Tuesday 11 July 2017

Tuesday 11 July - Mosjøen and NE of Garland

Where’s Bertie? He's in the same car park as he was on 24 June (exact location: 64.54405, 12.45399)

A country can't have as many gushing streams and rivers and as much green as Norway without lots of rain and today the country gave us an extensive display of its powers of precipitation. From 0930 to 1645 there were but a few fleeting dry periods.

We frittered away one of those dry periods finishing up our elevenses in a car park in Mosjøen, such that by the time we stepped out to have a look at the town, rain was falling again, albeit gently at that time.

We had driven right by Mosjøen on our way north, but this time we spared it the time for a look around, with the impression that it would take about ten minutes. I think it actually took twenty.

By appearances there is laundry drying in one of the streets ... it's actually part of the current arts festival in the town.

Restored Shell Station

Mick, feeling a bit tired, has a rest on a little chair

South of Mosjøen it had been my intention to direct us out to the E17 to take a less direct, more coastal, route down to Steinkjer. However, after perusal of the guidebooks and the tourist brochures, I couldn't find that there was any real attraction in going that way. I'm sure there is nice scenery, but if even the tourist brochures couldn't sell the area, then I doubted it was going to be anything better than we saw up north or will see down south. Add in the factor of that route being appreciably longer and involving a couple of ferries, and we opted to repeat our outward drive along the E6 instead.

Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain. What better day to dive off the main road to see another waterfall? This was one to which I had intended to detour on our way north, but failed to notice the sign posts pointing it out. Today I did see them and, being lunch time, we killed two birds with one stone.

We would have got wet at the spot from where I took this snap even if it hadn't been raining.

This spot was far enough away not to get the spray

It was an impressive amount of water tumbling down the rock step.

A couple of hours more driving (including another lengthy engine-off wait at some roadworks - it's the problem with having so few roads - when you resurface you have to keep the road open, there being no scope for a diversion) took us to the place where we intended to spend the night. Very pleasant, it was, with an excellent watery view. But the weather was miserable and the slope went against the direction in which we wanted to park. So, on the basis of a rainy day being a good day to get in some miles, we reset the SatNav for the kipping spot we had used three weeks ago.

This place was remarkable then for the huge gushing waterfall at the top of which the car park sits (indeed, it was only the sight of the waterfall from the road that caused us to pull in and discover the car park). This is how that fall looked then:

This is how it looks today:


It appears that someone at the hydroworks (probably one higher up the river, rather than the one next to us) has turned the tap off!

Wildlife sighting of the day: Two moose standing in a river. I would have loved to have got a snap of that, but there was nowhere to pull in.

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