Day 23, Saved by the Sculptures!

We woke in our wilderness camping spot, having had a very windy night, and I do mean outside the van in case you were wondering! The wind was so strong it had blown our neighbour’s big canoe away from his T5.

We left to begin the very very long drive to Oslo. We had both been dreading this as it meant a return to busy roads, and the E6 all the way in.

As it happens, we followed an amazing river for hours. We stopped several times to cross the river Otta on little bridges by foot. I’ve never seen such an active river; there were so many waterfalls. The water was the clearest river water I’ve ever seen, and varied from rushing and tumbling over rocks into a huge serene deep turquoise lake.

Eventually, however, we had to leave the lovely scenery behind and head into urban territory. It was a huge 6.5 hour drive for Lyn, and we were glad to get into the camp site. As it is a capital city we had resigned ourselves to having to pay for a camp site, and there is only one really in Oslo. We ended up getting here at 6.30pm, and paid a whopping 92 pounds to say here two nights. Wow. That stings after so many free nights!

We pitched up and relaxed, and then headed out to search for the Sommeroya festival that was nearby to us. This is one of Oslo’s electronic music festivals, and we could hear the bass clearly from Harvey. We walked out of our camping field and straight into the Ekebergparken sculpture park adjacent to us.

We followed our ears and found our way to the boundary fences of the concert, and watched for free. We weren’t going to pay 120 pounds each to get in! We watched for a while then went off to explore the sculpture park. Lyn and I both enjoy looking at sculptures and wondering what they mean, and how the heck the artist got their inspiration; drugs, alcohol, both?

This park was fabulous. We loved stumbling across the sculptures dotted where you would not expect to see them. There was a Damien Hirst “Anatomy of an Angel” standing by the sides of some massive ornamental steps that had been part of a German military cemetery until the powers that be had the graves removed and sent elsewhere in 1952.

The most creepy sculpture was of a giant woman, frozen in a walking stance right in the middle of the path. As you walked towards her you could tell, there was something not quite right, and felt as if someone was watching you! Her height made her Lyn’s ideal woman!

Other sculptures included a silver swirly couple hanging cuddling from the trees, one that looked like me laying down, and one very weird one called “The Traveller”. I’ll leave you guys which one is which!

Back to the van now, listening to the bass whilst dinner is cooking, and the van is rattling. We passed at eating at the little café in the campsite, where a takeaway pizza would have set us back 22 pounds each.

We are going into Oslo tomorrow, so that should be a fun filled expensive day!