Norwegian Summer 2026: Day 8 – Syningongom to Oset Fjellhotel

Over breakfast I pulled up the day’s route and gave it the usual once-over.

“Today’s route should be interesting!”

“I don’t know if I like that.”

Fair, Liz! After yesterday, “interesting” had earned itself a bad name. But for once it was all upside: a sliver of interesting and not much more, just a very nice day of riding. Beautiful weather, a tailwind, no routing snafus, and a bit shorter than usual to boot. Norway even won their round-of-32 match at the World Cup. All in all, a great day on the bike!

First order of business was packing up and cleaning the apartment. Handing the place back spotless knocked 500 NOK (over $50!) off the bill, so twenty minutes of light mopping and sweeping was easily worth it. Best-paying job on tour.

We also ran into two more pairs of bikepackers who’d rolled in after we were all tucked away last night. First, two Swedish women a bit older than us, loosely following our same route — they’d end up at our hotel tonight too. Then a young British couple, Jennie and Phil, who’ve been out for a month or so and just happened to sync up with us. We’d cross paths with both pairs at various points through the day. A good day to have a light schedule!

The first hour or so was chilly and crisp, but also had us ripping along with a nice tailwind. Rolling hills with lakes and cottages all around, the vast majority of them clearly empty. We hit a brief stretch of double track, maybe 2 miles, that devolved into a bit of a muddy mess, but that was only 10 or 15 minutes of minor slowdown.

We’d prebooked tonight’s hotel back at breakfast, leaving us about 20 miles shy of the end of our Mjølkevegen journey. We could have pushed on and finished today, but we weren’t keen to stay in Gol itself, so we called it early. About thirty miles with just 2000ft of climbing. A real rest day, for sure!

Jennie and Phil had passed us back on that muddy double track, and we figured that was the last we’d see of them. Then, hours later, we were stopped at a roadside picnic table in the middle of nowhere (a pretty common sight around here) eating lunch when they came rolling up. Turns out they’d detoured into a village for some sustenance and we’d leapfrogged them then. We chatted for a good 45 minutes about trips we’d done, and they promised to keep us posted on a few things we’d been watching for down the road.

From there we were just a short ride to our hotel, the Oset Fjellhotel. Clearly designed with skiing in mind, they’ve embraced the summer sports and have bikes for rent and probably some pretty good hiking trails around. We’re close to a big lake, but the hotel to bill itself as “lakeside” is a bit of a stretch!

Like most of the places we’ve stayed, it’s full-board: breakfast included, dinner available. So far we always take the hotel dinner; not much variety or quality in our bike bags by the end of the day! We usually message ahead to flag that we’re vegetarian and prefer vegan, and they always sort us out. Sometimes it’s a buffet, sometimes a fixed course, but we’ve never once ordered off a menu (drinks aside). The food has been exceptional across the board, and the bread in particular is delicious and varied — always whole grain, always fresh.

Tonight we had a great salad bar (a very nice treat, we’ve been missing our fresh vegetables), delicious creamy vegan broccoli cheese soup, roasted veggies, spaghetti and sauce and a bunch of dessert things to sample. That and local non-alcoholic beer that was excellent!

Overall, about 3 1/2 hours of ride time, roughly thirty miles, and 2000ft of climbing. We still managed to stretch that out into six hours on the road, so many nice stops! Easily our most relaxed day yet. Tomorrow we knock out the last ~20 miles of the Mjølkevegen — assuming “interesting” stays on its best behavior. And we have plans after that!