Date: 02 – 03/08/2017
From/To: Preikestolen Campground – Rjukan
Distance: 333 Km
Total Distance: 9325 Km
Weather: Cold, Drizzling, Cloudy, Sunny
Road: Paved
We had breakfast and I could see the black clouds coming in. As you can see, I wasn’t too happy.
It started to rain heavily, so we packed up everything except the tent. When the rain shower stopped and we opened the tent, there was a collection of lakes in front the tent.
We packed up the wet tent and off we went. The rain stopped, started, stopped ….. and then we needed petrol. Well since were prepared, we considert to have lunch outside J. Not long after the break the weather cleared and the rain stopped. We hopped onto a ferry and it started to get warm.
At the end of the day we opted for a cabin on a camp ground.
We unpacked the wet tent and set it up, temporarily. It was dry in no time.
The next day we continued to Rjukan, a small town close to the ‘Rjukan Falls’. The falls don’t ring a bell, but maybe ‘Vemork’ does – The movie “The Heros of Telemark” is based on this location, more to that later. On our way we passed the farm ‘Myllareguten’ the home of the famous Norwegian fiddler ‘Torgeir Augundson’. To be honest, I didn’t know much about him before we passed his stature J
The Vemork hydro power station was built to produce fertiliser and years later to produce ‘heavy water’. This was one possibility to harness nuclear power or to build a atomic bomb. Germany invaded Norway and started to use the heavy water for its research. The allies realised that it would be dangerous if Germany continues with the research and did everything to destroy to ‘Vemork’ hydro power station. There were saboteurs, some bombardments and at the end sinking of the ferry “Hydro” that transported all the heavy water created in the last year or so. This was around 1944 and the end of the German research. So below is the famous hydro power station and the generator house.
And me trying to recitify some things – rumwuschele and of the Knöppsche drücken, dürfen nur mer, de Experden J
Anyway, there was an intriguing example of heavy water. Heavy water (deuterium) ways ~ 10% since it has an additional neutron. This gives deuterium different properties. So here is one litre of water and one litre of deuterium and deuterium is really ~10% heavier. Apparently the human body contains small amonts of deuterium and we can drink it without any problems.
When we left the museum the clouds were just coming in, so we hopped on our bike and rode home, to a nice warm cottage. Tomorrow we will continue on some scenic routes to ‘Geilo’.
