Atlantic Ocean Road

Our next stop on the journey is Molde. Our hotel looked like a sail and is actually named the Scandic Seilet. Regardless of the name, the view was 180 degrees of beautiful snowcapped peaks.










We have to confess that before we were planning our Norway venture, neither of us had heard of the Atlantic Ocean Road much less the James Bond bridge. Yesterday, we rented a car and drove the road and over the bridge a few times. An unbelievable engineering achievement. Not just the main bridge, but the entire string of roads and bridges that is only 21 feet wide and 8.3 kilometers long. Connecting an archipelago of islands at the edge of the ocean, it is said to be the most beautiful drive in the world. We were not disappointed.



Hearty souls on bicycles in the snow and rain.




The "James Bond Bridge." It's called that because it is in the James Bond movie "No Time to Die." There's a chase scene that start on the bridge and ends somewhere else that looks nothing like Norway. The scene with the bridge is maybe 10 seconds. Purportedly, Norway paid the film makers $5 million to include the bridge. Probably worth it since the handle stuck and the road is a huge tourist attraction. 



The word of the moment is Trigonometry. Notice the curves and on each end they blend perfectly into the island where they terminate.. 







I'd give someone credit if I knew who took the drone shot below. Awesome picture that gives you an idea of how rugged this country is and how awesome an engineering feat the construction of the road must have been. Take a second and zoom in on this picture.


A map of the road. The Atlantic Ocean Road is really only the 8 kilometers in the upper right of this map.



 
Here's a link to someone else’s site that has both the scene from the Bond film and also some drone snapshot of the road and bridge. 

https://sacredwindows.com/the-james-bond-bridge-and-other-connectors/#:~:text=007%20fans%20to%20a%20pristine,of%20Oslo%2C%20called%20Lake%20Langvann




Comments

  1. Kay and AndyMay 2, 2023 at 9:23 AM

    The James Bond Bridge says it all!! Not a simple connection from one place to another. I love the quote " the engineers chose style over geometry"--oh, so true. We thought the Overseas Highway to Key West was a spectacular feat but the beauty of this bridge is outstanding. But considering that the Overseas Highway was built in 1938 and this one in 1989, I would say both were stretching the concepts that engineers had to work with in their day!!!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Los Conquistadores Españoles

Image
  Okay, maybe we’re being a little aggressive in saying we’ve come to conquer Spain. More than likely, we’ll find ourselves not conquering, but rather, falling in love with Spain and the Spaniards. We will find out along the way. So far, they have been extremely welcoming to us. The flight over ‘the pond’ was the usual mix of people able to sleep and those of us who don’t do so well. One woman two seats ahead of us decided to party through the night and watched movies and drank wine all night long. Maybe she doesn’t have Netflix at home. They gave us all noise-cancelling headphones. At one point, around 3 am somewhere, she had her headphones on, and she was yelling out at the movie, “…don’t give up on him, don’t give up on him!” Susane got a laugh while Malcolm slept through it. Another gentleman in front of us brought his seat back and was out like a light for the duration. We were in and out of shallow sleep and arrived restless and exhausted.   The word of the day is...
Read more

Prisons

Image
 In 50 years of traveling and thousands of hotel nights, I have never had a hotel room that had a scenic overlook of a prison. Even if only a former prison that is now deactivated. At times, I felt like I could almost hear the screams of Franco's wrongly imprisoned inmates crying out. We do not need Franco style dictators in the world.  
Read more