Blogging at 22:00 on Friday 26th July from intended overnighting spot N 60.36184°, E 05.48561° / http://maps.google.com/maps?q=loc:60.36184%2C05.48561
Last night's ferry crossing turned out to be a bit bumpy at times, but nothing too dramatic. By 5.00am we'd all been awoken by the crew to ensure anyone who was due to disembark at Stavanger did so, and didn't sleep through and end up in Bergen.
The early start was no bad thing, though as we had a really long complimentary breakfast and were then fully set up to enjoy the cruise up the Norwegian coastline. We've done this before and it's fantastic. The ship navigates through the hundreds of islands and islets just off the coast, often through disturbingly narrow channels and under road bridges that really don't seem high enough as you approach. It must be pretty demanding work for the skipper. The scenery all the way up the coastline is truly dramatic, many of the islands are really brooding and rugged, others more benign. Many support houses and some of these were very opulent.
In contrast, the coastline also supports a good deal of heavy industry with more than a few shipyards, as well as fishing ports and 'salmon' farms etc. Best bird and animal sightings of the 'mini-cruise' were white-tailed eagle, peregrine and a solitary porpoise.
On reaching Bergen we decanted but were not allowed through immigration before taking a breathalyser test. Good one, Norway. No probs for me (0.00%) but at least one Lithuanian-registered van in the line in front of us ran into bother.
Since landing we've done very little other than check out potential parking for tomorrow's parkrun (bad) and find somewhere local to kip. We've actually ended up on a paid 'aire' kind of arrangement. We came across it purely by chance and took a what-the-hey kind of attitude. It's cost about £8, our payment made as instructed on arrival to a PayPal account listed on some home-made laminate cards dotted around the plot.
We've been here since lunchtime and it's been chilled enough. We've seen red deer and had chance to catch up with a few housekeeping and truck-maintenance jobs (pic).
All in, a pretty steady day, then. Tomorrow will probably be anything but, what with the no-parking parkrun and then heading for the mountains, tunnels and innumerable ferries of fjordland.
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