The wheels, they keep spinning

Another couple of fairly active weekends have gone by. While I'm getting pretty good at racking up mileage on the bike, it seems I'm getting a bit lazy with blogging. Anyway, so I've always been rather curious about Drammen, that's probably got something to with the fact that we ended up biking there last weekend.

The weather seemed really perfect, and seeing how I'd never seen the local concept of a 'use and throw' barbecue grill in action, we decided to make it a picnic! Worked out quite nicely, I must say. So nicely, that we kinda lost track of time and had to take a train back home :).

Then there was the hike to Gaustatoppen. Seeing how the place is well over a hundred kilometres from Asker, we ended up driving for what seemed like forever :). But the hike itself was quite spectacular.

Unlike some other long hikes, you can quite clearly see your destination from the very start. Of course, one might be inclined to not believe that it's at all possible to cover such distances in a mere couple of hours! And then you see the snow :).

Yep, this is the middle of summer, and we were happily trudging through patches of snow that had braved the sun. The rest of the landscape was equally fantastic. Beyond a point, the whole hillside is covered in boulders, which in turn are covered in a green mossy sort of thing. This apparently is the work of centuries of freezing and thawing that's ruptured entire mountain sides!

You can supposedly see a seventh of all of Norway from the top of Gaustatoppen. I wonder who worked that out exactly, but we must have missed out on a few fractions of the view, seeing how the farthest rows of mountains were rather cloaked in a haze by the time we made it to the top. The store selling fresh waffles kinda made up for that though :).

Since the weather was particularly fine for most of the week, there were a couple of more forays to the beach and such. But this last Friday, we really outdid ourselves! The great thing with Drammensfjord is how the roads that skirt around it on either shore really cling to the coastline! This means that on a good clear day, you are constantly presented with stunning views of the fjord as you make your way around, all 60 kms of it :D.

This afternoon we decided to explore the Oslofjord side, and sure enough, the views were rather few and far between and the terrain a lot more challenging. But there's nothing like ending a long bike ride with a smoothie and an ice-cream, so I guess I can't really complain. Especially since I'm the one who planned the route :P.

Now where should we go next week?

Currently: I should be sleeping :|
Listening to: Sparklehorse - Revenge (ft. Wayne Coyne)