cheese, bacon, caramelised onions, tomato and sauce - It disappeared in seconds, Drew approves.

Drew then ordered Eplekake med karamellsaus og krem, i.e. Apple Pie, caramel sauce and cream. 

He really enjoyed the enjoyed the sugar rush this brought on.

I, who seldom eat dessert, unless it is cheese, as I'm a recovering diabetic (technically I'm what the doctors call in remission), was a bit stuck as I was still hungry. What to do? I decided to see if they would serve a 'naked' apple cake, and to be fair to them once I explained I didn't want cream or sauce they brought me the cake with apple. It wasn't as sweet as it would have been if served in Britain, so I seem to have had no ill effects from it.

We walked back to the hotel and after a long travelling day made it to bed by 10pm.