Trondheim

We completed our 700 km journey south to Trondheim yesterday. From reading other blogs we’d expected the scenery to be quite dull and boring, but it was much better than the scenery driving through northern Finland. There were loads of roadworks going on all along the E6 which did slow us down a bit, and each stretch of roadworks is almost always accompanied by road tolls. They charge you using ANPR cameras, and it’s 20 NOK here, 40 NOK there, but it all adds up and so the journey south ended up costing around 700 NOK (€70) in tolls.

Diesel pricing is a bit of a lottery too, with the regular price being around 15.50 NOK (£1.44), but on Sundays and Mondays the price seems to go right down, and we’ve paid as little as 13.80 NOK (£1.24), which is a big difference.

Our camperstop in Trondheim was the IKEA car park (P3) which is specifically for customers with motorhomes. It’s free, and whilst you’re not supposed to spend the night there they don’t discourage it, and so plenty of people stop overnight. It’s ideally placed as it’s ten minutes walk to the bus stop and then 15 minutes on the bus into the town centre.

Last night, classy guy that I am, I treated Carol to a Swedish meatballs dinner in the IKEA restaurant, thereby making us customers for parking purposes! We also took advantage of the free WiFi as you do.

This morning we were up early to catch the bus into town. Buying bus tickets was a right faff though – if you pay in advance it costs 3.70 NOK each way, or 6 NOK if you pay the driver. Trying to buy tickets via SMS didn’t work (I don’t think it likes foreign phones) and so I had to download their app, register my debit card and buy the tickets that way. If you are visiting Trondheim then there’s a helpful website here.

Trondheim isn’t a large town and there aren’t a huge number of things to see, but we spent a few hours there strolling around. The weather was warm and sunny which made a nice change, the first decent day’s weather we’ve had since arriving in Norway. We went to see the main attractions, which are the cathedral and the old timber buildings along the waterfront, and we also climbed to the fortress on top of the hill where there are great views across the town. I did quite fancy visiting the music museum Rockheim, but as it seems to concentrate on Norwegian pop music, and the only Norwegian group I’m familiar with is 80’s pop combo A-Ha, I gave it a miss.

When we were done we took the bus back to IKEA. Tomorrow we will visit Kristiansund, and it’s a long drive so we’ve made a head start – it’s a good job we did as there were loads more roadworks (and tolls grrrrr!) getting out of Trondheim.

Mike