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Day 8. Jøssingfjord to Svinesland.

We stopped to take some pictures just after leaving the tunnel. I found the group laying the tables. This gives and idea if just how massive Jøssingfjord really is as does this picture of Damae.

On the way down we saw two little houses nestling by the water under an enormous overhang of rock. I did not want to waste the speed we had built up by stopping to take a photo, so we zoomed past the photo opportunity to the foot of the climb out of the fiord.

The big reward of the day was a sign telling us just how far we'd got vertically, the (metaphorical and real) high point of the day. There was still a lot of climbing ahead of us before we would reach the campsite.

The 'interesting thing' about the day was that with every notably large climb we headed back to sea level. So the total of the big climbs came up to approaching 1000m (no idea what all the small drops added up to on top of that). We lunched in Åna-sira. We enjoyed the fast downhill section before Åna-sira whilst realising we whould have to climb again soon. The hot sunny weather was back which we felt as we started climbing out of the fjord. We walked up this short section, partly because it was steep and partly because of the post lunch dip.

By the time we hit Flekkefjord we were getting weary. Svinesland seemed a long way away and we discussed just camping wild. In the end after a cuppa and frequent stops we decided to push on and were rewarded with a lovely section running on the old main road. This was now pretty much just a driveway for the people living in the area. An occasional car reminding us that we were on a road and not a cycle path. It wound round the valley, shaded with trees climbing but not excessively so. A cool relaxing way to finish the day.

Svinesland was a small campsite next to the main road (and roadworks for a new tunnel) and a small lake. Lovely. We arrived in the sun and pitched our tent in a spot with a view. There were a few large caravans with Norwegian plates and a couple of tents. A gentleman in the caravan next to the water, was building an enormous deck on the side the van and was busy sawing for the first couple of hours.

A while later a Dutch couple arrived and a lone traveller (who had cycled up from the Netherlands) turned up. It was lucky that we met these people when we did. We had set off on our trip without much preparation (bought the guides and a roadmap) not thinking that ferries etc might not run. As it turns out summer in Norway offically ends mid August, and this meant that some ferries between small islands stopped running or ran much reduced services. One of these ferries we needed to take stopped after the 13th. So we now had a goal, we had to get to Risør in time to get the ferry.

In the middle of the night we were disturbed by arguments in the valley, seemingly in a mixture of Dutch and Norwegian. After a short while things quietened down again and we slept through until morning.

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