In The Hall of The Mountain King(Edvard Grieg) - Mountains and Fjords and a Glacier - Myrkdalen to Olden,Norway -7th July 2016

---

---

The day has dawned(we will call it dawn at 7am,even though the sun rose officially this morning at around 4am)fine and clear and a more perfect day for the road and scenery ahead we don’t think we could have asked for.

Our studio has suited us well and having cooking facilities and a refrigerator has been a real bonus to keep our costs down and also keep our chilled groceries where we need them to be when they are out of the chilly bag. The only small thing against the studio was that it had a garlic smell when we arrived and the man on the front desk when he checked us in sort of gave us an apology by saying that they had had a bus load of Korean tourists the previous night who had been free and easy with the garlic in their cooking.

And that garlic smell had somehow got itself into the car when we climbed aboard the next morning to start our drive. Had the garlic pervaded our suitcases and groceries we had taken into the room for the two nights?

But garlic smell is like the airs of Rotorua with its sulphur. You get used to it after a few minutes. We didn’t notice it again during the day.

It was only a short drive up the D13 and we had our first photo stop of many for the day.

The road ahead had to get over a mountain ahead of us and to do so the road constructors had made a zig zag that stood out from a distance so that you could clearly define where the road crossed the mountain side to climb the altitude necessary.

At our stop we watched a bus descend rather slowly taking each hairpin turn with care.

While we were doing this three sheep that had free reign of the land down to where we had crossed a cattle stop came over and started licking the tyres of the car. Now OK we do need to clean the car desperately but we weren’t going to worry about the tyres. What they were enjoying was a mystery to us. They had to stop and return to the flock that was lazing about in the warm sunshine when Gretchen decided they had better be well away from the road when the bus coming down the zig zag finally as it might want to stop to allow its passengers to take photos of the road they had just descended.

Sure enough that is exactly what the bus driver did but by then the sheep were well out of the way.

We started up the mountain at a steady speed taking the first two hairpins without meeting any opposing traffic coming down.

However the third hairpin was another story!

Unbeknown to us driving up the road there was an articulated truck coming down and we met right on the hairpin. Gretchen let out a four lettered word I do not often hear from her!

In Gretchen’s book, downhill traffic is supposed to give way but this guy wasn’t going to do that and she was forced to reverse back to give the truck driver enough room to negotiate all the way around and straighten up.

Problem passed we continued on the rest of the way up the mountain side and reached the summit at just on 1000metres.Around us on the side of the road and away into the distance of the rather barren landscape the snow was still lying in large drifts. The snow next to the road had an icy look but even though the sun was warm and the air temperature was 12C it didn’t seem to be obvious that it was melting.

There were some beautiful scenes as we slowly travelled along the plateau of snow on the hillsides and ice floes in the lakes below us. Everything just screamed out photograph me!

The snow poles on the side of the road at around 6 metres tall indicated just how much snow falls here in the winter time.

Ahead the plateau continued to climb slightly and eventually we came to a 1km tunnel to make it through to what was the northern side of the mountain where the effect of windblown snow in the winter would be at its worse, assuming the road was open to traffic. There were enough lodges scattered here and there on the plateau to suggest that some sort of winter activities happened up here.

The view from the other side or northern end of the tunnel over the valley that led down to the small town of Vik and out to the Sognefjord was magnificent and it took some time to gaze around at everything that was in our vision to take it all in.

We were so pleased we had chosen to take the D13 and the mountain scenery over the 8km tunnel and then the longest tunnel in the world at somewhere over 20km on the E16 from Flam.

The road up to the plateau had been in 4 distinct zig zags and you could really only drive at 50/60kph in case you met something coming down, as we did.

However going down the other side to the fjord was a different story.

Here the incline or decline for us wasn’t as sharp but rather a steady drop and it was very easy to pick up speed quickly on long virtually straight downhill stretches until you were forced to brake for a corner which made your speed slow. I am not sure what was the most hair raising, the uphill or the downhill! Gretchen just seemed to be enjoying her moments of being a ‘rally driver’!

About half way down we took the opportunity for a stop (which took the momentum out of Gretchen’s ‘need for speed’) at a viewpoint and met up again with a German family who had sat opposite us on the train on the downhill journey. We hadn’t actually spoken to each other then and we didn’t again this morning but there was a sort of acknowledgement that we had crossed paths before.

At Vik, just before we entered the town, we spotted a church to the side of the town that was quite different in appearance from anything we had ever seen before.

The shape of the building was as you might expect of a church and there was a spire of sorts. But it was the unusual colour of black for the building and the fact that there was no glass in the tiny openings that served as windows plus the twirled endings on the little spires that made it quite different.

We were of course looking at the first stave church we had come across and there aren’t that many left in Norway. What is left is now being preserved for history.

The word 'stave' describes the main uprights used in the construction of the church and is how the style of church got its name.The staves on the Hopperstad Church were 8 metres tall and very,very,solid.The church was founded around 1140 but had gone through a restoration in 1880.However the stone foundations were original and because the wooden church was built on stones rather than soil the timber has lasted all these years.

We don’t normally like paying to enter a church but this one we gave exception to and anyway if we hadn’t paid we might not have got to see the inside of what is peculiar to this part of the world.

I asked if there was a ‘senior rate’ to discount the admission of Kr70 and got us both in for Kr50 each. Yes even Gretchen got the senior discount!

There was no artificial lighting inside the church meaning that it took a few moments for our eyes to adjust. There was a smell of what we thought was like creosote, a product that is occasionally used to paint wood a dark shade at home.

You just couldn’t make any comparison to modern day churches and it will be interesting to read more about how the people followed their religious beliefs using these stave churches as their place to pray.

The fjord had to be crossed and it was a short drive to the narrowest point in the area where the ferry went across to the village of Hella.

The GPS comes up every so often asking us to do a u-turn when something confuses it. Today we were half way across the fjord on the 10 minute ride and she suddenly barked out ‘if possible do a u-turn’.

We had lunch a little further along the road from Hella overlooking the fjord. The D55 had little traffic and it was idyllic sitting listening to the few birds that were up in the tress and the gentle lapping of the water just below out picnic spot. Even a small inflatable about 100 metres offshore couldn’t disturb the peace.

The day’s scenery before us just got better as the afternoon moved on and at Sogndalsfjora we switched to the D5 and headed north.

Now the afternoon is not normally a time to catch reflections in a lake as by this time of the day you usually have some sort of breeze.

Not today however and as we came upon a lake that was perhaps 3km long we noticed how the reflections of the pasture on the mountain side and the houses were gradually growing in clarity.

And a stop was called for to record the scene. The reflections were almost perfect such was the stillness around us.

A little further on and another startling sight came into view for us. This really was turning out to be one of those days of rare beauty as far as the scenery was concerned.

As soon as we had seen the glacier hanging from the craggy mountain we had to stop as we thought this might just be the only opportunity we had to take photos.

How wrong we were. A little further on we were able to drive off the highway and to a car park that was virtually below the Boyabreen Glacier..What was even more amazing was this glacier is a small off shoot of a gigantic glacier further back that is not visible from the road.

There was an information board that had photos through the last century showing how the glacier had receded overall as most glaciers have in the world due to the warming process going on.

However it was still a stunning sight and its dominance of the view in front of us was quite breathtaking.

We bought an ice cream from a cafe/restaurant next to the car park. Patrons there had the most fabulous view you could ever expect to have with your meal out towards the glacier.

As we left the glacier we entered a 6.7km long tunnel that took us through the mountain range and then a shorter 2.6km tunnel that was all downhill to emerge still at an altitude of 250metres above another offshoot of the mighty Sognefjord where another photo stop had to be made.

We rejoined the E39 which we haven’t been on for a couple of days at Skei and drove through a 20km valley before we ascended another mountain range, although this one was lower and shorter to pass through than the ones earlier today before we dropped back down to sea level and the Nordfjord.

Just before the campground at Olden we came across a new tunnel being built through the granite rock and with all the equipment and men at work it seemed they were making the most of the dry weather to make progress to its completion.

The key for our cabin was hanging at the unattended office for us and we got ourselves unpacked in the cosy space that would be home for the night.

There was no running water in the cabin so we had a 20 litre plastic jerry can to take down to the ablutions block to fill and bring back for our water supplies. Gretchen checked out the WC and shower arrangements as we don’t have these in the cabin either and declared it might be an early rise to avoid a wait. It was a small facility of cabins and a two storied house divided into 4 motel units. Just how many had their own facilities and who how many we would be competing against in the morning remained to be seen.

Across the drive way a group of three couples had been fishing in the fjord right beside their cabin and were about to cook a fish on a BBQ.We waited in hope for an invite but it never came and we assumed there wasn’t quite enough to feed another couple. We will have to make do with our boxed dry meals we have bought with us from our last Germany stop especially for occasions like this.

The Wi-Fi connection was brilliant which we thought was amazing for the facility we were in. We had better reception than we have had in many apartments where the router was in the room next to the laptop.

It had been a very memorable day of the Norway’s best scenery on the route we took and we had been so fortunate that the weather had remained fine and dry for us to enjoy it all and take it in.

Tomorrow may well provide a repeat of the scenery as we head towards and then drive the Trollstigen described as one of the world’s most dangerous roads.

PS:todays title music is probably one of the most well known pieces from Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg.Watch it on Youtube and turn the volume up to get the best as the music comes to a crescendo.

---