Biking in Norway

Every once in a while you see a movie that you had never seen a trailer for, one that your friends haven't told you the plot, one that doesn't fit the genre formulas; and it turns out to be the very best film you have ever seen, the kind of movie you can't wait to tell someone about.

Our bike ride from Flåm to Myrdal was just about like that. Kip called it one of the best days of his life. It started out with us deciding to rent bikes and go for a short ride to see 400 year old church. It was actually Sunday morning and that seemed like a nice thing to do. Kip had wanted to ride the Flåmbana railroad up to Myrdal and rent bikes back to Flåm. But we found out that the train ride would be $100 and we were planning to take it the next day on our way out of Flåm to Oslo, so we opted for just renting bikes and peddling around the area.

We through a couple of apples and a bottle of water in a backpack and headed out. It was storybook beautiful with idyllic farms with a few sod houses and contented flocks of sheep.

We found the church, took pictures and decided to go just a little further.

The door was open, but no one was inside. Can you imagine how many weddings and Christmas Eve services there have been here since 1660?

Sod roof

We decided to go a little further. The road was getting steeper, but we could see waterfalls in the distance and it was only just noon.

Ewe and her lambs going for a walk

That look on Kip's face means, wow, we just road bikes over a waterfall. Isn't this amazing?

By this time we were both hooked. Could we ride all the way to Myrdal? It was almost 3,000 feet in elevation from where we started. We decided to go a little further.