Two Tourists, if Proof were needed

Yes, you are absuolutely right. In the early hours of this morning, the Boston RedSox won the 2007 World Series, sweeping the Rockies 4 and 0 in the best of 7 series. Just had to publish a day early this week as I know you just wanted to be sure that your newly adopted team won through. Whether you wanted to or not you have followed their adventure since June. If you Believed, then your faith has been rewarded. Celebrate now, have a great Thanksgiving and look forward to the 2008 season!

Meanwhile we left you in Stavanger having just arrived at our hotel in the late affternoon....

That evening, 24 June 2007, we walked down Gamle Stavanger, 200 years of wooden buildings in great preserve and the streets in very clean condition. B was impressed by the number of rose bushes! We kept walking till we got to the “Sting” café where once again the Rough Guide came good on its recommendation….the Chicken Satay was good and so what if we doubled the average age!

Later that night we went to the movies. This time “Death Proof” where director Quentin Tarantino (PULP FICTION) pays homage to his favorite B-movies. Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) stalks women in his deadly vintage car, but when he picks a trio of tough girls (Rosario Dawson, Tracie Thoms, and Zoe Bell), he learns they aren’t such easy prey. As with any Tarantino film, there are plenty of nods to pop culture. Most of the scenes are deliberately short on plot development, the dialogue comes thick and fast throughout, and the film stock is often cleverly manipulated to perfectly replicate B-movies. The film was originally released as part of the Grindhouse double feature with Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror but it bombed financially in the US and so was released alone, albeit some 20 minutes longer, in Europe. It’s different. The debate on its merits or otherwise fills pages in print and on line. I was fascinated that at the end everyone was animated and talking and debating as they left the cinema. Sign of an artist engaging with his audience? I thought so. B’s critique is short and to the point ‘What garbage – I left after 30 mins..’
Next morning we ‘did’ Stavanger much as we had done Oslo previoulsly, but making sure to test the cafes, including McDonalds. The museums were excellent. The Oil museum is an education in itself and the restaurant is top quality(thanks to I&R who compete with Rough Guide as travel guides). Next we did the Maritime museum and the Canning museum. We both enjoyed this experience. Life must have been tough a couple of hundred years ago, especially when the herring disappeared from the shores around 1890 and no one knows why. The town nearly went bankrupt.

The locals all appeared friendly ...

We also visited the Dom Kirke. It has been serving the population of Stavanger (now 100,000) since the twelfth century. B was really impressed with the hand carved wooden pulpit.
Having checked every possible shop in Stavanger we finally got the baseball caps B was looking for and then did dinner at “Sting” again. Then we saw the ship arriving in so we headed back to the hotel, retrieved our gear from the left luggage room, got back into bikers gear and hit the road once more. Until next week I’ll leave you with the pictures…………

And some time for quiet reflection as we near the end of this adventure ......................

Norwegian Mizen

Tue 23 October 2007
Happy Special Birthday, Marie!

Sun 21 October 2007.

THEY DID IT.

Those SOX are now American League Champions!

Bring on the world series!

Sunday 24th June, 2007

Rumor had it that breakfast would not be served until about 09:00 this morning. Guess what? We were up early…so I went to check. And there was already another family tucking into a full breakfast so we joined them. It meant we got another early start on a beautiful day during which we were blessed with warm sunshine for the whole trip. Our final motor biking day in Norway.

B had spotted that we were close enough to Lindesnes, which is the most southerly point in Norway so we diverted off the E39 and down the 460 to the most southerly point in Norway. There has been a lighthouse on this site for over 350 years. Indeed, in 1656 Norway’s first ever lighthouse was built, well lit - literally, here on February 27, 1656. It consisted of 30 tallow candles in the upper floor of a three-floor tower. The light was closed after only a few months. In 1725, two lighthouses were built: one on Neset at Lindesnes and the other on Markøy about two nautical miles to the northwest. In 1822 a lighthouse was built with a light that was fueled by gas. In 1854 a new lighthouse equipped with a Fresnel lens was built. The lighthouse here now was completed in 1916. At the time it housed three families who lived permanently within its walls. The old coal fire lantern from 1822 has been preserved and the lighthouse station is now a listed site. Fortifications from World War 2 are also preserved at the site. The entire complex is located within a nature reserve and recreation area. One of the lighthouse keepers, Rolf Dybvik, has a gallery just below the lighthouse and sells his watercolor paintings of the South Norwegian landscape.

At the coffee shop we had _____ and ____ (you can fill in the blanks now!). As ever the waitress did not escape lightly as B quizzed her about the meaning of Lindesnes. She went off to investigate and reported it as meaning “Lands end” but though it also meant “A windy difficult (to sail around) place”. The oldest Norse form of the name was Líðandi. That name is derived from the verb líða 'go to an end' - and the meaning is probably just 'the end'. A later form was Líðandisnes, where the word nes meaning 'headland' was added. And yes you guessed it. She was invited to ‘take the rest of the day off’. Yis are getting good now theat we are getting to the end.

The route to the lighthouse tested our essential approach to motor biking. Real motor bikers seek out roads that twist and turn and enjoy whipping their bikes around the bends at whatever speed they feel is within their competence. The route to the lighthouse was ideal. A perfect surface and endless bends of varying curvature. B loved it. He got off the bike and extolled the virtues of the narrow twisting and winding route we had just traveled. I knew then I would never be a true biker. After years and thousands of kilometers and two bikes I still did not look forward to the uncertainty of tight bends. I felt the concern at danger rather than the exhilaration at taking the risk. Too risk adverse to be a real biker. The same nature that makes me nervous when S stands on the edge or when A jumps from a plane. Not that I do not enjoy biking. On A roads and higher it a different experience to the car. Certainly nothing beats it to get by in congested cities.

At Lindesnes though, I was reminded of my first love of two-wheeled transport: the bicycle. Maybe that has been bred into us. I know I was delighted that Andrew and I got the chance to tandem from Galway to Dublin in the summer of 2006. There is something about the bicycle that makes life seem better…no, that makes life better. And here at Lindesnes I envied two cyclists at they prepared to start their Norwegian Mizen to Malin journey by starting here and heading for Nordcap – 2,500 km due north!! Good luck to them. Their families seem proud as they waved them off on what I sincerely hope was an epic journey for them. They got off to a bit of a shaky start as we passed them after a couple of kilometers having some minor difficulty. B gave them two of his lucky shamrocks and wished them well on the rest of their trip.
We made our way as far as Flekkafjord for lunch. It was a lovely warm day and Flekkafjord is a lovely spot. The photo of the café shows only one parasol raised. That was ours, at our request! We strolled around its quiet streets after our meal. Excellent. Even saw a monument to Seamus’ summer trip, or something!

Just before Stavanger we stopped for petrol. This had become a ritual. All the stations took credit cards at the pumps and were very efficient.

After 296 kilometers we reached Stavanger and the final Thon of the trip by 16:30. The Thon rose like a beacon welcoming us into the city.

For the coming week the FIVB World Tour beach volleyball event was being held in Stavanger. A few days earlier, a ship brought hundreds of tons of beach sand to the town. There was enough sand to place it half a metre deep around the harbour, where ten courts were built. There was also a barge in the harbour with 2 courts and a beach-bar. Apparently it takes about three weeks to build the main stadium, which closes the road on the north side of the harbour. Conoco Phillips is the main sponsor of the event, which brings people from all over the world. In the first couple of years it was just the men that competed here, but now it is both men and women. It brought a great atmosphere - and Stavanger is popular with the players (the large prize fund may also help) - made even more special by the visits of large cruise ships to the harbour. A side effect though, as we had discovered was that the hotels were very full. When we got to our room it sported an excellent double bed. My turn to be assertive. Our room was changed despite the hotel being ‘fully booked’. Hope whoever the later comers were they were ok with a double!! Now, lets explore Stavanger……

Big Guns

Lillistrom was ideal two days ago. Easily accessible from the North. Just follow the signposts and one dual carriageway lead into another and there you were outside the hotel. This morning though it was in an awkward spot. Wish they had left it alone. Now the city of Oslo lay between us and our route West. Our maps showed a mass of motorways and dual carriageways and streets and intersections and, well just stuff. We looked at all sorts of options for getting us past the city. All looked complicated and the forecast said rain. It's bad enough trying to read a map on a good day but in the rain? The computer programme that got them to the moon was binary. Either 1 or 0. Simple. Reduce the proiblem to somple yes or no elements. We looked at the direct route. Noted the road numbers. And trusted that at each junction we would get the key decision at that point correct. The combination of my GPS and 50 year old eyes was not up to the task of assisting to make a series of decision in quick succession on a bike even at Norwegian motorway speeds. We fell back on instinct ...and mused how Aoife would find our paper maps and basic GPS, so... well …primitive, when she goes exploring and reads of Dadio’ s exploits. Anyway, grey matter it was for today.

Oh, ye of little faith. It you suspected that the next bit of the story was of how we got lost, then you will be sadly mistaken. The old grey matter worked. We whipped from junction to junction with unerring skill (shut up, it was not blind luck) until we were securely stuck in a traffic jam beneath Oslo (literally). When will we stop moaning about Dublin? I’ve not been in a capital city yet that does not have traffic jams at 09:00 on a working day. And here we had the added beauty of the jam being self contained in its own tunnel so that the noise and fumes added to the ambience. So much better than being in the open air, don’t you think? Is that our only complaint of Norway? I think it is. Forget it: we were clear again in a while and back on excellent roads whizzing along at the highest legal speeds we had done all trip. Ripping along at 100 kph.
And then it started to rain! Rumor had it that it had not stopped raining in the British Isles, nor indeed in the UK and Ireland, but we had got used to lovely dry sunny days here. We reluctantly pulled on the wet gear and pressed on for Arendal, our destination at just 298 kilometres in total for the day. The wonderful guide in the Tourist office had a great attitude. Look, its always raining here: get used to it, accept it and enjoy what we have to offer. Fair play to you. That’s the right spirit. So we did our best. It was not difficult. It’s a lovely scenic town and it even provides free music sessions to cater for all tastes. The night sessions started around midnight (long days, remember?) so we passed some time going to the cinema to see Oceans 13. Great fun. We wondered if the disco across the road would keep us awake all night and then woke the next morning for breakfast. We paused only to remind the receptionist that she needed to move her car before parking restrictions came into force at 09:00 and were on our way once more.

Before we go here's a question. The photograph below shows the scene that greeted us on arrival in our room. A card on behalf of the Mayor of the city welcoming us to Arendal. It was placed, as you can see, dircetly on a box of chocolates. Would you expect that the box of chocolates to be included in the welcome or to be part of the 'mini bar' for which a separate charge would be levied. We disagreed and B went to check ... (I'll give you the answer in a comment)

We made our short journey to Kristiansand once again in warm sunshine. Clearly Norway regretted the wet day it had presented us with yesterday so today as we arrived they had a band out to greet us.

Not just one band but a whole festival of bands. They were massing in the square beside our hotel before marching through the town. That's why getting a room had been difficult.

We checked into the hotel and then made our way to the Canon Museum at Møvig. This has been established around the Vara Battery (named after a German engineer general), part of the defenses built by the Germans during the Second World War to guard the shipping lanes of the Skageral, which is at its narrowest point here. Denmark is only 116 kilometers away and there was a matching installation at Hanstholm in Denmark. Each of these 38 mm cannons had a range of 55 kilometers and the bit in the middle that they could not reach was mined. Construction began in 1941, and initially 1,400 men (I assume they were all men) from Norway, Denmark and Germany were involved. In 1943 200 Russian prisoners of war arrived and were there to the end of the war. However the Vara Battery used naval guns (honours students can compare and contrast with Gronsvic Kystfort from a few days back) and so the 600 strong crew included 450 naval gunners: the army guys apparently providing close defence. Trial rounds from three cannons were being fired in 1942 but it was summer 1944 before work on cannon 1 was completed with 4.5 meter thick roof and almost 4 meter thick walls being constructed (the standard thickness elsewhere on the site is 1.8 meters). This massive bunker is still visible and seems to be the only one where the roof is in place. However although 230 tons of parts for the gun arrived and were in place the barrel itself never made it. It was some job: almost 20 meters long and weighed 110 tons but on 22 February 1945 the ship on which it was being transported was sunk in the Kattegat by the RAF.

So after all the work, including 16 smaller cannons, countless bunkers, defence posts, tunnels and almost 3 kilometers of narrow gauge railway, the battery never saw active service in war. OK, it was part of the Norwegian coastal defences until 1957 and they popped off the odd trial round but that was it. In 1962 the main cannons, including what existed of cannon 1 were broken up and sold for scrap. However, for some reason cannon 2 survived: an exemplar of the work of Messrs Krupp of Essen. It’s hard to get a sense of scale. It a bit bigger than a food mixer!The whole gun is 28 meters long and weighs 337 tons. The shell was 170 cms long and weighed 800 kg; the explosive cartridge behind it weighed almost 100 kg and behind that was a charge with another 100 kg of explosives.

And now….it’s a museum. A quiet museum in a wooded glade south of Kristiansand that is a little way off the beaten track and so struggling financially as the main tourist routes pass it by. But the scale is immense. An extraordinary piece of history. Pat of the German defences. What were the French doing on the Maigenot line? That, I suspect may yet be a story for another day and another Blog. The key to avoiding depression after a major trip is to start planning the next one immeditely: Keep at it B!

We headed back to Kristiansand, with a grand total of 100 kilometres done that day, and still had plenty of time to check out it's coffee houses and street theatre. The festival bands meant there was a free show at nearly every corner.

The photos give some impression of the place. Note the quality of the McDonalds here ... mind you we must be getting more sophisticated as we skipped having a meal here today. We also came across Libris from where our maps were purchased (S3 again)

As we completed our day even the dogs smiled on us as we prepared for one last Norwegian journey!


Sox? Hanging in there although 2:1 down in the American League Championship (best of 7) Series against the Cleveland Indians. The coming week will tell a tale!

A Capital Midsummers Day

STOP PRESS: The Yankees are out of this year's American League series. Our favourite Sox start their campaign for the Pennant this Friday. Stay tuned. Now back to Norway in June....

Day 15 (with a bit of 14 too!)

Well I took a little licence last week because the day did not end in Lillistrom. Instead we hotfooted it (literally) out of the hotel and across to the railway station for a quick run into Oslo itself to orientate ourselves for the morrow.

The Rough Guide suggests that Oslo city centre ‘embodies the urban elegance of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: wide streets, dignified parks and gardens, solid buildings and long, consciously classical vistas combine to lend it a self-satisfied, respectable air. Oslo's biggest single draw is its museums, which cover a hugely varied and stimulating range of topics: the fabulous Viking Ships Museum, the Munch Museum, the park devoted to the bronze and granite sculptures of Gustav Vigeland, and the moving historical documents of the Resistance Museum are enough to keep even the most battle-weary museum-goer busy for a few days’.

We arrived in Oslo central station and from there as we progressed up Karl Johan’s Gate (street), the Rough Guide was again spot on in describing it as beginning unpromisingly with a clutter of tacky shops and hang-around junkies but things soon pick up at the corner of Dronningens gate. That was how we found it and we made our way along until we got to the Hard Rock Café. Outside there were hundreds of bikes all lined up along the pavement in one of the biggest displays of bikes we had ever seen.

Apparently, this congregation of bikes only takes place once a year or so. We took the above photos on a camera phone. We had a meal in the Hard Rock café, spent so long over it that the souvenir shop closed and so we had to made a note to return tomorrow to get the obligatory pin for BP.

I was intrigued by the pedestrian lights in the city. Each had two red men. Still can't figure why. If you know do leave a comment please. Whatever about red men, what about the Red Sox? Tonight’s game would be described as the Boston Bats Bash Braves (my Dad would have loved that headline) as they hammered the Atlanta team 11:0. Meanwhile the Colorado Rockies were in the process of sweeping the New York Yankees. On 21 June 2007, the Sox had a rest day but were then 46 to 35 games ahead of the NYY. Go Sox! (I bet you don't know whether you are coming or going in time zones at this stage!!)

A rest day for us too. Albeit only from the bikes. We hiked around Oslo taking in the sights and getting the few presents that we could bring back.

A visit to the National Museum to see the Scream by Munch, Norway's best-known artist who died in 1944, aged 81 was a must. Munch painted a number of variations of this painting and it has had a chequered history. As I mentioned earlier, the National Gallery's Scream was stolen on 12 February 1994. Suggestions that it was taken by a Norwegian anti-abortion group turned out to be false. After three months, the painting was offered back to the Norwegian government for a ransom of $1 million. This ransom was refused, and the painting was recovered in May of the same year following a sting operation. Ten years later, another version of the painting, the Munch Museum's Scream was stolen at gunpoint along with his Madonna. Once the painting were gone, the Munch Museum closed for 10 months for a $6 million security overhaul. A reward of a quarter of a million euro was offered for it's return and ultimately three men were convicted in 2006 for the theft and jailed for between four and eight years. In August of 2006, Norwegian police announced that the two paintings had been recovered. The paintings were said to be in a better-than-expected condition with only a minor scratch and two minor holes.

Afterwards we visited a modern art exhibition housed in what was, for all intents and purposes, a plastic bubble. See picture above. We though it was HOT. No wait, that was only the heat inside the plastic tube. Otherwise it left us cold. Wonder where AJ gets his appreciation of modern art from??

Meanwhile the Irish Times was reporting that today in London a self-portrait by the Dublin-born artist Francis Bacon was bought (from the heirs of a European collector who acquired it in 1980) by an anonymous telephone bidder for €28.71 million at auction in Sotheby's. Bacon painted Self Portrait while coming out of a severe depression caused by the suicide of his lover George Dyer in 1971. It shows the artist dressed in boots and an unbuttoned shirt in lavender room and is the only full-length Bacon self-portrait ever to go on sale out of the 17 such works Bacon painted after 1956

Like the Dutch the Norwegians have a 'rent it here and leave it there' bike scheme in the city which seems to work very well. You get a card which enables you to release the bike from its stand. You register it again when you leave it back at the stand nearest your destination.

We ‘did’ Oslo that day, including a trip to McDonalds and ended up in Dolly Dimples, where we ordered a half ’n’ half 40cm pizza i.e. two toppings on the one base. The waitress did not note the half ‘n’ half and we were given the full pizzas at no extra cost. Made no difference, as we could not finish them!

After a lovely day in Oslo, the weather forecast suggested rain tomorrow.