Heading north

Our next stop in Norway was Lillehammer, which hosted the Winter Olympic Games in 1994.

We decided to avoid the main E6 route and take the more direct but slightly slower road 4, which we hoped would be more scenic. The roads definitely had a different feel to them from what we’d experienced so far, with lots of pine forests lining the route.

We stopped for lunch in a small town called Jaren and were treated to a gorgeous lakeside beach to have our sandwiches. The water was clear and warm, it was just a shame we’d had to park the car at the train station so didn’t have our swimming costumes with us. We might even have tried out the floating trampoline if we had!

We arrived at Lillehammer Camping about 4pm and pitched our tent, which was a bit challenging as the ground was quite rocky and it was very windy. Lillehammer sits at the top end of the Mjøsa lake and our campsite was right on the water. It had a playground with four slides and a little beach, although the water didn’t look that inviting there. We had a lovely stir fry dinner before heading to bed.

The next morning we planned to visit the ski jumps that sit above the town. What we hadn’t realised was that it was the Birkebeinerløpet half marathon race that day, one of Norway’s most famous running races with around 8,000 participants! It starts at the Nordic ski centre at the top of the hill above the ski jumps and ends at Håkons Hall at the bottom of the hill. As we drove up to the ski jumps we were told that the road leading to them would close at midday for the race so we made sure not to dawdle as we took a look around.

There are two options to get to the top of the jumps, either walking up 980 steps, or a chairlift. Despite H’s love of steps (no pun intended) we chose the chairlift as it was the quicker option. It was a lovely warm, sunny day so the views from the top were great (although it was not the best weather for the runners!) It was also interesting seeing the take-off ramp, as this wasn’t visible at the one in Oslo. Again, we were baffled as to why anyone would want to jump off the ramp on skis - it was so steep!

We got back to the car and drove to the top to see the start of the race. Lou and H enjoyed taking part in the warm-up and dancing to the blaring music as we cheered the runners off. After the last runners had left, we headed back down to town and grabbed some lunch at a supermarket salad bar, which we took back to our tent to eat.

With the weather being so nice, we decided to take a dip in the lake. We headed to Strandpromenaden, a couple of minutes drive up the road from our campsite. The water was quite murky and pretty cold but that didn’t stop Lou heading in for a swim, even if she did stub her toe pretty badly on a hidden rock on the way out! It did help to cool off though.

After dinner, we went for a walk up the hill to the centre of Lillehammer. The main street was pedestrianised and had lots of nice looking restaurants and bars, although the highlight for H was outside the town hall where there were lots of little trikes to ride around on.

The next morning we were approached by a Dutch lady asking if we’d stayed at Bomstadbaden campsite in Karlstad recently - clearly we’d made an impression on our fellow campers! We packed up our tent and drove to the Olympic museum for a quick look around before leaving Lillehammer. We didn’t realise that the museum is part of the wider Maihaugen Open Air museum, which includes a postal museum and a number of traditional Norwegian buildings from 1400 to present day, which unfortunately we didn’t have time to look around. We did however stop to listen to a brass band that were playing just outside the foyer.

The Olympic museum was less child friendly than others we’d visited, but there was still an interactive element where you could pretend to take part in a biathlon which was surprisingly tiring! The museum covered the Olympics in general, starting from their origins, through to recent Summer and Winter Games. There was obviously a big focus on the Lillehammer Games but also the Winter Games in Oslo in 1952. H enjoyed looking at all the mascots from the last 30 years and it was interesting seeing all the different torches and medals.

After a tasty mushroom soup for lunch in the museum cafe, we continued our journey north along the E6 to Otta, which was only about 90 minutes away. After suffering with a rocky pitch in Lillehammer, we decided to chance our luck and just turn up at Otta Camping without booking, with the aim of scouting out the pitches before committing to staying at one. Unfortunately we turned up just as the heavens opened, so we scrambled around trying to choose a pitch before retreating into the kitchen area to wait for the rain to pass before putting the tent up. We were surprised to see a group of large English caravans on the site, the first we’d seen on our trip, as most of our fellow campers have been from Norway, Sweden, Germany or the Netherlands.

Once the rain had passed and the tent was pitched, it turned out to be a very pretty campsite, right next to the River Otta in a valley between two large hills. Our pitch was right next to the river which offered lovely views.

We cooked dinner in the communal kitchen where we chatted to some lovely Belgian ladies and watched a programme about a Norwegian decathlete, although we didn’t understand much as it was in Norwegian!

After dinner, we headed into Otta, however being a Sunday evening, pretty much everything was shut. We did manage to get an ice cream from the local Circle K at the petrol station though! We found some very large purple and orange deckchairs to sit on and a couple of playgrounds to play on before buying some yoghurt at the supermarket and heading back to the campsite.

Unfortunately we had our worst night’s sleep of the trip so far, as some of our fellow campers decided to throw a party at 1am! This lasted until 3, so we all woke up bleary eyed and not in the best mood. This was exacerbated when we went to the communal kitchen to find the yoghurt we’d bought the night before, as well as some of our leftover dinner had been thrown around and the kitchen had been trashed by the partying campers. This put a real dampener on our day - we don’t think it was a coincidence that this happened on the only campsite where we’d seen English vehicles (and huge caravans, and even some horses)!

We left the campsite and drove up a very steep windy path to get some lovely views back down the gorge and continued on to Rondane National Park. It was rather cold at the top and as we hadn’t particularly planned to go here, we weren’t really dressed appropriately for a walk. So we headed back down, stopping at some view points on the way, from which H was excited to be able to see our tent.

We drove to Sjoa Klatrepark where we had booked to do a Go Ape style tree walk. There were three levels, yellow for children aged 3-7, green for 7+ which was 7m off the ground and blue for 10+ which was 11m off the ground. H was a bit scared initially on the yellow route but once she’d done it once, she quickly made her way around twice more. Unfortunately she needed someone to go with her, and some of the obstacles were a bit small for James and Lou, so she only did it three times! Lou did the green route and James did both green and blue. It was a lovely place, with friendly staff and a nice view over a lake. There was camping there too, which in hindsight we might have been better off booking, although the views from our campsite were also very pretty.

We drove back to the campsite and had dinner, where another camper again recognised us from our campsite at Lillehammer so we had a nice chat with him - he and his wife were cycling from Oslo to Trondheim, which is quite a ride!

We were about to head back to the tent when a young Austrian boy approached H with some chalk and asked if she wanted to play with him and his brother drawing pictures on the road. H happily obliged while James and Lou chatted to his parents, who gave us some good tips for our trip to Ålesund later on. This small act of kindness somewhat restored our faith in humanity after the disaster of the night before. We then had a couple of games of Monopoly Deal before heading to bed.

Thankfully we had a better night’s sleep and next morning packed up the tent and continued north. The road took us quite high up and the temperature noticeably dropped, to about nine degrees, which was odd as we were hearing how back home, the UK was experiencing a 30 degree heatwave! There were lots of quaint cabins with turf roofs and even snow on some of the peaks.

We stopped for some lunch in Oppdal. We’d packed a picnic but as it was raining we ate it in the car overlooking a sports field where children were playing football and riding bikes. There was also a skate park.

Once the rain died down, we drove to the centre and found a small playground next to a cafe which was attached to an outdoor equipment shop, so everyone was happy! Inside the shop was a huge indoor climbing wall, so we stopped to watch a couple of girls do a route before getting back into the car and heading to Trondheim.

We felt like we could have maybe planned this leg of the journey better, for example staying for three nights in Lillehammer and only one night in Otta, or even Oppdal, as the driving distances each day weren’t huge. That said, we planned to meet James’s parents in Trondheim so there was no rush to get there any quicker and the rope climbing in Sjoa was good fun.