Day 12 Repairs and considerations

The morning started off well enough dry weather with some clouds and some wind so its time to hang out some of the drapes the dogs sleep on and vent the cabin. While stuff is catching a fresh scent I did some recalculations on the holiday budget.

A hard choice to be made today, it’s depending on the repair costs I’ll be looking at. For now I’m mentally preparing for a possible wide U-turn and leaving the target for what it is. Ambitious and probably far fetched from the start but it got me some 2800km up which is allready an achievement with old Hermes.

The boys are just chilling on the fresh little breeze and are growing closer day by day some more

I just met the man who will be providing me with a replacement axle, unfortunately he arrived with the wrong type. My axle is of an older version of landrovers namely a series 2 which was replaced with newer versions of the axles in the series 3. The conversation about it wasnt clear and he was surprised to see an older axle type on my Hermes.

The very friendly Rolf is part of a landrover fan group in Norway Trondheim and he has driven a total 320km to get me the part which he will hand me for free. There are such warm and friendly people in the world, it fills my heart.

In return I have offered to pay for his fuel of course and write a piece on their fan group to submit to the Dutch landrover group LRCH. He told me he rather share the love for the landrover family, we will see how it turns out, for now it looks like a bottle of wine for his lady as he doesn’t drink himself.

He also invited me to a landrover gathering next wednesday near Trondheim. Which I considered and discussed some routes on the map. To me that’s and indication that I can’t go any higher North then Sandjoesan/Mo I Rana. He showed me a very nice route to drive and then go back down to that gathering. It will be fun to see the Norwegian versions of it landrovers, I hear they are harder to maintain then the other ones because most are maintained as ex military.

That makes the decision closer to final to me. Listening and looking at signals that drive our lives in directions that feel just, gives is less resistance and in this case the incident, all indications of resistance and assistance give me more and more the determination that this is probably close to the maximum I will be getting out of this Norwegian adventure.

So the U-turn will likely be happening at Sandnoesjen and then we will have done some 3200 kms getting back will be less kilometers and I’m budgetting on 6000 kms in total. I will decide when I’m at that point.

Did do some progress again after the 20 minute, repair job. And made it to the region of Namsos, no its not Greece. The way up to Namsos was dressed with gorgeous forrests with trees covering mountain sides only fractions smaller then the majestic fjords. The sweeping road crossed bridges, lakes, islands, valleys and towns.

One of the other benefits is that I likely will get to spend time with my sweet daughter when I’m back after I have washed and cleaned Hermes with the salt he is catching on these roads. I am missing her and her mum and am happy we have regular contacts and I get to see their faces frequently on video calls.

A constant stream of roadside warnings for crossing moose and reindeer tells the driver how close to nature this path of adventure is.

Searching for a nice suiteable spot off the main raod didn’t take little long. Next to a little stream just of the main road on an entry for two forrest walks.