Going for a drive

I am not sure why, but for some reason there were basically no rental cars available in Trondheim. I rang at least 3 places who all said they were booked out before getting a call back from the rental place attached to the hotel I was staying at. They managed to find me a car as long as I was able to pick up and return it on the same day. Not a problem, I just want to go out and back in a day.

I picked up the Lexus from the back of the hotel and spent a while getting everything I could speaking in English and setting a destination into the built-in navigation.

My only navigation plan was to head north of Trondheim looking for fjords.

My first stop was Steinvikholm Slott, a castle from the 16th century built on the instructions of the bishop after meeting with the pope. During summer it looks like people fish around here and there was a hut with information about fishing licenses (or something similar). It looked like it had been abandoned for the winter.

The castle sits on a small island just off the shore. There was what looked like bits of a foot bridge that had either fallen down or hadn’t been finished yet, but it was possible at walk over to the island at what I am assuming was low tide.

I got my camera backpack and picked my way through the rocks over to the island.

I did a lap of the castle walls looking for the entrance. I swear I could hear music or something playing inside, but there didn’t seem to be anyone around. No other cars in the carpark. Inside I found some tradies doing some restoration work in the snow. They had a radio playing and were both wear ear muffs. I don’t think they ever knew I was there.

I did a lap of the ruins in the snow and then decided to send the drone up.

After flying around for a while I packed up and headed back to the car to go find a fjord to take more photos.

Once I had successfully not gotten stuck on a very snow-covered stretch of what was probably a wharf (?) and parked in a little turn around area I got out and started taking a few snap shots with my little Sony.

I then got my drone out again and got what were probably my favourite photos of the whole trip here – aside from the aurora.

Ages back I even uploaded a couple of these to Displate for printing, and I have a couple of my walls.

The locals I passed driving into the fjord came back and were slightly confused to see my car parked on the side of the road near the entrance to their driveway. I landed my drone, packed up, got back into the car and head back out towards Trondheim.

I had to make two stops on the way back to the hotel – the first was to pay for some toll roads on the route, and the second was to fill up with fuel before dropping the car off. The view from the carpark with the vending machine to pay for the tolls was quite good.