Navigation
Where am I?:^mistymornings-->Cycletouring-->2008-->Norway.-->Day 26

Day 26-2. A day sightseeing in Røros and an evening cycle to Langen contd.

The result of this hard life, and the relative poverty of the mineworkers (the Danes creamed off all the profits) is that there was no money to build new houses for the residents and hence no drive to modernise the town. The resulting mix of buildings that remain from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries range from the grand to the colloquial. The old centre of town is a delight to see and combined with plenty of shops (for a town of five thousand people) in the centre we decided quite quickly that Røros would make a pleasant place to live.

We wandered up through town under overcast skies looking for a place to sit down and have a bite to eat. We found a bench on Kjerkgata not far from Cafe Tryggstad and the Fokus bank and sat down. It promptly started drizzling so we ate a little hurridly in the warm summer rain. Just as we had finished eating the sun came out. We then walked down a little alley from Kjerkgata to Bergmannsgata as we had spotted a G-Sport shop there. We had a quick look inside, I found a gas adaptor for Trangia cookers which was a fair bit cheaper than in Holland. We left the shop, and walked back to Kjerkgata in the sunshine. To say that the weather was changeable today was a bit of an understatement. After a bit of vague dilly-dallying we then decided to cut through to the bottom of Lorenz Lossius gata and walked up along the river to the Smelthytta. This is not the 'original' one but a re-creation to give an impression of what it was like. The old burnt down many years ago. We had a peek into a couple of courtyards on the way up before stumbling on a small summer market with traditional wares and traditional folk music in the square across from the Smelthytta.

The church is one of the few stone buildings in the town and the spire is visible from most parts of the town. It was now time to take a look at it so we walked across to it. We went in and found a guide who spoke excellent English. After hearing about the history of the church we asked a few questions about what it was like to live in Røros. We got some interesting answers back especially to my question "What is the worst thing about living in Røros". The guide replied with "The long cold winters". Røros, it seems is known for having harsh winters sandwiched between a spring and an autumn that each can be as short as one week. In contrast, the summer weather, despite the clouds threatening to rain again seemed quite fine but we wondered what it actually was like to be there in the depths of winter. We thanked the guide for his time, and took some pictures of the colourful interior before going back outside.

The sky that was threatening to rain as we left the church, then turned into rain as we walked back down to our bikes. Everything was just as we left it and we decided to end our rest day in Røros by walking back with our bikes to Cafe Trygstad for a sticky bun. It was quite late in the day, about a quarter of an hour before closing time and we wolfed our food down, used the loos before heading off towards Langen Gjestegard.

We started cycling out of town along the RV 30 and after crossing the river we turned left, cycling past a relatively new housing development at Gjøssvika. The houses here looked nice enough but it was quite different to the town centre. Within a few minutes we had left the 'suburbs' or Røros behind. We cycled past a mix of scrub forest and farmland and evidence of a developed cycle sign infrastructure and our navigation consised of following signs for cycle route 20.

Within an hour of leaving Cafe Tryggstad the tarmac stopped. It was replaced with reasonably well surfaced gravel albeit with potholes and corrugatings in the usual places in bends and where vehicles needed to accelerate. We also noticed that local cycle routes of which there was a good network in the Røros area were well signposted. The scenery was nice enough as we carried on down local cycle route 20. The clouds were blocking a lot of the light and it was starting to get dark. As we neared Langen Gjestegard we got a wonderful view of the high mountains that ringed Lake Femunden. This made us look forward to the views we'd get from the boat tomorrow. Damae whizzed off down the hill towards the Gjestegard and I only caught up with her as we reached the turning into the hotel grounds. It had taken us two easy hours to cycle the thirty five kilometres from Røros to Langen and we were now ready for a bite to eat and bed.

Previous page Next page