Day 9. Crossing the Artic.
Day 9 and still no Internet access, but I’ve decided to carry on writing this blogs locally on my laptop. We had a lot of mileage to make up today so by 9am we were all ready and leaving the camp following the E6 through Norway. Over the past few days we have been climbing mountains but today we climbed the mother of all mountains. We have been cruising along at about 55mph until we hit a few mountains with gradients of up to 9%. The road meandered around the mountain and so there was no chance of picking up speed to help attack the climb. As we climbed the hill “New Blue” powered up as best she could and then it was into third gear and the speed slowed down to about 35 – 40 mph. Still the road continued to climb and there was nothing for it but to change into second gear. The revs hit 4,000 as the engine continued to pull us up the mountain and then we noticed that the temperature gauge had moved from just under half way to just over and then it started to climb higher. We decided to keep climbing but if the needle hit the white section above the “H” then we’d have to pull over and let the engine cool down. We didn’t want to risk overheating and blowing the head gasket at this point. The needle for a while stuck on ¾ and then finally we reached the top of the mountain and then had to face a 7% gradient going down. The car was now able to do 60 mph without any power from the engine at all and the temperature gauge soon dropped to just under where it should be.
Driving through a local village we pulled up for a rest and immediately the cars were surrounded by people, we soon discovered that if you live in Norway you can’t own a 3-wheeler so perhaps this is why they draw so much attention.
Back of the road again and we passed over the Artic Circle and so had to stop at the landmark they have there. Trampling through the snow we found lots of piles of rocks and stones which were soon discovered were “stone men”. People who visit, instead of making a snow man they build up a pile of stones, so we got a boulder, and made a stone Bond Bug … a boulder resting on three stones with a slab for the canopy. I also wrote www.3-wheelers.com on a stone and left it amongst others that had been signed.
Now we are in the Artic you would expect things to be colder and they were though the sun was still shining brightly and the roads were still as twisty as ever. As we followed the road we crossed over bridges galore and then had to catch a ferry. Our timing for that was superb. As we pulled up to the ferry it was boarding so we got straight on and off it went.
On the other side we stopped for lunch and whilst we all had things like burger and chips and pizza, Richard tried Reindeer steak. Apparently it taste like beef and looks like beef so I’m not sure how you can tell what it is.
As the night wore on we pulled into a camp site half way up a mountain. We are about 450 miles away from the North Cape now so we are wondering whether we can make it there tomorrow.
Elvis