Sandjeford & Torp, Norway

Another short trip to go on in between my night shifts at my small train station in London. This time was a 1p each way flight with Ryanair to a airport called Torp, about a 90 minute bus journey south of Oslo. When I arrived in Torp airport, I have nearly achieved my goal of visiting forty countries by the New Year. This is country 39 for me, and with Andorra next weekend when I go to Barcelona for a weekend/Christmas break, I nearly started celebrating the achievement! I came on this trip with my travel mate, Ollie Tong, who has been to Torp and Oslo earlier in the year. 

 

So, with four hours in the Torp area, it was a case of what to do. Heavy snow from the weekend has now frozen up, despite it been a couple of inches deep.

Not good snow to build a snowman or have a snowball fights with. Oslo was too far (but I am doing a four week trip of the Arctic/Norway next summer, so I am coming back), Sandefjord at first may have been a little bit too far to travel, so we just walked. I mean walked out of the terminal, (grabbing a local free map on the way), and see where we would land. After walking along the main airport road for forty minutes, and getting my feet wet in the snow, we landed at a very little town called Kullerod. There wasn't anything to do there. Ollie was getting a little bit bored, and when we saw a road sign stating that Sandefjord was 6km, and the time we had, we decided to walk it.

 

After walking through villages of Abol and Breidablikk, with their pretty white and brown houses covered in deep snow, and decorate with festive lights of the season, we landed up at Sandefjord train station. A couple of nice churches to see here before making our way to the centre. A McDonalds was found, and after checking out the prices and trying to raise a second mortgage to pay for them, we ended up having a cup of vanilla tea and a cheeseburger, which came to a rip off price! Then with time running out, a 180NOK (£18) taxi fare was paid to get us back to Torp airport, and then fly back to London and back to work. Another trip done, and a cold one at that!