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!