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Published: July 13th 2016
We had a good night’s sleep in our bunk beds in our little cabin alongside the Nordjjord.Not that we will get used to the very short amount of nighttimes at this time of the year in Norway at our latitude.
The worst thing waking up in the morning is looking at your watch and although it is light outside the clock says it is just 5am and you want to sleep at least another hour.
I lay there and thought about getting up or trying to go back to sleep and in the end the former won out.
I had thought that by going to the ablution block at 6am I would have the place to myself.
Not so! I had to take a seat and wait for both the toilet and shower to come free.
The shower was interesting and I wondered what the guy ahead of me had done when he emerged from the shower room and grabbed some paper towels and went back into the shower room.
When it was finally my turn I found that water was everywhere and it was just as well there was like a wooden pallet to
stand on to keep above the tide mark! Where all the water had come from with the previous guy is beyond me but I was going to do my best not to add to it.
For Kr10 (about NZ$1.60) you got 5 minutes so I made the most of it and didn’t add to the water on the floor. I could not figure out what he had done other than the shower rose was one of those that you had to ‘manage’ to keep on the wall.
Gretchen waited until later before venturing down to the women’s ablution block and had no problems at all.
It was another sunny morning and we are starting to wonder how long our luck will hold out as far as the weather is concerned.
Certainly yesterdays drive and memorable scenery wouldn’t have been the same to experience had there been rain while we were driving the route.
We started our drive around the Nordfjord on the D60 to Stryn where it was time to fill the petrol tank as we were heading into a fairly isolated area today.
We had followed a rental car for a couple of
kilometres and commented that the driver didn’t appear confident with the narrow road as he was hugging the centre line and crossing it at times.
We followed him into the petrol station and even though I had taken a few minutes to fill up and pay he was still trying to figure out how to open and fill the tank in his rental car! Needless to say we hope we don’t have to follow him on the drive today.
After some shopping for lunch we left Stryn and moved onto the D15 and took basically a westerly direction.
Lo and behold ahead of us again was the guy who couldn’t figure out his petrol tank in Stryn. We were please though to see that he indicated he was pulling off the highway as we got stuck behind him. Let’s hope that is the last we see of him today.
Further up the valley on the D15 we entered the Hellje tunnel of 2.6km long and emerged into another valley. Building a tunnel is certainly the most direct way of getting between valley and over mountain ranges and the Norwegians do it extremely well which makes driving
straightforward.
We got ourselves to a point in the road where we had to make a decision on taking a different route.
We had climbed partially up a mountain side road and the option of the D258 to Grotli came upon us. Gretchen had read that the road was unsealed but we were up for a bit of adventure today to ready ourselves for the Trollstigen so we took the turn and continued climbing rather than staying on the D15 and entering another tunnel.
The road was steep and took several hairpin turns to get up the mountain side.It was very narrow but it was sealed.
We hoped that perhaps it might widen out a bit once it reached the summit which wasn’t that far away. And sure it enough it did and the road was still sealed.
The summit was at just over 100 metres and the small lake alongside the road still had ice floes in it.
We drove across the plateau and even came across 2 cyclists who appeared to have unloaded their bicycles off their campervan and were going back to check out the amazing scenery.
There were cars
and campervans from several European nations and there was International co-operation at the passing bays which came up every couple of hundred metres. The road was now quite busy (we hadn’t noticed this when we took the decision to turn onto the road) but the traffic all moved smoothly at a slow pace. No one really would want to speed over this road such was the changing scenery after every corner.
The road was just 27km long but with all the photo stops we made plus the low speed we took over an hour to get to the end of the road at Grotli and rejoined the D15 heading back west again.
There was a picnic spot next to a large lake and there were toilet facilities, a bonus at lunchtime.
I always say ‘any port in a storm’ when looking for toilet facilities around the middle of the day and today was no different. I discovered just how long I could hold my breath as I did my business in the long drop chemical toilet and took a huge breath after emerging into the fresh clean mountain air.
Gretchen had the lunch all set up
when I returned and she asked whether she should give the ‘small’ room a try. My advice was hold on as best you can unless she could hold her breath longer than me!
Lunch then proceeded.
It was pleasant in the sun and although there was a slight cool breeze coming off the lake it was quite bearable.
We were not long into having our lunch and a car with Czech number plate pulled in and the 3 occupants got out to have their lunch at the next table.
One of the guys went up the little rise to the toilet. And didn’t return for several minutes!
We thought he might have been overcome inside the small space because no one could hold their breath for that long.
Then he appeared and came back down to talk to his fellow male and female passengers. We would have loved to have understood Czech language if what he was saying was a description of his thoughts on the small chemical toilet.
We should have offered him our antiseptic handiwipes because they didn’t have any and he had to go over the road and down to
the lake to wash his hands.
His description of his experience couldn’t have been that bad because as we were driving off the female passenger was heading up the small rise to use the toilet!
It was just a short drive and we turned off the D15 and onto the D63 which would take us through the small fjord side village of Geiringer, named after the fjord on which it sits. This fjord has UNESCO world heritage status for its beauty. And then further on we would tackle one of the world’s most dangerous roads, the Trollstigen, a road that is only open for around 4 to 5 months per year due to the amount of snow that covers it once snow starts to fall in the autumn.
First though we got another of those surprises that have popped up when we have least expected and the surprises have usually been because we didn’t know that an area we were in contained scenery or an experience that we hadn’t previously known or read about.
Just after turning onto the D63 we came across another lake, as we did yesterday, where the reflections, even though it was
afternoon which is not usually the best time for reflections on water, where the reflections were quite stunning.
As we were taking photos we had noticed cars going up the mountain side nearby on a zig zag road. Initially we thought this would be the road we would take but we soon found out that it was a private road with a toll and although we passed a sign to where it went we didn’t take enough notice.
However we were curious enough to stop a half a kilometre down the road and turned back to recheck where it went.
The road would take us up a further staggering 500 metres in altitude over 5 kilometres for a fee of Kr120 for the highest view in Europe of a fjord plus all the other scenery on a 360deg basis.
We paid the toll of Nkr120 and started on the zig zag on what was certainly a very steep incline. The road was wide enough for two vehicles to easily pass and there were guard rails all the way up so it wasn’t too scary.
The views from the top were awesome and again we were
so thankful the day was fine and clear as it made visibility as far as our eyes could focus.
Looking over the edge of one of the viewing platforms wasn’t for the faint hearted as the drop was straight down the rock face.
The Dalsnibba was one of the best finds we have met on the BBA V3 and we know we keep saying that every so often there are surprises for us but the views from here just blew us away.
One other thing that was very evident at 1500 metres above sea level and exposed to all four quadrants of the compass was the complete lack of any wind or breeze. Quite astonishing!
We got ourselves back to the D63 negotiating all the hair pin curves with care and only had to pull over once to allow an uphill car a little more room to get around corner.
As we could see from the Dalsnibba lookout it was all downhill to the Geiringerfjord.
There was really only one pull off set aside for vehicles to stop safely and admire the view further down the mountain side and although we had already seen
the world famous fjord from the Dalsnibba lookout we also wanted a closer look from the stopping area.
There was no room in the pull off area as there were large buses pulled in and mixed in with cars. We managed to stop off the road and clear of the traffic and we were only going to be a couple of minutes taking photos.
That done we returned to the car just as a large 50 seater tour bus coming up the hill and couldn’t fit into the over full car park came to a stop right in front of us blocking our access onto the road without reversing back into the downhill traffic lane. Buses have been a pain at times and really are a law unto themselves.
The small village of Geiringer was busy with people everywhere and it wasn’t really an option to stop there and in any case we didn’t think there was anything else we could add to our sights of the day by stopping.
Heading up the mountain side on the other side of the village the road continued with more hair pin curves until we got to another lookout
similar to the one half an hour earlier although this time the view was different in that you not only looked back to Geiringer village but also further down the fjord after it curved. Again the vistas were stunning and even the fact that there were a lot of people milling around didn’t detract from making the stop.
We had one further short ferry ride across a fjord before we got to the road we had come to Norway to tackle.
The Trollstigen was constructed in 1936 and took 8 years to finish and is rated on a couple of websites that we had read as one of the world’s most dangerous roads to drive. Vehicles over 12.5 metres according to one website were not allowed on the road as they wouldn’t make it around the 13 hairpin curves.
We had approached the road from the top so our journey was going to down the mountain side which may work out to be an easier task than driving up the mountain side as you have better vision looking down than up when you are driving.
The car park at the top has a restaurant and it
was virtually full even this late in the day.
To get a view of what you have just driven, if you come up the mountain side or what you are about to experience going down there is a walkway from the car park that takes you out to 3 viewing platforms where you can look down at the road from where it starts in the valley below.
We spent 30 minutes or so getting an idea as to how drivers handled the hair pin turns although the road looked wider than we had read about and imagined.
We watched a bus coming up have to swing right out as far as he possibly could to make it around a bend about half way up with his windscreen almost touching the rock cliff face on the opposite side of the road. His approach had the effect of a campervan having to slow down and then wait for the bus to straighten out before the campervan could proceed. If this happened on every corner it could slow the traffic down even more.
We walked back to the car ready to take on whatever was coming up. Gretchen had
looked carefully before we left the lookout and said she couldn’t see any buses coming towards the road from the valley which should mean we at least don’t encounter any of them on the way down.
Ahead of us was a 4 wheel drive with Russian registration plates. We thought they would be up for a bit of adventure heading down the mountain side but they turned out to be ‘scardy cats’ by driving in the middle of the road moving back into the right hand lane only when a car was coming up towards them. They also only drove at about 20kph which was way too slow for Gretchen. I thought I was going to have to stop her pushing the horn on the 308 to get the Ruskies to hurry up!
Half way down the Russians caught up with a bus also heading down and now we had two slow vehicles ahead of us.
We arrived at the car park at the bottom and took the opportunity to stop and reflect back on the hairpin curves of the Trollstigen and took some photos from the bottom looking upwards.
Would we rate the Trollstigen as
one of the world’s most dangerous roads? Probably not.
It would have been more of a challenge to drive had we had a clear run ahead of us and could have thrown the 308 into the corners like Gretchen wanted to do.
But the Russians and then the bus had taken that fun away by travelling too slow and so we rate the Trollstigen as a bit of a ‘pussy’!
We didn’t have too far to go from the bottom of the Trollstigen to our second camp stay in two nights at Gjerdsetbygda on the D64.
It had still been a long day but we had packed so much in to it that it took some time to recall all we had experienced as we sat down in our cabin going back over the day with a cold beer and nibbles.
Along with the hike to Pulpit Rock it will probably rank 1
st equal for being such a memorable day and it is going to be hard for the rest of the BBA V3 to come up with a day of scenery like we have had before us today.
Tomorrow we head for Kristiansund
and as it’s an easier day of travel we can probably allow ourselves a lie in. That is unless we want to be first in the shared showers and toilet and not have to queue!
PS:enjoy Chet Atkins strumming away to this authentic Norwegian mountain song.Think of the wheels of a car rolling around in rhythm to the strumming of the guitar and you could be travelling with us through the Norwegian mountains.Enjoy on Youtube.
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