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10th August; N60°40; E7°15;Finse 1222, riding the mountain trail

Not exactly Provence.

Started from home (Risør on the south coast) late Thursday afternoon, drove the 350 kilometres to Geilo, spent the night there and was ready for the mountain and the bike path on the old Rallarvegen road, from Haugastøl a few kilometres west of Geilo, next morning. Across the Hardangervidda mountain ridge, and down the gullies and the valleys on the west coast to Myrdal and Flåm and eventually Voss the next day.

Weather was not too bad from the start, however the weather forecast was some rain on the western side of the watershed, with the wind and the weather coming from the west most of the time this was a fairly typical forecast for southern Norway.

The distance along the Rallarvegen is about 27 kilometres from Haugastøl to Finse, from Finse to Myrdal another 37 kilometres or a total of 64. No problem to bike that in a day or so we thought.

It started well enough. We biked the first leg to Finse in about 2 1/2 hours, since the rest of the track was mainly downhill we assumed that the final leg would be even faster. Things turned out differently. However before Finse weather was good with only the occasional shower,

this is a photo of the Hardangerjökulen glacier taken just to the west of Finse.

We had a lunch break at Finse, at the cabin of the Norwegian Mountain Touring Association, and had rømmegrøt or sour cream porridge, a Norwegian delicacy and warmly recommended.

There is a Finse web cam. It is updated every 15 minutes during the day, and shows the station area with the Norwegian rail station building on the left, to the right is the local hotel, of course named Finse1222. The Norwegian Mountain Touring Association's lodge can be seen in the background, to the right of the station building.

We started from Finse again around 2PM, weather was good from the beginning,

however things deteriorated after a while, this picture at the highest point of the track at Fagervatn and 1343 meters above sea level is only too typical of the weather we experienced on the western side of the mountains. The track was also rather washed out in places, and the going was slow. However the scenery was spectacular,

this is from the Kleiva gully between the Hallingskeid lodge and the Flåm valley, at about 900 meters above sea level.

Another picture bit further down the gully, from there we came to another cabin/hut along the Seltuft lake and had a cup of coffee and some waffles before we pushed on towards the Flåm valley and the Myrdal station that connects the Flåm railway to the Bergen line.

We arrived at Flåm at 7PM after 5 hours from Finse, just in time to take the train through the Gravahalsen tunnel to Uppsete where we spent the night at Uppsete lodge, and biked the next day the 43 kilometres from Uppsete to Voss railway station on the Bergen line, most of that on asphalt road.

The above picture is from a lunch break about 15 kilometres from Voss.

We arrived at Voss in time for the 14:35 train to Bergen and spent the weekend in Bergen together with friends.

Great biking trip, however we will do again soon, hopefully this autumn, with a better weather forecast. Check news for more pictures and update.