Olav's Way Page 9.
There are a lot of barns in Norway with a ramp up to the second floor, Corwen took this photo because this was a particularly fine example. We always imagine James Bond, Smoky and the Bandit or the Dukes of Hazard driving in only to shoot out the other end after much sqwarking covered in chicken feathers and maybe sharing their car with a goat.
The guide book warns about walking on the E6 motorway as its so busy and dangerous. The biggest danger is falling asleep through boredom and collapsing into the path of a passing cow.
We entered Otta.
The river/lake that we had been walking alongside for weeks was very very green now.
It soon joined another river that was clear, you could see the two differently coloured waters.
We stopped at Sel Kirke for the night. There is a campsite described in the guidebook here, we spent ages looking for it till we spotted the row of abandoned huts in a nearby field. Since the campsite was no more we camped by the church.
Oh did we mention Corwen is also into weird ironwork? All the ironwork on each church gate and door etc is handmade and varies from church to church. Sometimes it can take quite a while to work out how to operate some of the more ingenious mechanisms.
This is a particularly fine example.
The next day we crossed the river, this time for good. The next few days would see us cross the watershed from the Gudbransdal Valley, over the high point of Dovre Fjell, and then down into the Oppdal Valley whose river runs north, not south. It felt very odd to see our familiar river from the wrong angle.
Even at this altitude the Norwegians use any bit of flat land to cultivate a crop. Barley in this case, the fully grown plants a little over a foot tall. We could see the mountains we would shortly be crossing ahead of us, they looked very steep!
The farmhouse had a lovely gatepost like a miniature stave church.
Another picture to sum up Norway. This tumbledown barn has a satellite dish, presumably so the farmer can constantly monitor the price of herring.
A tumbledown old shed, beautiful in the bright mountain air. You can see the layer of birchbark under the turf that keeps the rain out.
This is the Jorundgard Middle Ages Centre, which is a faithful reconstruction of a 13th century village. Above and below you can see the church. This village was originally built as a filmset for the making of Kristin Lavransdatter, a famous Norwegian novel.
The buildings were beautiful and still contained the props from the film.
The MOT is going to be expensive .
Counterbalanced wellhead.
The medieval forge. We bumped into Robert again here, for the last time, though we didn't know that then. He has our contact details, but we seem to have lost his, get in touch if you see this, Robert! We left the museum and walked into the village.
Outside the church is this statue of Kristin Lavransdatter. She has a little snub nose like a Manga character.
This is Nord Sel Kirke.
It has some nice woodwork.
Oh, and some really interesting door-handles...
and a fabulous gate-latch (or sneck as they call it up-north, which makes a guest who hovers in the doorway on the way out a sneck-hanger). It took me a while to work out how to use it.
The church, like many others in this part of Norway, has immaculately maintained war graves, we were moved by the age of the soldiers. There was a Piper and a Drummer among these Scottish soldiers.
While we had a snack outside the church we met this fellow, a Swiss who had cycled up from Stockholm. He had an incredible weight of stuff in his paniers, around 40 kilos, no problem to him on his bike! It made us envious as we had 15 kilos between us and that felt heavy! Bicycle travel for us next time we thought. The revolution will not be motorised... We left the church and carried up the valley side which became a steep gorge.
There didn't seem to be much danger of seeing a train up here on the mountainside, but perhaps one passes every so often.
There was some lovely moss, if you are into that type of thing (Kate is).
So she took a photo of this giant liverwort. Ho Hum...
The gorge was pretty dramatic.
But opened out into a really lush open valley.
Fertile cattle rearing country.
We found a campsite, Haugen Vollheim, which was right by the river. The owner gave us a Pilgrim Discount, which was nice, so we splashed out on a giant tin of meatballs for dinner, which wasn't so nice.
Kate thinks it looks like I'm rolling a spliff, but I promise I'm not! As it happens I don't smoke (well maybe if its your birthday).
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