When we came down to the dining room at 8am the fire was roaring and the table had been laid up with everything we could possibly need for an excellent breakfast – our host had evidently been up very early to ensure our stay was perfect. He popped back several times for chats as we were preparing to leave. We learned that they get a lot of snow here every winter. We also discovered that Norwegians not only pay a high price for fuel but also have to pay for every mile they drive thanks to cameras on all the major roads: his wife currently had to make daily trips to Lillehammer to visit a friend in hospital, so every morning there would always be a new bill through the letterbox. It’s all part of Norway’s policy of encouraging people towards more environmentally-friendly forms of transport, and evidently it is working as electric cars are very popular. But Inge said Norwegians love their cars and they are so used to being taxed that many just pay up and continue as usual.

We had planned to leave early but it was so perfect here that we were in no real hurry. George also needed a few bike repairs so it was around 10:25 when we finally thanked our host for a wonderful stay and rode the four-mile downhill road to Otta. Our destination was the Solstad Café which Michael had researched on the internet before we left England. The proprietor was taken aback when Michael seemed to know about the flooding they had experienced earlier in the year as a result of a leak upstairs, but the penny clicked when she realised he had viewed their Facebook page where the hard work of repairing the damage had been documented in detail. She said it had been her Waterloo Moment.

The distance from Otta to Lillehammer is 71 miles with a fair amount of downhill, but there were several things we wanted to look at in the Lillehammer area so we had planned to use the train for part of the journey. Unfortunately there was a five-hour gap in the service after the 1129 departure so we had decided to use that train as far as Hunderfossen and then cycle the last 9 miles. There was some confusion on the station about which platform our train would be using: the station timetables told us it would be Platform 2 but when we had unloaded our bikes a tannoy announcement told us it would now be on Platform 1. Fortunately it was a few minutes late and we just managed to get our bikes ready by the time it arrived.

The train manager seemed to think we should have advance bookings for our bikes, but as Michael didn’t have any and she only saw three bikes she thought she could accommodate them in a special storage area that happened to be empty today. She was aghast when three more bikes arrived but we still got them all in there with some careful packing – John’s bike ended up laid horizontally on the others. She then discovered that we had no seats booked either – most irregular – but she checked her printed seating list and identified several seats scattered around a carriage that would not already reserved. We paid for everything on the train and then settled down to enjoy an hour-long journey on what seemed like a nearly new NSB electric express train as it sped its way down the wooded river valley.

Hunderfossen is most famous as the location of the Hunderfossen Family Park, one of Norway’s most popular attractions, and at 12:46 we found ourselves on an un-signed rural station next to the Park’s wooded parking area. We were going to the nearby Norwegian Road Museum, however, detailing the history of road transport in Norway and the possible options for the future. Being free and interactive it seemed an ideal attraction for our near-empty wallets, but first we had to get some lunch. The café at the museum was open today but turned out to be quite expensive and, as usual, had few vegetarian options, so we sat around the tables outside to enjoy whatever bits of food we had left over from our previous lunches. Red squirrels are rare in Britain but we had seen a few during the tour. One climbed onto a low wall by the woods near our table but then vanished again just as quickly. It took George’s ingenuity to get it to stay there for some video shots – a slice of bread was all it took.

The museum itself was, as usual in Norway, very modern and interesting, although also as usual there weren’t many people visiting it. Apparently the winter season started today – in the middle of August! There were examples of Norwegian cars through the ages, road-building vehicles and equipment and an interesting video presentation on how to manage and control the use of cars in the future, reconciling transport needs with environmental protection. Our youngsters, however, were more interested in an interactive exhibit that involved bridging gaps with hundreds of small wooden planks, and our departure had to be delayed so they could complete their constructions. John’s bridge won the strength tests but everyone had a lot of fun.

Leaving at 3.15 to go back past the station and on towards Lillehammer Google took us somehow through the back entrance of the Family Park, where there was no barrier, and then out through the front entrance where no questions were asked. The park was very busy and the attractions looked quite fun but it seemed to be aimed more for families with younger children. Our route then took us over the Hunderfossen Dam, where HEP was being generated on a fairly large scale, and then along cycle paths that bordered the main road all the way to Lillehammer.

One of the places we wanted to see in Lillehammer was the Norwegian Olympic Museum, but we were running rather late after the bridge building. The museum is located in Maihaugen Park, one of Northern Europe’s largest open-air museums with close to 200 buildings that celebrate Norwegian culture and history. With some fast cycling our SatNav brought us up a steep hill to the rear entrance with only ten minutes to go before the 5pm closing time, but here we were met by an automated turnstile that none of us could work out how to operate. A passing local kindly pressed and held the correct button that allowed both us and our bikes through, but by now it was so late that John and Will decided to take advantage of a free look around the Garmo Stave Church in the park. The rest of us got to the museum entrance and had a look around the ultra-modern foyer as we weren’t sure we would have time to look around Lillehammer tomorrow.

Returning to the main street we found one of two so-called Chocolate Cafés that was still open. It was bustling with enthusiastic customers sampling the superb coffees and exquisite cakes. Some of us tried After Eight Lattes and others had chocolate cheesecake but we all thought it was by far the best café of the tour. By way of making up for last night’s dirty trick John kindly presented Michael with a box of birthday chocolates which he duly shared with the group.

Lillehammer youth hostel is located, unusually, in the train station. And I don’t just mean inside: it all seems to be completely integrated with the station foyer shops and café. The receptionist took our bikes down some stairs to a private store room and then, after a bit of searching, we eventually found the door near the station entrance that led up to the rooms. We had a large 5-bed room with an extra pull-out bed under the bunk so that we could all stay in one room for the first time on the tour, although the cramped conditions and single shower left us wondering whether two separate rooms might have been better after all. Everything was very modern though as the hostel only opened within the last year or so.

Once we had all showered we set off back to the town on foot to find our evening meal, for some reason believing that the meals available in the hostel/station restaurant would not be very good. We checked out a few restaurants and found them all way too expensive. A pizza and burger establishment looked good until we discovered there was not a single vegetarian pizza on the menu. A bakery was open that sold excellent cakes at knock-down prices so Michael bought a few of those for later, but there wasn’t much in the way of savoury food. In the end John and George, the meat-eaters in the group, got some food from a burger stall in the pedestrianised shopping area while the rest of us got some yoghurts from the KIWI store and returned to the hostel restaurant. Here the chef made us huge cheese and tomato omelettes for just £14 each and threw in extra salad, chipped potatoes and fillings for no additional charge. With the extras this worked out to be the best value meal of the tour.

The general consensus for tomorrow was that we should cycle the 28 miles to Gjovik in the morning if the weather was good and then take a train to Oslo, so we headed for bed a bit earlier than usual.

When we awoke next morning, light rain was washing the station platforms and low cloud shrouded the distant hills. All those who yesterday favoured cycling today felt that the Olympic Museum deserved a proper viewing, so we allowed ourselves plenty of time to enjoy the excellent breakfast that here included hot porridge and baked beans as well as all the usual items.

Having retrieved our bikes from the storage room we rode the short distance back up the hill to the Olympic Museum, bought a few souvenirs at the shop and then spent an enjoyable hour looking around exhibits that celebrated the history of the Olympics. A glass cabinet housed all the different torches used in recent Olympic tournaments, a treadmill machine allowed two people to compete in simulated Olympic sports and a cinema presentation offered various programmes covering many aspects of the Olympics. Of particular interest was a video presentation with individual headphones and a terrific soundtrack that covered the Lillehammer Winter Olympics of 1994.

The café was new and modern but didn’t seem to offer a great selection of coffees or food so we rode the mile or so to Håkons Hall, the arena built specially for the 1994 Olympics. This is where the ice skating duo Torvill and Dean came third for Britain after getting a perfect score, all because of a penalty imposed for an illegal lift. The interior of the stadium has now been rebuilt as an impressive sports centre, but our youngsters were most interested in a top quality Table Football game in the foyer: a local youngster watched their game as avidly as though it was Manchester United vs Liverpool!

We needed a café, and since the Chocolate Café we visited yesterday scored maximum marks we returned again this morning to try different selections. Once again we were not disappointed. We then bought a quick lunch from the KIWI and returned to the station to catch the 14:15 train to Oslo. This was just as modern and well equipped as yesterday’s train, with vending machines for drinks and snacks, but this time it started from Lillehammer so we had plenty of time to get our bikes on board. The train manager chose not to charge us for the bikes for this journey, which was a useful saving for us. It brought us into Oslo Central station for around 16:45, about 20 minutes late, and we spent the next half hour in the huge, busy foyer area while Michael got some useful advice from NSB about tomorrow’s train journey to the airport.

We decided to use this unplanned time in Oslo to begin our exploration of the city, starting with a ride along Karl Johans Gate, the main shopping street of Oslo. It was bustling with so many people that progress was slow. We stopped at a Freia chocolate outlet that was selling large £4.50 chocolate bars for just £2.50 and then watched the dance band that was entertaining people in the square opposite. Next stop was the Royal Palace complete with guards, but our main destination was the Vigeland Sculpture installation in Frogner Park.

Gustav Vigeland spent most of his life creating sculptures from bronze and stone, all of which now occupy either the museum or the dedicated section of Frogner Park. It is now the largest park in the world to feature sculptures from just one artist and is the most visited attraction in Norway. The sculptures celebrate the eternal cycle of humanity, from birth to death, happiness to grief.

The conveniences here required payment again, and once again had “toilet police” to make sure everyone paid. Michael found, however, that polite negotiation can sometimes be rewarded with a free entry for a child. We then set about walking around all the sculptures in the main area of the park. Every statue told a different story about human life and we could quite understand why the park is so popular. Some seemed a little weird to us, but that’s probably only because our expectations were restricted by our limited life experiences.

We set off again at 7pm for the final ride of the day, to Rønningen youth hostel on the outskirts of Oslo. It was an hour ride, and along the way we stopped for half an hour at a KIWI store to stock up with food and provisions where a helpful Norwegian woman advised Michael on the kind of cream that goes well with strawberries. This meant it was 8.30 when we finally arrived at the hostel, another of those modern hobby schools that would be a hostel only for another week or so before the new term started. It was very modern, the main building having a huge lounge area accessible from all corridors and decorated with artificial trees and grass. The rooms were also great - spacious and ultra-modern - but the hostel was not without its drawbacks.

The warden had inadvertently managed to allocate us to different blocks, so whilst Michael’s group was in the main building, John’s group was in another building on the other side of the car park. The member’s kitchen in Michael’s building was poorly equipped and the pans had been left full of meat grease by the previous users, but when they went to check out the kitchen in John’s block the entrance door would only respond to John’s door card, and John was buried deep inside.

When we finally got access, his kitchen seemed much better so we set about preparing our food. In the absence of a toaster we put the toast under the electric grill, which worked fine. For those of us doing baked beans, however, the clever electric hob just would not switch on for us. We are all fairly intelligent, but it didn’t seem to matter what sequence we used on the touch buttons, the hob just refused to get hot even though the lights were on. After twenty minutes the toast was cold and tempers were frayed so Michael went to get a member of staff from the main building. When she finally arrived she informed us that this was an induction hob which required a particular kind of metal on the base of the saucepan. She swapped our saucepan for another from the same cupboard that looked almost identical and now, miraculously, the hob came on! The obvious question was why had they put saucepans in the kitchen cupboard that would not work on the hob, but we were too tired and hungry to argue. We settled down in the open lounge/dining area near the kitchen and could just about see the funny side of eating after 10pm.

After a good breakfast and some games of table tennis we set off a little later than planned at around 10.10 for main Oslo Exploration Day. First stop another of Oslo’s three youth hostels, Oslo Haraldsheim, where we would be staying the night, to make sure the cycle bags we posted from Bergen had arrived safely. They had, and while we were there we made sure we would be in adjacent rooms.

Having ticked off the Vigeland sculptures last night our next stop was to be the Viking Ship Museum on the peninsula of Bygdøy. Our route took us through Torshovdalen Park and here we were surprised to find that some kind of event was taking place involving children in home-made cars. We had inadvertently stumbled across the 2017 Olabil NM Gravity Car race which takes place every year in Oslo. Parents help their children make unpowered cars that meet the entry requirements and then, on the day, they see how fast they can complete the downhill course through the park. We stayed long enough to see a few of the entrants hurtle down the path: the sharp left corner at the bottom looked like it would take a few scalps but in fact all the cars we saw made it around safely. It all looked like a lot of fun, and you can find compilation videos and Facebook pages about the event on the internet.

We stopped briefly at the Spinn bike shop on Kirkeveien, a Trek dealership, and found prices were generally higher than in Britain. What Michael didn’t quite understand, however, was why all the hundred or so tyres they had on display had an identical tread pattern! Soon afterwards we had ridden past Frogner Park again (which happened to be on the way), crossed the rather busy roundabout onto the Bygdøy peninsula and found our way to the Viking museum.

It was 12:30 and we were all looking forward to coffee in the museum café, so it was disappointing to find that the museum was so small it didn’t have one. Annoyingly we had passed a café half a mile back along the road. Entry was free for the youngsters and only £10 each for the adults, but the museum turned out to be smaller than we had imagined and not quite as interesting (for us anyway). There were three complete ships on display, all watched over by hawk-eyed security officers. Michael got told off first because he raised his camcorder up near one of the oar holes to get a better look inside: he kept it at least 10cm away from the ship but apparently he wasn’t allowed to get anywhere near that close, presumably in case he suddenly felt the urge to touch it when he smelled the ancient wood. Within minutes Dillan was told off by the same security officer for eating a piece of chocolate near the ship: apparently the chocolate “gets in the air” and can damage the wood! Jude found the official so annoying that he took a photo, but I’m sure he was just doing his job.

There were some small balcony areas that allowed us proper views inside the three ships, and there were many amazing artefacts on display that had been retrieved from the locations where the ships had been found. There was an audio-visual presentation on the ceiling above the Tune ship, although it only lasted a few minutes. We had to admit that the woodcraft was incredibly intricate, especially on the sleigh and the cart, and it was amazing to think that most of the items in the room were over 1200 years old. The museum shop turned out to be the most fun for us, however, with some drinking horns (Jude bought one), Norwegian mugs (Dillan bought one), cuddly toys and winter wear which John kindly modelled for the camera.

We watched a robotic lawn mower outside as we ate our packed lunches, then headed back along the road to the Arkadia café where Michael finally got his overdue coffee and John ended up paying £14 for what he had thought was a £6 fish soup - apparently it was the tastiest soup he had ever eaten, but that didn’t really help much. John then took Will back to the Viking museum to buy a souvenir while Michael took the rest back to the main shopping area by way of the Frognerkilen skate park on the edge of the Oslo fjord, where the younger members couldn’t resist playing on the climbing frame.

We were heading to a game shop but along the way we called into the Fjållråven store, a premium Scandinavian outdoor equipment brand that can also be obtained in the UK. They had a huge range of attractive well-made backpacks for children in a multitude of colours, but they were rather pricey at £80 each. John met up with us here and we continued together through Young’s Square, widely considered the political power centre of Norway because it is surrounded by party HQs and union buildings. When we finally reached the GameStop shop in the Gunerius Shopping Centre (having nearly lost John along the way) we were surprised to find mostly the same consoles and games we would find in a UK shop, with prices generally quite similar.

Now it was time to check out Will’s place of interest: the Oslo Opera House, located on the water front. This is the largest cultural building constructed in Norway since the year 1300 and was only completed in 2007. The architecture was stunning and immersive, allowing visitors to walk all the way up the rooves to the very top. The inside was no less stunning, and John was particularly impressed by the luxurious quality of the lavatories. The whole of the water front area is being rejuvenated with modern buildings and we got some good views of the progress from the roof.

John and family got excited when they saw a covered, floating platform on the other side of the harbour where people were jumping into the icy fjord water and then recovering in a hot sauna. They decided immediately to go right over there for some fun, but when they arrived they discovered it was fully booked for days. Disappointed and hungry they joined Michael and the others in the search of a suitable vegetarian restaurant. There didn’t seem to be a lot to choose from, but we eventually found some options in the Strøget passageway off Størgata. John and family treated themselves to a Mexican restaurant while the rest of us discovered just how tasty Falafels can be at the Mazar AS habibi café.

While John and co finished their meal, Michael, Dillan and Jude went to the huge Byporten shopping centre opposite the station where they got luxury hot drinks at the Espresso House and bought stacks of Go’ Morgen yoghurts at 80p each from the Kiwi supermarket to take home as gifts. Everyone met up outside at 7.55, purely by accident, so we rode back up to Haraldsheim hostel together.

The reception was now packed with a hoard of students who were congregating there in preparation for a talk in the hall. We had to wait a long time before the receptionist found time to retrieve our cycle bags from the store room in the basement, and then he had a problem calculating our 10% discount and overcharged us by £12. Michael tried to explain he had got his figures wrong but his response was to suggest that Norwegian hostels offer excellent value compared with other type of accommodation. Michael then tried to argue we should get a further discount as we needed to leave tomorrow morning before they started serving the included breakfast at 7pm, but he had an answer for that too: they would prepare “packed breakfasts” for us to take with us! It was late and Michael was tired so he just paid the overcharged amount and planned to sort it out after we returned to England.

Our rooms were across the courtyard. Our bike bags had been packed wet on the day we were in Bergen so we laid them outside our rooms to dry overnight. Jude made himself a horn of tea and felt like a Viking as he drank it, but we had to be up very early tomorrow so we headed for bed soon after 10pm with the window wide open.

Our epic adventure was nearing its end when we awoke at 05:45. We collected our “packed breakfasts” and got away from the hostel at 06:45 as planned. There were only two trains that could get us to Oslo airport on time, and to make sure we could board one of them with our bikes NSB had advised us to catch the train at the National Theatre station, the stop before Oslo Central. The roads were virtually deserted at this time of the morning so we arrived in plenty of time to get our bikes down the escalators to the underground platforms. We even had time to examine our packed breakfasts - bread, jam, a hard-boiled egg, an apple and an orange. It was certainly better than nothing.

Boarding the 07:28 train was easy here and we arrived at the airport station at around 07:50 to begin the tedious process of disassembling our bikes again and packing them into the bike bags. Dillan really hated having to do this and would have seriously considered a 400 mile detour via The Netherlands to avoid it, but we were getting more experienced now and managed to complete the task fairly quickly. We checked in the bikes and bags (with some assistance) and then decided we could spare ten minutes for a Starbucks before checking ourselves in. This was a mistake.

It was 09:50. Our plane was due to leave at 10:40 and suddenly we were told that our gate would close at 10:10. We got through the X-ray machines OK, although Dillan once again managed to have more than 100ml of fluid in his cabin bag, a can of deodorant which was duly discarded by the staff. There then followed a very long walk to our gate, but when we got near we realised there were passport checks as well. It was 10:05, there was a very long, slow-moving queue and there was only one person checking passports. Michael managed to get a message to our gate and eventually they arranged for another person to come on duty to check passports. We missed the gate deadline but we made it onto the plane by 10:30.

This time the plane left on time. The longer journey back from Oslo gave us some great views of the Norwegian landscape in the morning sunshine. We approached England via the Thames offshore wind farm array which looked very impressive, then turned inland to cross Kent to Gatwick. The pilot proudly announced that he had arrived, amazingly, half an hour early so the airport staff just weren’t ready with the disembarkation equipment!

At Gatwick our bikes came off on the same conveyors as the luggage, but then the exit doors were too narrow for the bikes so we had to wait for someone to come and open the wider doors. After twenty minutes a chap arrived who was clearly impatient to get off duty. He told the youngsters to go into the intermediate chamber and press the green button when the doors closed behind them. They somehow failed to do that, so he went in with them himself and did it for them. Unfortunately he then failed to return for the rest of us, clearly feeling he really did need to get off duty now, so we had to hail a passing baggage assistant who rang through for special permission to operate the doors!

Reassembling the bikes on the airport arrivals lounge took longer as usual and was a bit oily. We then got some lunch from M&S, took the Gatwick Express back to Victoria and rode the short distance to South Kensington station so that we could buy a box of 17 Ben’s Cookies to share. This was George’s request stop, but we all thoroughly enjoyed them.

Next stop was the Pizza Hut at Marble Arch, although we were delayed in getting there when John failed to notice us all turn right and continued on through Hyde Park for a mile before realising his mistake. We told him on the phone where we had turned but somehow he still passed us again on the way back! When we finally got to Pizza Hut it was incredibly busy with no spare tables so we ordered take-away pizzas to eat on the train and then rode to Paddington at top speed.

We arrived by around 17:30 for the 17:45 train and had no trouble loading our bikes. Our seats, however, were occupied by a group of women from Newton Abbot. Careful examination of the tickets revealed that somehow our bikes were booked on the 1745 but our seats were on the 1845. Normally this would result in us being thrown off the train at Reading, so Michael prepared himself carefully for complex negotiations with the train manager. In the event he didn’t check tickets until after Westbury and he was very understanding, telling us to stay on the train with our bikes and not to worry about it. We spent the remainder of the journey relaxing and chatting to a friendly woman from Exeter and a chap from London who said he had paid off three mortgages by breeding a particular type of dog!

We were all understandably tired when we rolled in to Newton Abbot at 20:52. It had been a very special adventure that we would never forget, but we were very glad to be home again.