So day 1 of our road trip involved a late departure from Bergen around midday. Getting back on the road was an amazing feeling, as driving is one of our favourite ways to travel and really see a country rather than just city hopping. After a few short breaks at picnic stops beside lakes, we smashed some kms out in order to reach our main destination for the day; our first national tourist route, known as the Hardangervidda. This was our first taste of 1 of 18 specially chosen routes that the norwegian government mapped out as the most beautiful drives in Norway and named "National Tourist Routes". Although as we've since learnt, almost every drive you do in Norway is amazingly scenic, and some of the best roads we've driven on were on the way TO a national tourist route! Having said that, Hardangervidda was an amazing drive through wide open expanses with long straight roads looking out across arctic flora and fauna and a great start to the road trip! That night we stayed in a very basic cabin with bunk beds in a holiday park in a small town called Geilo.

Day 2 took us onward from Geilo near the centre of Norway back west and north towards our next destination, the Aurlandsfjellet, which was our second tourist route drive. The drive took us almost past Flam, where we'd been only a few days earlier on a day trip, and along the huge Sognefjord past scenic Aurland and then climbed steeply up the mountain to a ceiling of the world lookout known as Stegastein. From there we continued on into the early evening and eventually arrived at our second nights accommodation near a small town called Skei. Although this was also in a holiday park, the two places were incomparable, as this park had only 5 small cabins available, and 4 of these including ours faced a large, fast-flowing waterfall barely 100 metres away. As we sipped on a drink with the sun setting, the waterfall flowing and the sheer cliffs around us watching over, we felt pretty content with life!

Day 3 was originally going to be our only day without a tourist route to base our day around, however after discovering that one of the lesser known routes was only a slight detour from our original route plan, we decided to include it on the road trip! From the moment we completed the windy climb up a mountain to begin the Gamle Strynefjellsvegen tourist route, we knew it was going to be something special. Huge green glacial lakes sat at the bottom of enormous cliffs leaking waterfalls from above every few hundred metres. The rough terrain was filled with mossy green rocks and larger boulders all spread out in a very scenic mess of greens and browns. The road itself was barely a one-way dirt and gravel road, which meant lots of manoeuvring around oncoming cars, but luckily these were few and far between, which added even more to the serenity (how's the serenity Darrel). That night we upgraded a little to a B&B set on a goat and raspberry farm, which was located in a small town called Norrdal in a valley surrounded by mountains. Highlights included our second story balcony view of the waterfalls running down the mountains, and a free farewell punnet of the freshest, tastiest, biggest raspberries we've ever had! Almost forgot to mention that day 3 also included our first ever car hire accident. As we were happily driving along on our way to our accommodation, a huge tractor parked on the side of the road pulled out straight into our side, scraping his digger all the way along the right side of our little hire car and smashing our side mirror. Luckily Nat was unhurt but we were a bit shaken up. We also got lucky in that the driver immediately admitted all fault, called his English speaking wife who came and assisted him in making a claim and contacting Avis so that we would not be charged for anything. We then took the car to a garage where an Avis mechanic looked at it and okay'd us to continue driving the car on our trip and dropping it off in Trondheim!

Day 4, our final full day of our first road trip (3 separate car hires on this trip!) was also the only day where we were aiming to hit two separate national tourist routes. First one is known as Trollstigen, and is easily the scariest, most narrow winding road we've ever been on. First we started up at the viewing platform, to fully witness the craziness of a narrow mountain road with 11 hairpin bends and full sized buses running up and down. As the clouds floated over the road and totally obscured any view on the road we realised how dangerous the drive would be! After somehow getting around a huge tourist bus as it came around one of the blind hairpin turns at us, we made it safely to the bottom of the mountain and with a sigh of relief we headed for our next goal, the Atlantic Road. This was our most anticipated tourist road as we had seen it on the Norway tourism website with all its bridges arcing from island to island. As it turned out, the road was a bit of an anti-climax after the thrill of the Trollstigen, but was still worth the drive! Our final night was spent at the end of a fjord in another B&B this time perched on top of a hill with clear views of the fjord from our bedroom window.

In the morning we quickly hurried down a breakfast and then were off to Trondheim to drop the car off and jump on the Hurtigruten cruise ship!