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The weather this day was the best of our trip, talk about timing !! At the end of the horseshoe fjord was Hellesylt, reckoned to be an old viking town as it is readily accessible to the ocean, but is well sheltered by the fjord. It’s a tiny pokey place now, the only saving grace was a powerful horizontal waterfall through the centre of town. We climbed a small hill on the edge of town to set up camp and collapsed on the springy moss for an hours sleep as the exertions of the day had finally caught up with us.

Monday 13th was another transit day. The one bus to Bergen didn’t leave until the afternoon, so we filled in the morning with a long walk into the next valley. The bus trip took 8 hours, but the fjord scenery and long through-mountain tunnels were entertaining enough. It was in one of these tunnels (one 11km long!) that we realised that this is the first proper darkness we have seen since leaving Stockholm. As the story continues we were 2 weeks early to experience the proper midnight sun, but our nights were still light.

We spent the next 2 days at a camping ground in Bergen - it was laundry and shower time again! Bergen is such a pretty city, it’s just a pity that there isn’t an Ericsson there. The buildings were all two storied wooden pastel painted doll-houses.

On Wed.15th we took a famous train link down to Flam which sits on the Aurlandsfjord. As it was on the eve of the big national holiday, and this region is the most accessible of the western fjords (a lot of people come to Bergen and don’t do any more that the "Norway in a Nutshell" tour), we bumped unwillingly into our first experience of package tourists….The worst kind!!! We were close to murder after the "scenic" train trip down. I don’t know what is worse,, is it frenzying tourists blocking your view of the window as they take their all-important snaps that won’t come out anyway,,, or is it the whining voices saying "It’s not as good as home" or "It’s just like home" or the senile oldies saying "where is home?". Answer - all of the above!!

Tracey and I got into Oslo (live)on the eve of Thurs.16th and headed for another camping ground. It was to be the last good nights sleep for us as Craig joined us from the next day ! His train from Stockholm got in at 7.00am and we had no plans to meet him at the station, but considered him finding us would be a good test of his backpacking skills, not to mention that it was too cold
and wet to get up.