Norway to Luxembourg

From Oslo we travelled down Norway to Kristiansand where we took the ferry back to Denmark. We had seen a programme about the northern tip of Denmark where the North Sea meets the Baltic Sea so we had to have a look. This map is on the beach at Grenen.

Here I am looking at the two seas meeting.

From Grenen we moved down to Aarhus, Denmark's second city.

The picture below shows one of the many houses we saw that had this type of thatch.

After Aarhus we stayed in Aabenraa before finally leaving Denmark.

Before moving across industrialized Germany we thought we'd visit the coast. I think Scharbeutz must be a well kept secret. It is a lovely seaside town - it even has donkey rides on the beach.

The woven wicker seats on the beach were everywhere, people even had them on their balconies and in gardens. Riding along the coast there were plenty of lovely holiday homes.

From Scharbeutz we travelled to Hamelin. It is the prettiest medieval town (with lots of salt dough rats). We rode into town on our bikes.

Here are some of the well painted buildings.

After Hamelin we left Germany and drove into Luxembourg. We stayed just outside the capital which meant we could ride in along the river. To reach the upper town we had to go in a bike lift.

From here we will move through Belgium and into France, back to Calais before returning home.

Stockholm to Oslo, Norway

We made it to our northernmost destination - Oslo. It was a trip of 2134 miles and took three weeks and four days.

The roads remained empty but the landscape did change as we moved west. There was still lots of forest, with the elk proof fence alongside all motorways but it gradually became more hilly. In fact whilst driving through Norway we drove through mountains and past ski slopes.

Norway did not seem to have as many lakes as we saw in Sweden but the views were still amazing. The top left picture is me enjoying an evening drink on the beach (taken from next to the van).

These are some of the things we saw on the journey from Stockholm to Oslo.

As with the other cities Oslo had some interesting buildings - there was much more of a mixture of styles, including an area with very modern high rise buildings. The traffic was the worst that we had seen. As well as the many cyclists there were also lots of people on 'landskis' - small skis on wheels. I can only assume people are preparing for the snow.

Of course we found another Viking museum. This time it was three boats and items that had been found in burial mounds. Again the details were fantastic and I'm sure there will be a series of work based on the Viking decoration.

Stockholm

You may have noticed that I quite like buildings - well Stockholm wins. It has the most amazing variety of buildings. We spent two days cycling round the city.

I love the variety of roof tops.The old city was very lovely too, all dark cobbled streets.

We went to the VASA museum which contains the resurrected ship from the 17th century. 98% of the ship is original. The preservation processes have destroyed the original colours but extensive research has found evidence of the colours and they have produced reproductions.

The pictures above are of the actual ship. The ones below are reproductions - sculptures are life size but the ship is a model.

These are the pigments that were used to paint the ship.

The ship sank on its maiden voyage and remained undisturbed for over 300 years. As well as lots of equipment quite a lot of clothing and footwear was found, even some of the sails were still folded up.

Boots and shoes

Remains of the main sail.