2012 July 11

Locked
David and Susan Bratt
Posts: 412
Joined: Wed Nov 30, 2005 9:11 pm

2012 July 11

Post by David and Susan Bratt »

We have been dealing with rather weak internet connections and blog loading problems for a few days. It has been frustrating trying to resolve it all. We needed a good internet connection at the right time of day to make a phone call to our blog server in the US. One day we tried at a hotel while watching the Tour de France (2 Pepsis = $12) but didn’t get anywhere. The next day we found a cafe with free internet, but lots of noise from the street four feet away had David shouting into the phone (2 fruit smoothies =$16). So much for free internet, and who knows what the phone call to the US will cost. But we hope we now have the problem solved.

Yesterday we left Rover in a parking lot in Notodden and took a bus about 45 miles on a road we didn’t want to drive. Our destination was Rjukan, the site of a hydro power plant at Vemork, where the Germans in WWII made heavy water for nuclear research. The result was a famous sabotage story, a pretty good movie, and (the town hopes) new life as a tourist destination for this now economically depressed region.
heavy water.JPG
heavy water.JPG (145.01 KiB) Viewed 3117 times
Rjukan is strung out for several hilly miles in a narrow valley, requiring us to take taxis to get where we wanted to go. This included crossing a very narrow bridge 84 meters above the water.
bridge.jpg
bridge.jpg (203.55 KiB) Viewed 3117 times
We were glad we were not driving Rover. Susan asked the taxi driver to stop so she could get a photo of the bridge. He said no one had ever asked him to do that before.The town also offers a trip up the mountain in the oldest cable car still in operation (originally used to take laborers up to the sunshine once in a while, since the valley is so deep that town gets very little direct sunlight). We are told you can see 1/6th of Norway from the top, but not when that top is covered in clouds, as it was during our visit . . . so we decided to skip that trip.

Today we first headed to Heddal to see the 800+ year old wooden stave church, the largest of the few remaining examples of these old churches. “Stave” refers to the large wooden posts inside that hold up the high roofs. They are just amazing structures. Like the others we’ve visited, this one was set in the middle of a cemetery with some very old gravestones. The lowest roofline covers a "hallway" that runs all the way around the outside of the church.
heddal stave.jpg
heddal stave.jpg (199.95 KiB) Viewed 3117 times
Rover 2002 24ft RB

www.ourtravelswithrover.com
Locked

Return to “Our Travels With Rover”