We have decided that Oslo doesn’t like us. We had problems when we arrived in Oslo, and we had problems when we left. We had been driving along Freeway Route 4 for only a few minutes when a rock appeared on the road which I thought I missed – but didn’t and it made a very load noise as it passed under the car. I thought we had escaped unscathed but a kilometre or so down the road I suspected there was something wrong, and a few minutes later I was sure. We pulled over to find a flat tyre. We changed the tyre and got to a service station. We ran Avis (the company we had rented from) but got not much joy after being transferred around a couple of Swedish call centres. However the end person we got said – get the tyre fixed and we can work out later who pays.

We pumped the tyre up at the servo only to find the sidewall ripped, so that tyre was gone. We were next to a mechanics shop, so we went and asked him, but he didn’t have a replacement tyre, so he sent us about 5km away to a large tyre firm. We got to the tyre place, but it was no good there either, they didn’t have the size we needed, but she kindly gave us the address of the distributor in Oslo. So back to Oslo we headed finding the distributor eventually. However they didn’t have a replacement tyre and didn’t know who would. Stumped, we decided we would head for the local Avis branch in Oslo and see if they had some ideas. They couldn’t solve it but they got onto Stockholm Avis, found another Swedish Avis car sitting at Oslo airport, and sent us out to the airport 40km north of Oslo.

We swapped our tiny Kia for a $53,000 Peugeot 508 with more electronics than I have ever seen on a car. It took me several minutes to figure out how to put it in reverse. No extra charge from Avis.

So we left Oslo delayed by a few hours but with lots more room for our camping equipment! We are camped at a commercial camp ground just south of Ringebu next to a nice lake and forested hills all around. ($36 a night unpowered site).