Journey to Hjelmeland

So long tiny hotel room, you served me well!

Remembering how tasty those sausage rolls were at the cafe yesterday, I made a point to raid them again today.

In addition to the sausage rolls, and a slice of quiche, I got a croissant that was so buttery it actually made a large C-shaped butter stain on the inside of the box they gave me. I think I’ve found the Norway version of my “Best Café”…

On the way to the docks I caught another manhole for my collection:

I checked the ferry schedule again and realized I had a couple hours to kill, so I meandered though the tourist section again and sorted more photos in a coffee shop.

My wanderings led me to this fellow. Imposing!

I arrived at the ferry terminal early, so I wandered around a bit, then charged my laptop and poked photos in the waiting area.

The terminal was surprisingly compact. It had eight separate stations where a boat could dock, and each was only about the length of a boat. The pilots actually moved them in sideways, which was pretty impressive to watch.

When my boat arrived, one of the deckhands showed me a spot under the stairs and handed me a bungee cord, trusting me to secure the bike. Boarding and departing took only a couple of minutes.

The boats were much faster on the water than I expected!

We made a bunch of stops, ping-ponging north and south between some islands.

After about an hour I arrived in Hjelmeland and shoved my bike back over the ramp. The boat scooted away. My water shortcut saved about a day of riding on the Eurovelo 1, and I was fine with it. Too many boat rides too close together made for a messy schedule.

Nearby I noticed another, larger dock with a car ferry getting ready to take on passengers. It looked like an entirely different system. According to my map it ran a triangular route between just three terminals: Hjelmeland, Nesvik, and Ombo. The Eurovelo used it, but I planned to skip it.

I knew I should find the hostel where I would be camping, but my first order of business was snacks. There was just one restaurant in all of Hjelmeland that was still open: A “thai” place right next to the terminals. I ordered a family-size meal of fish and rice and tucked it away in a bag.

With that done, I rode to the hostel. A harried man in a t-shirt and cargo pants gave me a brief tour, using English with a heavy eastern-European accent. I asked him if there were any rooms, in case I could trade up from a campsite, and he said “No. At capacity.” Later on I realized it wasn’t because they had a ton of customers, it was because they were making major repairs to the plumbing before the busy season.

And they were very necessary: I tried to take a shower and the drain didn’t work at all, but I didn’t notice because the shower was actually a partially-tiled closet with a wooden door. Water ran beneath the door and into the common bathroom area, where there was another drain in the floor … which was also clogged. When I stepped out of the shower the entire bathroom was flooded, with drifts of soap and dirt slowly creeping towards the drain. I had to dry off in the kitchen.

Hostels! You get what you pay for.

Anyway, I decided on a patch of ground in the back yard, right next to a fence. It only took a few minutes to make camp.

There was still plenty of light, and I could see rain elsewhere over the fjord. Quite majestic!

As I was falling asleep, I realized just how strange the ambient sound was. I could hear the usual birdsong and wind, and the small waves of the ocean inside the fjord as they flicked at the coastline, but in the distance I could also hear the motors of several ferry boats moving in different directions offshore.

At regular intervals one of them would approach the dock. That made a surge of larger waves, then as the boat docked I heard clanking metal, and finally a deep booming sound as the vehicle ramp smacked into the pavement. Sometimes a few car engines would start and I’d hear the hissing of tires as they drove out.

It wasn’t loud enough to keep me awake, but it was captivating. I set the phone to record and perched it near the top of the tent, in a little storage area, and over the next eight hours as I slept it recorded a really unique soundscape. A couple days later I made some minor edits to it, then cut it into half-hour chunks. Now it’s ready for regular listening on my “falling asleep” playlists.

Hjelmeland shore at night, Parts 1 through 7