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Published: June 30th 2016
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Writing this in the lovely warmth of a cabin at a campground outside Bergen. We arrived in torrential rain to a very soggy campground and decided to have a night of dryness. Of course as soon as we put the key in the lock the rain stopped!
Today was a beautiful journey from Odda to here. We took the quieter route up a few fjords, lots of waterfalls, lovely orchards, small towns, harbours and one ferry.
After Stavanger we went to Preikestolen. Pretty drive but not far. When we left we had taken the tent down in the rain. We had lovely weather for the whole drive. As we pulled up to put the tent up it started to rain, of course! According to the weather forecast the next day was going to be drier, particularly in the morning so we decided to do the main walk,out to Pulpit Rock, the reason to go there the following day. Having hung around the town, been every shop, had a coffee, a bowl of soup at the Chinese restaurant we went up to the start of the walk. The hike to Pulpit’s Rock is famous so there’s a big carpark that
was busy, and expensive (we found out while there that there’s a bus from the campsite). So we decided to do a different walk today, according to the park information person it was a ‘Norwegian Walk’ around the lake. We discovered that this meant four hours of small trails, over streams, up and down. Periodically it would pour down making the ground even more sodden. The walk there was not great fun but once we’d turned the corner at the bottom of the lake the walk up the other shore was much more pleasant. Out shoes are still drying out three days later!
To avoid the forecast rain we set off early (6am) to walk to Pulpit’s Rock. We didn’t realise what a good idea this was as when we were coming back the trail was heaving (literally in some cases). It must have been the first clear day for a while. It’s a 2 hours up and less than that back down walk. Pretty relentless but not too steep. Nice views along the way, quite a lot of mist going up. Once we were there we stayed nearly an hour to let the mist rise. Stunning location, you
end up at this massive rock that sticks out over a fjord,(like a Priest’s pulpit), with a 600m sheer drop. Beautiful greeny blue water below. While we were there it was very peaceful. Literally hundreds of people passed us as we descended.
From there we went to Odda, camping by a lake outside the old industrial tow, , really pretty with views of waterfalls and glaciers from the campsite. We managed to take down and put the tent up without rain for once. The big reason to be in Odda is a hike called the Trolls Tongue. It’s an all day 22km hike out to a rock that sticks out over a lake. After several days of rain we learned that as expected it was very muddy and there was not a lot to see on the route. Having just done the hike up to Pulpit Rock we decided that nice as the Trolls Tongue sounded we didn’t need to do a long hike for a similar result. After following a signpost outside the campground to “Glacier 8 km’ we drove along a very narrow lane to find a big carpark, information boards and great view of a glacier
and icefield. So we decided to spend the day hiking up to the glacier instead. It was a rewarding experience. Not a long distance but very steep. Starts pleasantly along the valley then suddenly starts scaling the contour lines. Lots, and lots of hanging ropes to pull you up, stream after stream to cross by wooden planks or some sturdier metal crossings. The end result was lunch at the bottom of the glacier with a view up to the icefield. Very pretty and worth the exercise.
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