Day 13-2. Sognsdalfjøra to Gjerda Campsite Jøstedal
It was now past our usual lunchtime so we grabbed an instant dried trekking meal out of the bottom of the food bag, and made that. Seeing as we were to spend most of the day cold and wet this was actually a good idea. The trekking meals contain plenty of calories and are surprisingly rather yummy. My childhood experience of instant meals of various types was not particularly positive but it is good to see that much progress has been made in the intervening years.
The rain was unavoidable as we packed the tent up, and made our way via the toilet block to the exit. The day's cycle would consist of climbing up from Sogndal to Hafslo, descending back down to fjord level at Marifjøra before climbing back up to near the end of the Jøstedal and hopefully finding a nice campsite there. We hoped for better weather, but realistically looking around us it was set for the day, maybe a few days.
Today, in contrast to much of Sweden we had the wind with us, except of course as per Sod's Law not during the first climb. This started a couple of kilometres out of Kvam with a six hundred metre long tunnel. We nearly followed a sign for a cycle track which went round this tunnel but it was not at all clear if this track would end up where we wanted to go. So we plumped for the road and after making it through the tunnel safely carried on climbing fairly steadily. The valley was relatively narrow until we reached a coll at the top of it.
There the road squeezed through a narrow gap not occupied by the river and the view opened out showing us Hafslo and Hafslovatnet lake. The water had a greenish tinge rather like that of the fjords we had cycled along, and was to be part of our view for a good half hour. Halfway round the lake we started climbing again in earnest but then the weather distracted us mixing sunshine in with the clouds. Damae took some photos of her feet as well as the view. Our boots were water proof but water had been dribbling in all day off our legs and via our socks. The boots were not to dry out for several days, and as a consequence would begin to smell like a very very mature Camembert cheese.
A little further up we spotted a restaurant and decided it would be a great place for a cuppa, only it was closed. Undeterred we made use of the seats on the veranda to brew up some of our own tea and eat some sandwiches and take in the view. Just as we had finished they opened up, and we nearly stopped for a coffee. However we were not yet halfway to our goal and we still had a lot of climbing to do. Luckily for us we had stopped not too far from the top and on reaching it and after a couple of hundred metres of cycling on the flat the road went quite sharply downhill. Wheeeeeeeeee. Of course it was a little bitter-sweet moment as we knew we had now lost all the height we had gained. Plus we would be coming this way on the return journey and have to do it all over again. Such is Norway and anyway not having to pedal for a while was fun.
After a short section of muddy cycle path that avoided a tunnel, we hit the edge of Gaupne and took the left turning up the Jøstedal. Just after turning I noticed that the water seemed very high under the bridge. The parapets were almost under water, and the water itself had a beige colour very different to the greens of the water in the fjord.
Undeterred we headed on up the valley and much to our surprise a few small climbs apart the gradients were rather easy. We kept climbing up away from the swollen river and then returning to it. After about fifteen kilometres or so we started getting advice from motorist heading back down the valley that the road was blocked by floodwaters and that we should turn round. This makes sense in a car or camper, but not on a bike. Having used the calories ingested earlier in the day to climb to where we were, going back meant losing height again and wasting all that hard work. So we pushed on and a little further up were confronted with a wide section of road covered in a thin layer of water. We'd already passed a number of areas where the streams cascading from the valley walls, with nowhere to go were spilling over the tarmac. This however was a much bigger amount of water. Cycling carefully through the large puddle the road thereafter appeared to be clear so we pushed on.