5th August 2016. Røros, Norway.

We had a lazy start to the day and a nice leisurely drive to Røros.   Not long after we left the rastplatz I thought I saw a couple of deer grazing in a field but as we got closer it turned out they were two cranes.  Darren found a lane to pull into but they were specks in the distance from there and when I did try to take a photo they bobbed their heads up briefly then put their heads down so they looked like boulders in the distance and they stayed like that for ages!  What a couple of stinkers!

We found a view point over a waterfall, I’d been trying to find a stop near the river, apparently it’s a good area for salmon fishing and we’d seen loads of people fishing as we’d driven along so I was hoping to see some but we couldn’t get close enough to the water.  We were very close to the level of the water when I saw the sign for the view point and was full of expectation, until the road went up hill!  What a tease!  Nevertheless it was nice to see the waterfall.

We parked at a parking area for large vehicles on the outskirts of Røros.

Røros is an old copper mining town.  We only saw one other person as we walked in and he was on his bike, I thought there would be lots of people walking from the car park.  Wrong!

There were quite a few more people in the main part of the old mining town, although I was surprised that as it’s the summer holidays it wasn’t heaving with people.  We visited the Tourist Information shop, found out where we should be going then detoured off the path within ten minutes of starting our tour!

I really enjoyed our visit to Røros, although it’s an UNESCO world heritage site people live in some of the old buildings, which is really nice to see.  The town has a very grand church which was built in 1780.  We followed the path around the back of the church and up the hill.  From the top there was a lovely view out over the town.

We walked through quiet little streets back down to the mining area and walked up on to the slag heaps which had far reaching views over the countryside.

We were quite surprised to see three cannon on the slope of the slag heap until we got closer and realised that they were actually large drainage pipes sitting on the wooden base of a cannon, strange, but when we got to the top of the heap we could see that something theatrical was being done/had been done.  We’d noticed horse poo right at the top of the slag heap and I thought someone must be very brave to ride a horse up there, the area isn’t very wide but maybe they were ridden by stuntmen!  We could see storm clouds brewing, we’d expected it to rain while we were walking down to the town but the sun came out, which was great.  We weren’t keen to walk back in the rain so we decided to make our way back to the van and off to Oppdal, definitely our next stop this time!

We saw an interesting bit of machinery as we drove along and were amazed to find a lay-by just round the corner so we pulled in.  I made dinner and once we’d eaten we went to look for what the sign said was called the Eidsfossen Kraftverk.  There was an ‘official’ path that went straight to the Kraftverk (an unfortunate name because I now keep humming “She’s A Model!”  D’oh, thanks Kraftwerk!) and halfway along an ‘unofficial’ path had been made at some point. It was a nice windy track through the trees down towards the cliff looking over rapids then the track went up and over the rocks until it rejoined the ‘official’ path. It turned out to be an old power station.

Further down the road I saw a dam which had a lay-by so people could stop and look at it.  So Darren turned off the road into a little lane, turned the van around and we went back to look at it.  It was the replacement hydroelectric power station, there are two others in the area as well.   

 Just before we got to the dam we saw a Stave Church as we drove through a village called Kvikne.  Darren had seen a symbol for it on the map and assumed there must be something special about it as there were no other churches mentioned.  It was a beautiful structure. 

We eventually arrived at Oppdal which was a medium sized town but the main part seemed very busy, we were a bit worried about what the rastplatz would be like but it was actually very quiet.  It was a car park at the back of the town where we had a view of cloud capped mountains on two sides of us and swanky looking apartments in front of us.