24/10/2025
It was now the 23rd of October and we needed to catch our return ferry to Denmark on 27th. In case you’re wondering why this blog is dated the 24th it’s because the date on the blog is the date of the last thing I talk about. This blog covers 23rd and early morning on 24th.
The plan was to drive south to Oslo, spend a day or two sightseeing and then go get the ferry. Luckily we were nearly back on the main E6 trunk road so the journey to Oslo should be pretty straightforward. It was about 740km from our parking spot to Oslo so we would have at least one overnight stop on the way.
Driving south
First things first, we stopped for some food at the supermarket. Now that we’re getting closer to the end of the trip we’re trying to live a bit more hand to mouth rather than building up stocks of food, so it was the essentials only, veg, bread and – of course – berliners.
Then we started to look out for toilet emptying options. There were so many of them on the E6 when we drove north, but as we made our way back south we could see that someone had been along the route to add red tape crosses to all of the closed facilities whether motorhome services, toilets or tourist attractions. I can understand why they are closed, it’s not worth the maintenance costs in winter. But it was very frustrating especially as we needed to cross our legs too as the toilet was full. Luckily a few facilities had been left open. Finally we were relieved – in more than one sense – to find a service area where we could empty the toilet and use the loo.
Between Levanger and Trondheim the E6 was interrupted by a diversion. We knew about this already as it had been big news in Norway. There had been a large landslip on 30th August which took out a long section of the E6. It’s a really narrow section of Norway bordered by the sea on one side and the Swedish border on the other. For a while heavy traffic had needed to divert via Sweden but fortunately a diversion had been created by adding some traffic control measures to small village roads and we were only slowed down a little.
You can just see the yellow jacket of the person controlling traffic in this narrow section of the diversion
Next we needed some LPG. The north of Norway doesn’t have many LPG opportunities and it had been over four weeks since our last refill. We stopped in the industrial park in Oppdal where we managed to fill with LPG more by luck than judgement. The payment machine was on the other side of the bay than the pump and the instructions were pretty non existent, but nontheless it must have been idiot proof.
Just a giant at a fuel station
Hjerkinn Parking
I was really keen to stop at Hjerkinn on the way back. If you remember this was where we had spotted the Musk Ox on the way north. It would be wonderful to see them again on our return.
This time we chose to stay in the car park on the way up to the Snøhetta viewpoint rather than in the campsite. But sadly the weather wasn’t good enough for Musk Ox spotting, low cloud came in and shrouded the whole area in a blanket of fog. And although it had lifted a little in the morning it was still pretty miserable. We will definitely be back here again though.
Parked up at the lower Snohetta carpark