Basil was rather flattered to find this morning that a super yacht had joined him overnight, anchoring just offshore in the fjord. I thought I could see a Royal Ensign flying from the stern, so out came my binoculars and sure enough it was a British vessel with the name “Gene Machine”. I was surprised by how much information was readily available from a quick Google search. The yacht is owned by a Jonathan Rothberg who is a scientist/entrepreneur who had made his money by designing the first integrated circuit for sequencing genes, hence the yacht’s name (at least he did something worthwhile for his cash). Much more amazing was that the yacht’s destination and current location are all available to Joe Public (I put the quoted co-ordinates into Google Maps and sure enough the yacht was a few hundred metres from Basil, whose co-ordinates are not updated in real time). Surely all this information on multi millionaire’s yachts being publicly available must be a security nightmare?

For the last few days I have been describing our next official Tourist Route as the “Artic Road” or similar. I am wrong. The official name is the Kystriksveien, which means coastal road. This is what we started today.

Sandvika

It was thankfully much quieter than the busy main E6 and better still the weather had cleared and there were even a few few patches of blue sky. The road hugs the sea with snow flecked mountains on the landward side. When the road reaches a fjord it does one of three things. It either follows the fjord inland and back out to the sea; it tracks the fjord inland and then dives through a tunnel, under a mountain, to the next fjord; or there is a ferry across the mouth of the fjord.

Sandvika

We have experienced the first two of these, with one tunnel being nearly 5 miles (8 km) long. This particular tunnel was unfortunately the worst of the many tunnels we came across today, being narrow, with barely room for two large vehicles, dark and with an unmarked road surface. At our final stop, just after the tunnel, we met an English family, who had been avoiding tunnels like the plague. They knew that they were going to have to face this five miler but I withheld the detail that it was not a good introduction to Norwegian tunnelling! Tomorrow we use our first ferry on the itinerary. There are 6 ferries in total if we do the whole route.

As we travelled sedately along the Kystriksveien I could see, out of the corner of my eyes, Sarah doing her arm exercises. Yes, in addition to attempting 10,000 steps a day, Sarah does a series of arm exercises from the passenger seat as we travel along. This time, as I took a second glance, I noticed she was performing what looked like repeated two armed Nazi salutes. With motorhomers waving to each other, I suggested she amended that particular exercise since I didn’t know what reaction we might get from fellow travellers greeted by a Nazi saluting Brit!

Sandvika Beach

Our first stop today was at a lovely beach in the community of Sandvika. The beach, which is over a kilometre in length, was broad, golden and empty. We walked the length of the beach with the dogs doing their best to wear themselves out. They have really come to love beaches on this trip. The parking area was brilliantly laid out, as usual in Norway, and so we availed ourselves of one of the many picnic tables for lunch.

Large Jellyfish on Sandvika Beach – Jellyfish at bottom of picture!

Mabel – bouncy as always

Melek having fun on the beach – he almost managed four paws off the ground!

The second and final stop for today was in another excellent rest area overlooking Holandsfjorden and on the opposite side, almost glowing blue, the Engebreen arm of Norway’s second biggest glacier, the Svartisen. It is, yet again, a magnificent vista (66.724507, 13.698523). There are toilets, hot water and a place to fill and empty motorhomes, all free courtesy of the Norwegian government.

Svartisen Glacier – you can just make out the blue hue

Tomorrow, provided the weather is good, our intention is to catch a small passenger ferry across Holandsfjorden and then walk up to the start of the glacier, which should be fun.

Holandsfjorden