Olav's Way Page 7.
It was very cloudy, looking back the way we'd come up the valley.
The Church is a wonderful colour that comes from hundreds of years of creosote. You can smell it from quite a distance too, and the no smoking signs start about 200 yards away!
You can see how thick the creosote is on the footing here. You can also see the stone plinth the church stands on.
Some of the planking on the outside of the church has these strange carvings on. It looked to me like the sort of symbols you see on Sami drums, apparently they are the marks of local farmers. Some clearly have runic components.
All these little tiles are wooden. Thats a lot of carving...
This is the old Priest House (now a souvenir shop).
We found this Pokemon water energy card on the way out of Hamar, and carried it as a magical way of reducing the extreme heat of our journey! As we were laying in our sodden tent it seemed like a good time to 'discard' this card so in a variation on an old spell to dispel rain we threw it out the door... The next day it wasn't raining, hurrah!
The next morning the church was open, its as stunning on the inside as it is on the outside. The pillars are all wooden but are painted to represent marble (by someone who has never seen marble). It is like most Norwegian churches a crazy mixture of folk carpentry and fantastical baroque carving and giltwork. A lovely dutch lady who seemed to fluently speak every European language showed us round, and let us take pictures, which is against the rules!
This is the altar end of the church.
We walked into Ringebu Sentrum and finally after much searching found the cafe on the second floor above a DIY shop. We had an omlette and a lot of coffee. It was here that we discovered that the cost of a coffee usually includes at least one and sometimes infinite refills. No-one had thought to tell us this! Caffeeeeeeeeeeeeeein.
It was still early so we walked out of town, stopping in the suburbs to admire this fine Stabbur which was in someones garden. The kind lady owner came out to tell us it was 300 years old and to give us some waffles!
We crossed this fantastic chasm, the photo doesn't do justice to the sound and power of the water.
The river soon widens out, we had a nice sit down and a cup of tea.
Late in the afternoon we came to an old barrow which had a big sticky up stone on top, and...
and a kind of lunar looking white quartz stone balanced on another rock in a grove down below. The coffee spirits were pleased with our observances as although the nearby Gudbrands Gard hotel and museum was closed the nice young lady, who we discovered played fiddle in the Valley Fiddle Band took pity on two itinerant fellow musos and gave us all the left over coffee! Caffeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeein...
On a coffee high we passed this house with lovely dragon gable ends.
We started to climb again past Sor Fron Kirk, which is called Gudbransdal Cathedral as its the largest church in the Gudbransdal valley.
The gathering storm clouds let through shafts of light briefly illuminating the cathedral.
The valley was transformed by a beautiful light show...
as we climbed higher, though the rain soon passed, we'll never forget the view.
After getting slightly lost we arrived at Sygard Grytting, a famous old Pilgrim Hostel, still providing hospitality to Pilgrims 700 years after it was built. Robert the English pilgrim we had met earlier arrived shortly after us, which was really great. The normal rooms that pilgrims slept in were all full with people attending a nearby concert so we were bedded down in the old pilgrims day room on the ground floor. It was a creaky building but we eventually got to sleep.
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