Tag Archives: rondane

Road trip Scandinavia: Day 13 (Hiking in the Rondane, and the Ringebu stave church)

Today we went hiking again, this time in the Rondane National Park. The route, which was considerably flatter than the ones from the previous hikes (details on Strava), started just a few kilometres from our hotel, at the end of a short toll road (to Spranget). We followed some narrower paths along the small river (sometimes through bushes, moors, and small streams) on the way to the Rondvassbu hut, which is situated at the Rondvatnet lake.

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There I still “climbed” a bit higher to be able to take pictures from above, before we got something to eat and drink inside (hot chocolate and a waffle with strawberry jam for me, coffee and a slice of banana bread for Clio). On the way back we took the much easier main gravel road, which ran a bit higher on the other, Eastern side of the river.

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The scenery was very beautiful, I think this is my favourite from the Norwegian National Parks that we have visited (it is also the oldest one of all). We saw quite a lot of birds (at one point almost stepped on one), but unluckily no larger animals. As it might be also visible on the pictures, the beginning of the day was nice and sunny, but then it became more and more cloudy towards the afternoon.

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After the hike we drove to Ringebu first to visit another stave church, then further all the way down to Lillehammer. We are staying in the Scandic Victoria hotel, but for most of the evening it was raining quite hard, so we only went out for dinner (to the Heim Gastropub, which was great). Tomorrow we can finally sleep a bit longer, if everything goes according to the plan.

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Odometer reading at the end of the day: 3151 km (of which 137 km was today).