Mountains and Stave Church day 21

Bergen is 500 kms from Oslo so we are going to take two days. There's something about being in a bus: I'm asleep before we leave Oslo but wake when the mountains get higher and the trees thicker until we are so high that the trees disappear altogether and there is snow on the mountaintops. We make several stops for the keen photographers and for Merryle to pick wildflowers including wild delphiniums.

Lunch is at a folk museum where we are served poached and smoked salmon and chocolate cake with "wiped" cream.

After another snooze we wake as the bus stops for a most peculiar edifice in the middle of nowhere - a stave church, so-called because big posts or staves were driven into the ground and the spaces between filled in. /Photo 2. There are only 28 of these left in Norway and this one is the best as 95% of its interior is original: the exterior has had tiles replaced and been tarred to preserve it. It looks quite extraordinary, like something out of The Hobbit  and was built in 1108. Imagine that! We have a young man to tell us about it: it has been restored to original lack of furnishings inside and is quite small in spite if it's height - everyone stood up. / Photo 3.

There's still more excitement before we arrive at Flam (a small o over the a and pronounced Flom.) Next is a 25 km tunnel under a mountain, the longest tunnel I'm the world. It's the longest 19 minutes we've experienced in spite of the strange blue rooms every 5 km which have been put in to break the monotony. / Photo 4. People go there to get married - how weird.

Our hotel at Flam is a ski lodge in the winter and full of all nationalities.

Sunset Sail Oslo day 20

Courtesy of Merryle and her husband
David we all went on a dinner cruise around Oslo harbour on board the Johanna. It was a motor cruise because there was no wind - the wonderful warm weather continues and everywhere we went there were people in boats, in the shore and swimming; everyone luxuriating in the best night of the year.

Dinner was as much shrimp as you could eat plus bread, butter and mayo - rather a shock to Ann who doesn't particularly like shrimp. Seagulls hung around waiting for scraps /photo 2 Bill and David. Photo 3 is Merryle watching over her flock. 

We returned on the stroke of 10 to a glorious sunset - the White Night turned into a Pink Night - and still enough light to read if you wanted to. I had to think sadly of folks back home tucked in bed and facing another cold day - us in a week.

Ramme Gaarde day 20

Previously belonging to Edvard Munch, artist of The Scream, and now belonging to Norwegian philanthropist Petter Olsen, Ramme Garden is a short bus ride away from Oslo. We arrived in time for lunch - rolls and what the girl called flower-cauli soup. Usually their English is impeccable so that was a memorable lapse. Photo 2 is me sitting on an organic seat decorated with lillies of the valley. 

A guide arrived to take us around the garden: I got the impression you can't go without a guide which is a shame. It's a splendid garden, full of rolling vistas, beautifully kept velvet green lawns, statues and colourful borders - maybe Merryle has saved the best till almost last. There is an outdoor theatre for regular productions of Shakespeare's romantic comedies and the final view takes in the sea.

Lovely, lovely, lovely.

Lunch Amongst the Perennials day 19

Ham and cheese sandwiches!  Lunch was made more Norwegian by little pancakes with jam and cream, served in the courtyard of a perennial nursery and new garden.

Photo 1 is our new bus from the garden with hills in the distance - strange to see hills after so long on the flat. 

Farm garden near Oslo day 19

Cases out at 5.30! It's a cruel and unusual punishment for Country Farm travellers but it's the only possible flight for us from Stockholm to Oslo - and it leaves us time to fit in a garden before lunch. We've got a new guide Albert and bus driver Gunnar and a whole new country which already looks different - green fields,  more conifers and distant mountains.

It's a 3-generation farm with our hosts Michael and Astrid who are not confident of their English so have brought in Liv to speak for them. They could have used the lovely grandchildren Olmichael and Marte who are on 2 months summer holidays. /photo 1. 

David was captivated by the stabbur, a root cellar and summer dormitory now a museum for old tools and implements. I loved the setting of immaculate garden around the farm buildings with a path leading down through a barley field to the lake sheet the children have boats. /Photo 3

There were peonies and blue poppies, meconopsis grandis, a beautiful vegetable garden and a wildflower meadow. (I understand about them now - how they have to be let go to seed so they can grow again next year. ) There was tea and cake in the summer kitchen and everything was idyllic in the warm sun: then we heard last winter it was MINUS 30 degrees C for 3 weeks. 

Farewell to Stockholm day 19

Some of the group are not going on to Norway so last night was a farewell dinner at the hotel - excellent food and wine chosen by Merryle's husband David  (who is at home minding the nursery. ) First we celebrated Bill's birthday with champagne on the patio. /Photo 1

David B asked everyone what summed up Stockholm in one word and got the answer he wanted: water. With 30,000 islands there's a lot of water in, between and you're never far from it. We have loved Stockholm and are sorry to leave. Our run of good weather continues and I wish hadn't brought heavy shoes, jumpers, rain coat and umbrella. However the gardeners David met yesterday are beside themselves at the lack of rain: it hasn't rained since June 13th.

Day in the Country Sweden day 18

I had serious shopping to do so David went in his own for a day in the country on the bus, destination Enkoping (pronounced Ensherping) famous for its 19 civic parks - population 40,000. A train and a horse wagon carried them on a tour of most of the parks.

Highlight was the biggest one, Dream Park, commenced in 1995 as a collaboration between head gardener and a famous Dutch landscape designer Piet Oudolf with a focus on perennials in small blocks of colour. An exception is the meandering Sage River, a large block of colour / photo 1

Plantings appear in all public spaces e.g. Kings Bridge, /photo 5, Fountain Park and the strip along the river where quirky student displays catch the eye, including one with birch trees planted upside down. / photo 4

My shopping was productive and involved lots of walking. For lunch I bravely ordered Ost & Skinka Smorgasar and got ham and cheese sandwich! - then came back to the hotel to be one of those people sitting in the deck chair.