The peterbergers ready to go

Norway and Beyond started in a typical Peterberger Fashion: long miles and hills.  After all, this is Norway – what do you expect?

We had the pleasure of spending our first two days in Oslo with Linfield Alum Katie and Morton Neilsen.  Morton completed a year study abroad at Linfield.  Katie and Morton met at Linfield on one of the Outdoor Club excursions to the Jefferson Wilderness. Now they live in Oslo and have two beautiful children Sandra and Benjamin.  Katie and Morton were perfect hosts putting up with our gear taking over their apartment.  Taking us shopping to buy those last minute things we forgot.  Three of us and all of our gear can be a pretty big imposition.  Besides their company, the best part was the introduction to Norwegian food and the personal tour guide around Oslo!  Thank you Kate and Morton for helping make the start of our journey fabulous!

Their apartment had a secure room for bicycles in the basement which we used to store and build our bicycles.  The only item we seemed to have not bought with us was an 8mm hex wrench needed for my pedals. We found one in town (well, we had to buy a whole wrench set).  Once our bikes were settled, the three of us were anxious to get on the road. Alexa was limited a bit by time as she was using some of her vacation weeks for this trip.  So we headed out in the morning of June 12, 2014.  With Katie, Sandra and Benjamin ready to assist and taking photos, we pumped our tires, loaded our gear on our bikes and made last minute adjustments.  And we were off.

The weather was perfect and our first days ride was long, hilly and scenic.  We made our way out of Oslo and were hoping to take the coast route all the way to moss. But as we found out fairly quickly, the cycle route sign posts are not always reliable. So we ended up going inland over very big hills.  Not our ideal first day from a getting used to being on the bike perspective- but a perfect introduction to bike touring in Norway.  Just north of As, a long hill had me walking my bike and Alexa claiming that her heart is going to burst once she made it to the top.

There were no camp grounds in Moss- and the closest camp ground was 10 km away- which probably would have been beautiful – but we were knackered and did not fancy the extra mileage.  So we opted for wildcamping on the Sourthern tip of Joley.  Our camp was situated on the shores of the North sea with perfect views of the Ferry to Horton, which we took the next morning.