Sogndal to Gol
Day 198 (I’m still off route!)
My ears are finally back to normal. It has been a total of 3 weeks I have been suffering with it. I am glad to feel good again.
Jane McLane and I took the most remarkable train ride over the mountains from Bergen to Gol today. Initially the trained passed through so many tunnels. I felt as though we were in the dark, more than we were in the daylight. When we would finally emerge from a tunnel the scenery was spectacular. Understandably this train route is very popular with tourists. I even saw a big old moose scurry away from the train as we passed.
When we made our reservations for the train, we also reserved space for our bikes and
received tickets for them. We were informed by the ticket person that only 6 bikes were allowed on each train. When we were riding the train, at each stop more passengers with bikes would get on. After a awhile the luggage car was so stuffed full of bikes, there must have been 20 bikes. The higher we climbed, the more bikes collected in the car. Imagine that!
At one point Jane and I were concerned that our bikes would be buried underneath all the others. By the time we passed over the highest point, the bikes started to disappear. It wasn’t long before the only bikes in the baggage car were ours.
We got off at Gol (pronounced ghoul). It had been 3 days since we were with the Odyssey group. It had been a great, relaxing 3 days. Now we needed to find where Odyssey was camping tonight. I had no clue.
Jane figured we could go to the Tourist Information booth and ask them. We found the place, but it was closed. There were two taxi drivers sitting in front so I asked them. He only spoke enough English to be able to point and tell me “go this way a campground at 3 kilometers or go that way a campground at 1 kilometer, 2 kilometer, 3 kilometer etc…
I kept telling Jane all we needed to do is hang out for awhile. I have always had good luck in seeing another rider in town. They would have a DRG and be able to tell us where the camp was. But at this point there was no one around. It was almost noon.
We decided to head to the camp on the other side of town. No sooner did we start out when we saw Denis, he told us where the camp was. It was exactly where the taxi driver had told us to go. Success!