The summer weather in the mountains between Bergen and Oslo varies almost by the hour. The plateau of Lake Sønstevann is very cold. It has rained overnight and we are reluctant to climb out of our tent. After coffee and musli, we start to ride wearing many layers. The air is crisp and clear and the plateau is beautiful, with snowy peaks beyond. As we descend into the neighboring valley it warms up and we see goats and sheep grazing on the hillsides.

We ride through Rjukan, a company town built by the state hydro electric company in the early 1900s. Identical buildings and houses line the main street with valley walls riding dramatically on either side, so steep that the town gets no direct sunlight six months of the year and recently built a massive mirror on one of the cliffs above town to track and redirect sunlight towards the town square. Happily for us, it’s summer and the sun is overhead as we sit in a park drying our tent out and eating a delicious lunch of knekkebrøt (delicious seed crackers), hummus, tomatoes and fruit. The small towns of Norway seem to have exceptional infrastructure. We notice beautiful parks with clean bathrooms and great play equipment for kids, attractive primary schools with lots of outdoor play areas, business and train service and good grocery stores. Another big climb awaits us after lunch, up to the mountain lake of Møsvatn. It’s a grind, but the lake is gorgeous and we find another gem of a campsite right on the lake and take a refreshingly frigid swim to clean off.

Dawn is a mix of pinks and blues and we enjoy our coffee watching the lake.

We make our way towards the town of Dalen and the Telemark Canal, a long 70 kilometer descent. There are ski areas and developments of mountain cabins along the way and we are struck by the low impact design, with green roofs that make the cabins blend in with the landscape. These developments also have centralized parking, so people walk into the cabins and there aren’t big garages and cars in front of them. Trash, compost and recycling is also centralized at a large collection area with big bins on the way out of town.

Per usual, the weather turns and we get cold rain, which requires that we put back on our puffy jackets and rain gear, but doesn’t diminish the beauty in the least.

We arrive in Dalen after a minor scrape with law enforcement. The road into Dalen drops almost 2,000 feet in a few kilometers of very steep decline. It is not a road I would want to ride up on a fully loaded touring bike. Which is why we were incredulous when a peevish road construction worker standing a few hundred feet from the bottom told us the road was closed and that we would have to ride back up and take an alternate road, a massive climb and thirty kilometers out of our way. Admittedly, we had seen a sign many kilometers back that in retrospect probably made this clear…but it was in Norwegian! So we feigned ignorance and rolled right on by, a faint voice behind us yelling, “I call police!”

We are not spending the night in jail. Rather we fimd a room at the historic Dalen Hotel, a landmark that should be the set for a Wes Anderson movie. At reception we are asked if we would like the three or five course dinner tasting menu, and by the way do we have proper dinner attire that meets the dress code? Ahem, no. There is even a group of guests elegantly strolling across the vast green lawn in white robes, on their way to the floating sauna on the Telemark Canal.

It is a delightful dose of comfort and after two nights of bathing in alpine lakes, the hot shower feels heavenly.