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Published: July 30th 2008
Flam to Myrdal railway
The view at the start of the valley as the train began to snake uphillBy the end of our fjord trip I think we'd already fallen for Norway, so expectations were high for the next leg of our tour - and we weren't disappointed. Our trip started at sea level in the small town of Flam. Once a small port, and now Norway distilled in a disneyland style, Flam is not a place to stop long, and we were glad we hadn't stayed there for the night. There can't have been a soul there who wasn't a tourist or a waitress. Having seen enough, we quickly jumped on the train, and enjoyed what must be one of the most scenic train journeys in the world. It was stunning.
For any train-spotters out there, the Flam-Myrdal railway is the steepest conventional railway in the world, rising from 2m to 886m above sea level in just 20km. It wriggles along the side of the valley, passing incredible waterfalls and cliffs, and winds its way through 20 tunnels, some forming complete loops inside the mountain to bring the railway out half way up the cliff it entered, only to vanish again for another loop. The whole thing took from 1923 to 1944 to build, with each meter
Flam valley
The view down the valley was stunnning. It looked like the best place in the world to live, with pretty farms surrounded by steep mountains. Shame you'd never be able to leave for snow in the winter! of tunnel taking a month.
Getting to the top was almost a shock, having left a sunny fjord to end up surrounded by patchy snow and a freezing blast of wind. Hot drinks were consumed with gusto, while we awaited the train to Oslo. Incredibly, this was just as amazing as the Flam-Myrdal section. It's the highest railway in northern Europe, and passes an array of glacial lakes, snow drifts, and even glaciers peeking their snouts out of high valleys. Quite how the line survives the winter I can't imagine. There were huge numbers of avalanche shelters, and special rotary snowploughs on standby, which actually tunnel through the snow rather than just shove it aside. And this all passes small summer farms, with clapperboard barns and wonderful scenery.
Dropping down off the hills into Oslo felt like a letdown, but after such scenery it didn't really have much of a chance. A good nights sleep soon changed our minds, and we came to rather like the city. It's not huge, or massively exciting, or spactacularly beautiful, but like the rest of Norway it's friendly and offers a lot more than we expected. We decided to get ourselves a
Waterfalls in the Flam valley
They were quite powerfull - coat required even in the best of weather. tourist card that let us in to almost everything free of charge, and made the most of it.
The maritime museum, appropriately reached by ferry, showed the marine history of the Norwegians from pre-viking times to modern oil tankers, but most fun was the Fram. Specially built to be sailed to the north pole by sticking itself into ice and waiting for the currents to push north, the idea still sounds crazy today. It almost worked, but it must have been a tough three years stuck inside what is a relatively small boat being squeezed by huge ice sheets. Perhaps even better, they had a collection of medal winning olympic dinghies, with a Europe that looked even smarter than Gareth's. Fortunately all of this was indoors, because it was chucking down outside with rain that wouldn't have been out of place in the tropics.
Fortunately, it cleared up for the second day, and we made the most of the outdoors by visiting the Norwegian Cultural Museum, which showcases the bast of Norwegian architecture and lifestyle from the middle ages to present day. It's rather surreal wandering around a small 1800's farmhouse, then popping down the road to a
View from the cliffs
Looking down the Flam valley, this was taken from the train in the middle of a cliff that must have been over 1000 feet high. The train was in a tunnel both sides, and the supports in the foreground are holding up the cliff above! 1950's petrol station, but we really rather enjoyed it.
The Nobel Peace Prize museum was somewhere between inspiring and horrendous, depending on the viewpoint. Some of the work people have done to promote peace is incredible (including Norway's own Nansen, who somehow found time to be an arctic explorer, an ambassador to the UK, and UN commissioner for refugees), but the list of ongoing trouble is terrifying.
Finally, our day ended with some light relief at an incredible sculpture park that covered a large area in the west of the city - check out the photos. Not long after, we were on the night train to Copenhagen. Expect more in the next issue!
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Gareth
non-member comment
Gold Wining Europe
Just in the interests of maintaining a factual accuracy to this blog I felt I should correct the year Siren Sundby won gold for Norway in the Europe was 2004 in Athens (it says so on the side of the boat) and 1994 wasn't an Olympic year, but apart from that not bad!