2026 North to the Nordics and Nordkapp, Thu June 25, 2026

Feda, Norway → Flørli, Norway

I'm heading out early to make sure I arrive in time for the 3pm ferry to Flørli from Lysebotn. Since there is no road to Flørli and there's no vehicle ferry tomorrow, I'm going to leave the scooter in Lysebotn while I take the passenger-only ferry to Flørli this afternoon, then back early tomorrow morning and continue my ride from Lysebotn.

I'm back out on the unpaved road to Fosseland Hytter at 7:40am. As soon as I get to the highway, I snap some pictures of beautiful fjords, then enter tunnels through the mountains. Some of these tunnels are really amazing with complete interchanges inside the mountain.

I rode through forests with pretty streams and waterfalls, then through the Setesdal valley along the Otra river (Norway's 8th largest river emptying into Kristiansand). In this region, I saw a lot of sod-roofed houses and sod-roofed barns, and even sod-roofed bus stops. They are iconic and very pretty.

Then up to higher altitudes and over a moonscape full of mirror alpine lakes with little waterfalls where one lake spills over into the next. There were a lot of sheep, so important to be not-too-enthusiastic about my riding. Quite a few motorcycles up here too.

Alec and Linda back in Nice, France sent pictures of severe weather including tornados off the coast of Nice! I'm glad to be experincing perfect, early-summer weather so far in Norway.

As altitude increases, the forest thins out and the terrain turns rocky with lots of lakes. There are a lot of sheep grazing up here which demands cautious riding. (Tomorrow I would see a sheep that was hit on the road, so I'm not sure if it was a careless driver or a startled sheep, but incidents do happen.) As altutude increase, it also gets colder. I stopped to put on my wind pants and the nearby sheep, instead of walking or running away, came over to investigate and wanted to taste my pants. Annnoyyyying! ;-)

At the top of the plateau, there's a shrine area with lots of cairns (little stacks of rocks) and a parking area. There were several motorcycles parked there including the French guy and the Italian guy from the Ferry. I got a selfie pic with the French guy and the Italian guy took my picture standing on a rock. Turns out we are all heading in the same direction and I would see them again at the ferry dock in Lysebotn.

Continuing down County Road 500, I went down the fameous 27 hairpin turns. These are pretty high radius turns, not like the tight course reversals (Tournata) in Italy. Also, the way the mountain rolls off, there's no place where you can really see the whole road. I've inserted an aerial (drone?) shot of the road though. See below.

At the bottom, the road enters an 1100 meter tunnel that goes 500m back into the mountain, does one final hairpin turn inside the mountain, then continues 500m back to exit a bit below the entrance. I stopped inside the tunnel and got a video of riding inside the tunnel. Wild!

Then I arrived at the Lysebotn harbor about 1.5 hours early for my ferry to Flørli. I hung out for a while snacking, then went for a walk and found a restaurant where I got a pork and vegetable stew. Very tasty. The waitress took my picture on a big rainbow chair as I was leaving.

Back to the dock, I left the scooter, took my bags and got on the ferry for a short, 14km ride to Flørli.

In Flørli, I checked in, and carried my bags about 700 m up to the Historic Hostel building. I had a picnic dinner outside while contemplating my options for hiking. The trail up the 4444 stairs and back down was estimated at 3 hours which seemed a bit too long for me, so I took another trail up to the waterfall. That was a lot of vertical gain (400 meters, 1300 ft) and quite strenuous. My hike took me 2hrs up and 1hr down, so in the end it was 3hrs anyway. The waterfall was pretty impressive. On the way up, I met several people who I stopped to talk with. One woman was wearing a Norway soccer team jersey while I was wearing my Torino Football Club jersey, so that enabled a fun conversation. Later on the trip I looked and looked for a team Norway jersey, but they were all sold out. But I got one on Amazon after the trip. I thought I might try going down the stairs, but I read a warning sign and never actually found the top of the stairs. I'm not sure I was actually high enough to find the top of that trail.

Anyway, I found my way back down. Back in the hostel, I found a coffee table book telling the story of the saving of the town of Flørli. When the powerplant was renovated and a new hydroelectric plant was built inside the mountain with feed piping carved into the granite, the power company was tasked with removing the town and returning the site to nature. But people who had lived there, grown up there, objected and out of the protest came this project to restore and renovate the town to make it a site for summer Hytter (cabins) and tourist destination. Hessel Haker petitioned the city of Stavanger and they let him restore the town and operate it as a hotel. I went down to the powerplant building to talk with Hessel and we had a converation about the restoration process, the politics, etc. It seems the city of Stavanger isn't giving him a very nice thank-you for doing the restoration. He is allowed to operate the facility, but has no ownership stake and gets no money to maintenance and further restoration. He is in a tough situation. I hope they figure out the marketing because they have something pretty fantastic, if only they could find the people in the world who want to go there.

I have to be up early in the morning to catch the 6:45am passenger ferry back to Lysebotn to collect my scooter tomorrow morning.

A note about GPS and elevation above mean sea level

I'm in a Norwegian fjord and I notice that my GPS elevation is like 54 meters while I'm not more than 3 meters above the water level and that water is connected directly to the Atlantic Ocean. In Norway, the smooth WGS84 ellipsoid model used by raw GPS satellites sits roughly 30 to 45 meters below the actual sea surface, depending on exactly how far north or west you are. This dramatic difference is caused by two distinct local factors:
The Fennoscandian Gravity Dip: The solid Earth beneath Norway is still recovering from the last Ice Age. Because massive, heavy glaciers compressed the crust for thousands of years, the mantle material shifted away. Even though the land is slowly rebounding (rising), the density of the earth beneath Scandinavia is still slightly lower than average, creating a subtle deficit in local gravity. Less gravity means water is pulled less tightly to the Earth's core, allowing the actual ocean surface (the geoid) to bulge outward and sit much higher than the mathematical ellipsoid.
Fjord Topography: Fjords are incredibly deep, steep-walled, U-shaped valleys carved out by glaciers. When floating at sea level inside a fjord, you are surrounded by massive, steep rock walls that rise up over 1,000 meters above you. These walls block satellite signals and cause multipath. Because the vertical calculation relies on clean, geometric lines from satellites near the horizon, losing those low-angle signals drastically reduces altitude accuracy.
Because of this 30+ meter gap, the official Norwegian Mapping Authority (Kartverket) continuously updates advanced local models to help surveyors correct raw GPS measurements to match Norway's actual tide gauges. I guess my Google Pixel 10 Android phone does not do the localized geoid correction needed for Norway. I wonder if my airplane's GPS would work for landing in Norway.


Fosseland Hytter → Lyseboten and Flørli

Fosseland Hytter to Lyseboten and Flørli

Ride Log