On leaving the campsite in Oslo – for the last time – I passed a fellow camper from a neighbouring pitch who I’d seen looking at my bike when it was chained up against a post at the site.

‘Are you a climber she asked’? Taken aback by the comment, I could only muster a look of bewilderment in response. ‘Petzl’ she responded, pointing at the climbers’ chalk bag I’d mounted to my handlebars as an ad-hoc storage solution. ‘Ah, well yes I am, but I have other chalk bags for climbing’. It turned out she was in the area with her partner because of the excellent climbing terrain in the vicinity.

Today, I was making for the train, hoping to cover almost 500 km on the Bergen line, allegedly one of Europe’s most beautiful train journeys. At this time, I have no information as to whether the reviewer had compared it to the West Highland Line…

During the early stages of the journey, I was struck by the virtually full tree cover of the landscape, that and the number of tunnels.

As the hours passed we trundled by a number of stunning lakes, stopping at some implausibly tiny settlements, at one of which we were told we could leave the train as it was going to be 2 hours until they could find a driver to cover the rest of the route, fortunately it wasn’t quite that long.

The line wended its way higher to its max elevation, at 1200 metres, in the middle of a huge snow encircled plateau, before, another barrage of tunnels brought us out onto a pretty fjord on our last approach to Bergen.

The 8 hours had flown by, although it had been a tough shift for my power bank, which was now fully depleted, it was lucky I had a hotel booked for the evening.

Charging batteries was certainly a priority in choosing to stay in a hotel before my first day’s cycle, but was it of greater priority than the fact that tomorrow was Saturday, and Bergen had a Parkrun?