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Day 22. Going home, Oslo via Gardemoen and Schiphol to Utrecht.

Distance and average: several hundred I guess!

We woke to another Norwegian summer's morning, not too cold but very dewy. We breakfasted trying to finish food off that we had bought the day before and started packing up. The last thing to go onto the bikes was the tent itself, we wanted to get it as dry as possible so left the doors open and let the breeze blow through. The sun shone, and to give it a helping hand we shook the condensation from the inside of the tent and let Mother nature do the rest.

We then went down the right side of the hill (where the buses to the campsite come up) and found a lovely view. If I'd known I would have taken my night photos from there rather than the restaurant. Also managed to find the ski-jump, and the Royal Palace, monolith and spire that I'd photographed from the monolith the day before. Then it was 'wheeeee' down the hill rolling fast, our last great descent of the trip (if you ignore the plane coming in to land).

We'd decided the night before to spend some time in the morning wandering round Oslo to use up the rest of our Norwegian Kroner. On arriving at the station left luggage section with bikes we put the bags into a largish locker again. The bikes we took outside and locked them to a railing on the side of the building, removing our saddles (one of the downsides of quick adjust/release saddles).

We checked times for the Toget (or should I actually say the Tog :) the express to the station and where we had to leave from. This train we discovered is lovely but expensive (we used it for our autumn trip to Oslo). But more of that later.

With the bikes locked up and luggage out of the way we headed back up the hill. We wanted to look at the cathedral and the cloisters round the back of it so we headed up through the pedestrianised area.

On arriving at the cathedral we wandered inside. Compared to other cities we have visited it is a modest affair, not at all grand. In fact reminded me more of an English parish church, with nice amounts of wood on the inside. But not a Cologne or Ulm.

In the area behind the Cathedral there was a lovely semi-circular cloisters with tables and a cafe. That morning there was also an arts and crafts market, with a multitude of stalls. A lot of the stalls had jewelery or tableware. But the range of styles and techniques was enormous.

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