Several members of the Handlebar Club travelled out from Gatwick with The British Beard Club contingent on Friday 13th May. Perhaps it was the date, but we were mercilessly faffed around at Oslo Airport, having our liquids confiscated, being patted down by security people, and then made to run from gate to gate, our graspable extremities fluttering behind us like pennants, as they tried to find an aeroplane to put us in. But, after sampling one of the famous Norwegian hotdogs, we finally took off, landing in Trondheim in good order.

Prices in Norway are famously high (try £16 for two pints of beer!) so many of us had brought along bottles of something friendly, which were opened in various hotel bedrooms to toast the midnight sun. The Norwegians have two words for this, ‘Vorspiel’ and ‘Nachspiel’, meaning ‘foreplay’ (rather unfortunately), and, ‘afterplay’. The idea is to drink as much as possible at home before going out for your ruinously expensive evening’s entertainment, and then run back to someone’s house afterwards for a party. Filmed by Dan Sederowski in a brown half-light, one of these bohemian nachspiel-orgies, in room 207 (or it might have been 270, I forget) in the Best Western, is viewable on the internet. Figures appearing to resemble Rodders, Andy Lear, Ted Sedman, and others, may here be observed, ‘cocktails’ in hand, sinking slowly into the carpet.

Sightseeing on Saturday included the wonderful Nidaros Cathedral (its architecture based on British cathedrals), the fish market (where you can sit down and eat the herring you have just bought), beautifully carved wooden houses and pub-cafés in the old town, where young bilingual ladies explain the delicious local beers to you (well done!), stunning fjords, and snow-topped mountains, the encircling river, and the bottle at the bottom of the wardrobe.

A good number of Handlebar Club members (and friends) took part in Sunday’s competition, in several different categories. Click on these thumbnail images to enlarge.

Ted Sedman did well as usual with his internationally-celebrated Fu Manchu moustache. Several others nearly won prizes too, in a few cases coming quite a long way from the bottom.

If you consult the photographs, you will see that the quality of moustaches was very fine, but what you won’t see is that conviviality of an even higher quality was the order of the day, and all those who attended, whether competing, spectatoring, supporting, judging (Dame Judi and Geoff), flesh-pressing – most of us at one point or another – or just enjoying the atmosphere, felt that the Norwegian Club had done a fine job organising the show. Marianne and I ate out that evening with the Despicable Parsons and the Delightful Keri, partaking of a superb liquid dinner, which ended up costing us an eye-watering amount. But what fun it was.

Monday was another day of sightseeing. I saw a young Nord lifting a huge circular cast-iron drain cover. ‘What’s down there?’, I asked him. ‘Sewer!’, he said. I looked down and I can tell you that the moving contents of Norwegian sewers much resemble those in Britain, and the rest of the world. I can also tell you that the drain cover was decorated, in line, with a picturesque illustration of a presumably famous Viking leader and his missus.

The day’s wandering was followed by an excellent pubby dinner consisting of a handcrafted burger in the ‘Irish Pub’ over the road from the hotel, with David Dade and John, of the British Beard Club. We met a young English fellow Jonny Elphinstone, who is studying in Norway and works in the pub. Hearing six months ago that the championship was coming to the nearby hotel, he started growing a moustache. He entered he competition and joined us on Tuesday’s parade. He’s the impossibly young gent in cap and waistcoat on the left of the group photograph, below.

The Handlebar Club was invited to march alongside The British Beard Club in Tuesday’s Norwegian National Day parade through the centre of Trondheim. And we did. This was an educational experience. Among the many thousands of locals, dressed in their national costume – each design representing a locality – I saw only six (smiling) police officers and just a handful of crowd barriers – despite the crowds being ten deep at some points (I counted – how boring of me). At the end of the parade there was no litter on the ground, nobody threw anything, we weren’t yelled at through loudspeakers, nobody chanted that we were going to get or heads kicked in, and not a single security camera was pointed at us. I think we could learn something from these delightful people.

Bars and cafés were full but The British Beard club had wangled us a place in the select buffet, upstairs in the hotel. I lunched on fish, watching, through the window next to me the comings and goings of the costumed wanderers below, and admiring the pulchritude of the perambulating Nordic babes; my elevated position offering a favourable angle on the native embonpoint.

After watching a brass band concert in the pouring rain, I made a quick last trip round the cathedral and sat down for a rest (I had to be asked to leave, after they switched all the lights off). The Despicable Parsons’ Bar was open in the evening, where some MacDonald’s burgers were eaten, and some leftover Scotch finished off.

Somewhere along the line I believe we ate an Italian meal, but I can’t really remember. Nonetheless, after a hearty Norwegian breakfast on Wednesday, we piled into a taxi – nine of us, I believe – and were driven back to the airport, admiring the mountains (through one of which we drove in a very long tunnel), the fjords, and the agricultural architecture. Steve told me that they paint their buildings with a special chemical-effluvia-free red paint that doesn’t kill bees.

Taking off into the crystal sky over the magisterial wrinkly coast and scrunched-up mountains it wasn’t long before we hit the clouds attached to Britain. We landed into the usual Tupperware grey of Gatwick and returned to our dwelling-places.

What a very enjoyable trip it was, and how well organised. On the British side Rodders, Dame Judi, and Geoff worked especially hard, as did David Dade of the British Beard Club. So here’s three cheers to everybody who took part – particularly our wonderful Norwegian friends.

 Tom Cutler
 

Text © MMXI Tom Cutler / The Handlebar Club - Photos © MMXI Mervyn Lemon, David Dade and Dan Sederowsky