Clown fish in Malaysia
Clown fish in Malaysia
  • South West Coast Path
    • 30/07/2017
So had a day off in Kristiansand where I did absolutely nothing, other than eat huge amounts of food and watch TV. Was staying in someone's apartment spare room air bnb so relatively luxurious facilities!
Kristiansand centre is quaint grid pattern of traditional wooden houses, mainly white but with a few colours thrown in.
The city sprawls beyond this into suburbs of all shapes and sizes.
Has a very nice park, a microcosm of the surrounding countryside.
Has two cruise ships docked, so town is crawling with camera toting middle agers (sorry parents!)

This section is renowned as a beautiful stretch of coast, and it is certainly popular with the campervan crowd...
And it certainly deserves the reputation, the road is twisting and climbing and falling, mini fjords, a mixture of legitimately quaint and isolsted fishing villages and exploded coastal holiday towns, and rock everywhere, cliffs, mogetes, just road, water, rock, and bogs.
Again, everyman's right to camp is tempered by the difficulty in finding or accessing a flat piece of firm ground!

Day 1 I end by visiting Lindesnes lighthouse, the most southerly point in Norway, just in time for a pretty sunset. Not the most exciting day due to the amount of holiday makers.
Day 2 starts with some nasty steep climbs, the kind which are making car radiators hiss and my knees hurt. After refuelling on sugary products, stretching, and seat post height adjusting in the pleasant marina town of Farsund, the afternoon takes me around a long peninsula, on small roads where the campervans dare not tread, and ends with a delightful tiny tent sized camp spot perched high above the fjord, amid wild raspberry bushes. That's more like it.

Day 3 is a tough one, rain rain rain, with 1700 metres of ascent, and 30km up and down opposite sides of a fjord to cross a bridge, because the main road goes through a big tunnel where bikes not allowed.
There is a helpful map online showing the status of tunnels...
Meet a dutch guy (cyclist) hiding from the rain in a bus shelter. He is unimpressed by the coastal rollercoaster roads and traffic and declares intention to head directly inland to the mountains.
I can empathise, but actually this part of the trip is very rewarding, just a lot of effort and the rain dissuades from long view appreciation breaks!
In the bizarre and inaccessible rocky lakey landscape, the few picnic areas and such are already occupied for the night by the more adventurous "wild" campervanners, so I am relieved to find a side track and space to camp at the peak of another climb.

The rain is turning everything into a waterfall which is very pretty.


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