The Dolomite Pass Pordoi

Saturday 3 July 2003. We look back on an excursion again today, heading back into and up the Dolomite mountas via the Pass Pordoi.

Hairpin bends and spectacular views were the order of the day.

There was a familiar voice as another Leger party got on the coach. I turned to see Christina who had been our guide in Amsterdam! "I take you round the red light district here?" she shouted down the length of a suddenly stunned silent coach...

Ever wondered what the Winter Olympics ski jumps look like in summer? Scary. They look scary!

We reached the Pordoi Pass. This reaches an altitude of 2,239 metres (7,346 ft) and we started climbing 9.4 kilometres (5.84 miles) ago with an average gradient of 6.8% - glad I wasn't travelling by pushbike... Helena, our guide for the day, was soon booking tickets for us all to go up the Sass Pordoi.

That wasn't a spelling mistake. Sass Pordoi is a mountain at 2,952 m (9,685 ft), whose summit can be reached by funicular from Pordoi Pass. These were large cable cars, not the small ones. They held a fair amount of people so once we had our tickets it didn't take long before we were heading skywards!

They set off climbing at quite a steep angle too. We were amongst the last people on, so had a good view looking downwards. I've never been particularly bothered by heights providing I'm not in the process of falling from them, but not everyone on the coach felt able to attempt the trip up the mountain.

It was a long way up even on the cable car. We felt our ears pop a couple of times as we ascended and the air got thinner.

At the top of the mountain there were a couple of gullies and the cable car made use of them, passing between walls of rock on three sides as it neared the top station.

As we reached the summit and got out to walk atop the plateau of the mountain top we could see that the cable car station actually overhung the edge.

Looking back down the way we came up we could see only a cluster of buildings without being able to make out much detail. The sun's rays lit up the tops of surrounding mountains and the path of the valleys far below.

Up here on the rock plateau it was decidedly chilly. Admittedly I was only wearing a t-shirt... My arm started to tingle with cold. When I looked, tiny ice crystals or snow flakes were landing on me. Time to go back down!

As we waited for the cable car it started to snow a bit harder and we crammed into the first available car shivering and clapping our arms around ourselves trying get warm again.

We were all on the coach again apart from a Chinese mother and daughter who had gone wandering around independently instead of going up the cable car. They turned up 20 minutes late and tried to blame it on Helena telling her that she had told them the wrong time - even though the rest of us had obviously gotten there on time. Helena was having none of it. "Don't argue with Mama!" she said in a voice that brought on a sudden storm complete with thunder and lightning...

Lake Garda and Northern Italy, 2003 Index

Königsee and the Jennerbahn

Monday 14 August 2000. After our morning in Berchtesgaden, we got back to the coach and motored on for another while before coming to Königsee.

We passed several of these wonderful chalet style buidings both large and small, but always exquisitely decked out in blooms of colour. We learned that the "see" part of Königsee's name meant "lake".

In the case of Königsee it was a crystal clear turquoise lake with tiny fish darting from underneath at any bread thrown to the ducks. Towering over the lake were several mountains.

We had a couple of hours free time and we had at first thought to go for a cruise on the lake.

However the long line of people who had all had similar thoughts put us off a wee bit and we stood for a while drinking in the sights and sounds. Before we found our drink though, Fran saw a notice for a cable car and we set off to find out if the queue was any less than for the boats. It was! In fact there was no queue whatsoever! The man in the kiosk told us that the car took 30 minutes to go up plus another 30 to come down again - plenty of time for us to take the trip and to spend a bit of time at the top.

So we walked through the turnstiles and got straight into a small two-person cable car which after a short pause launched us off up the mountain on the Jennerbahn. Again by way of explanation, Jenner was the name of the mountain and bahn means train or in this case a linked series of little cabins, suspended from the cable above.

The cable car was glazed with plastic and the door was locked. It very soon got boiling hot in there! The cable car opened in 1953 and due to the length of the cable (4.2km or 2.6 miles) it has to pass through a middle station where the gradient changes.

We approached, passed through, and left the middle station without any bother and the cable began to rise more steeply. The upper section of the cable was not only steeper but longer than that from the lake to the middle station.

And here we are, arriving at the top station. The Jenner mountain stands 1874m tall (6148ft) and the cable car travels 4.2 kilometers to get to the top.

The view from the top. We looked for the lake far below but were not able to spot it. Possibly because the cable car route takes a bt of a dog-leg bend at the middle station and also because the lower portion of the mountain is heavily forested.

We checked the time and decided there was plenty of time to sit and have a drink at the top of the mountain before climbing back into another oven for the journey back down!

The journey back down was as scenic if not more so than the jouney up. We had the added excitement of watching out for the lake to come into view. As we left the Jennerbahn we took a last look at the lake then back to the coach. A family of four are missing.

After half an hour they tumbled into the coach, breathless. They had been told that the boat trip would get them back in time but in fact they had had to get off at the first stop and then had to apologise and beg to queue-jump a line of 100 people to get back. "Was it worth it though?" one of the others asked. "No - we spent all the time worrying that the coach would have gone!"

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Up a Big Hill in Kitzbühel

Tuesday 29 January 2002. We are swanning around the Austrian Alps on a Leger Holidays coach tour. We have left a rather solid lake at Zell-am-See behind and are heading for Kitzbühel.

It's a glorious day, if somewhat parky (cold... my editor - that's me aswell - has just told me not to assume everyone knows my northwest English!) We arrive at Kitzbühel and Jock parks the coach in a part of the town we don't remember.

We head off to look for the cable car as we all fancy a look at the ski slopes. First we stop for a bite of lunch at a cafe and then find a cable car that, from the bottom station, seems to go a very long way up. Count us in!

Miss Franny and Sheila ignore any feelings of vertigo as we climb rapidly up the side of the mountain. They are facing backwards to the direction of travel and the mountain we are going up is in shadow.

We keep going up and the town becomes a toy in the distance below us. To the side the view is glorious.

We approach the top and somebody decides we would have to jump out quick because the car wouldn't stop so we all dive out like silly beggars, killing ourselves laughing and setting the car rocking away! There are a couple of shops for skiers and presumably some equipment for hire too. People are sunbathing on the bar terrace. To the right of the photo a tiny fence with just one or two cross bars stands between the level ground and a lo-o-o-ong drop. I wondered why it was so small but when I looked there were another three cross bars under the snow...

Photo for posterity - look folks, we are here! Me with Sheila and Diane. A constant stream of skiers came up and poled away. A couple of snowboarders were trying the gentler slopes. I was quite content to stand and watch.

It does look an exhilarating way of spending an afternoon, though up here at the top you don't see the ones who come to grief halfway down, spread-eagled with their ski tracks one each side of a careless tree...

Here James Bond makes a break for it, whilst an Eastern Bloc border guard chases him. Just to the front of us a snowboarder is tentatively falling down a gentle three-foot high slope towards the shops and bar complex. He slithers to a halt where a passing yeti dusts him off and takes him for lunch...

The view facing away from the bar and shops. The sun flares through clouds of ice crystals. Despite the height and all the snow it feels quite warm.

We watch the skiers for quite a while and then head back towards the cable car for the journey back down. They've done it again! Fran and Sheila get in a car that is just about to disappear throught the barrier and Diane and I have to run and dive in at the last moment! There's a real feeling of regret on starting the journey downwards. This afternoon would be thought the best of the holiday by most people on the coach.

Well, here we are at the bottom again. It cost us €14 (euros) for the round trip, each way taking approx ten minutes. The euro had only been adopted at the begnining of January and there was still a lot of confusion amongst the Austrians and Germans, never mind us Brits!

Return to Austria Winter Holiday 2002 Index

Cable Car to the Hahnenkamm

Friday 15 August 2003. We have travelled independently from Niederau to Kitzbühel by train and rain and before lunching have decided on a bold course of action...

This is the Hahnenkamm Bahn - the station for the cable car up the Hahnenkamm mountain. The obvious thing to do in pouring rain is to try to get above it, right? Mum is strangely reluctant. It turned out she was thinking more of a chair lift than a cable car...

Once inside the tiny cabin she calms down and starts to enjoy the views.

The Hahnenkamm reaches upwards to 1,712 metres (5,617 ft) above sea level. To get a decent photo of our ascent I need to open a window and lean out a bit. Or perhaps I just poked the camera out...

Without resorting to this, the view would have been somewhat different... Somehow I don't think we are going to get above the clouds and rain!

We reach the top, where hundreds of cyclists - with bikes - are waiting to go down again. We realise that some of the cable car pods have hooks on the outside and the bicycles can be hung out to get wet whilst going up or down.

From the summit we can look across Kitzbühel to the Kitzbühellerhorn - another mountain. The Alps are full of them! In winter the Hahnenkamm hosts a race meeting for people daft enough to strap planks to their feet and shove themselves off into the snow. There are both steep downhill and slalom courses to challenge skiers and the internet is full of videos of folks coming to grief on them. Just after the start of the downhill is a drop over which they free fall for 40 metres (100 feet) landing with care not to squish themselves to half their normal height before immediately being confronted by a sharp turn to the left which they enter at some 60 miles per hour.

And that, dear readers, is why I don't strap planks to my feet...

We leave the mountain and the other members of the family leisurely get onto the first available cable car. So leisurely in fact that the pod - which doesn't stop, but just trundles around a semi-circular platform - is about to launch into space again before I just manage to leap aboard at the last moment before it leaves. We get back to Kitzbühel to find that most people have folded their umbrellas and the rain has stopped - or at least, paused. It is now time for a bit of lunch.

After that we decide to squelch our way back to the station to get the train back to Wörgle. We are stopped by the train in question crossing our path. As it's a public holiday the next train isn't running so we have an hour to wait. We decide we might as well walk along to the next station but by some strange quirk of fate we don't reach it as quickly as I thought we should and, turning the map the upside down, I realise we have been going the wrong way... About turn!

Return to Austrian Tyrol 2003 Index

Fire and Ice: Bergen, Norway

Wednesday 9 August 2017. Our second visit to Bergen in Norway and we are looking forwad to seeing it again.

Before breakfast we come out onto the Promenade Deck to watch our approach to Bergen in Norway. We are up early because we are booked on a half-day trip which will include going up on the cable car to the top of the mountain.

First though it takes us on a little tour of the city, starting at the fish market. This is just a short photo stop, though our guide, Andrea from Venezuela, walks with us to the market to point out, amongst other things, whale meat.

There is quite a number of ships in the harbour and we'll have a closer look at some of them later on.

One of the fish stalls on the market. You will also find stalls with fruit and veg on this market and even some stalls selling food both for take-aways and a few with a collection of benches and table under a canvas roof.

A closer look reveals some huge crab legs and claws - krabbe-klor on the extreme left!

They were giving free samples slices of whale meat. Not for me. I'm no vegetarian but I draw the line at eating such intelligent creatures... That is what he is slicing up on the right. On the whale watching trip in Akureyri they told us that hardly anyone other than tourists eat whale meat now and begged us not to try it.

The Bryggen is the old town of Bergen. We have visited it before but now we get a chance to see it from across the harbour. We can see the track of the cable car leading up the hillside in the distance. I'm looking forward to that!

However, back to Bergen! We were now on the other side of the harbour to where we had visited before and there are old wooden buildings on this side also! The hill on the right looks as though it could be the one that I drew from a photo on our sea days approaching Iceland!

This part of the excursion was mostly a drive around this part of the town. The part that we were waiting for came after our round-town drive - the trip up the cable car.

But if we thought we would miss having to queue for ages we were disappointed as we were in a line for around 40 minutes or so before we got into the station and realised that there was a massive queue in there as well! Eventually we got to the front of the queue and made it onto the train.

We were not in a good position to take photos of the ride up - but we will be on the way down! At the top we found Andrea and told her we would make our own way down and leave the tour at this point. This would allow us to have a wander around the Bryggen and its shops at leisure. The view of Bergen, its fjord and the sea beyond is really excellent.

We make the most of the viewing area, taking in the inland side of Bergen as well as the port. The bridge to the left carries the European Route E39 across the end of Bergen's fjord. This route stretches 830 miles (1330 km) from just south of Trondheim in Norway down to Aalborg in Denmark. The road from end to end involves taking to a ferry an incredible nine times - the most ferry sections of any single road in Europe.

The peninsular in this view is where we took our drive earlier. The fish market can be made out as the bright red stalls, bottom left, and a Costa ship - Costa Magica - is in the port on the right, near to Thomson Celebration.

We have a little wander about the hilltop, finding some goats in a hut and evidence of their freedom in plenty along the path... We also had a look in the shop and I found it wasn't only Fran and the other ladies who had to queue to visit the toilets but the queue for the Gents was only a little one. We join the short queue for the cable car down.

This time I made sure to get a spot which gave us a good view of our descent! Several times the roadway crosses the train track - the road involves a few more hairpin bends than the train requires!

The halfway point. Apart from this short section where the climbing and descending cars pass, the cable car is single track. A hairpin bend can be seen on the road to the left and the roadway again crosses the track in front of us.

We reach the short tunnel that leads into the station at the bottom of the hillside. The car slows right down as it approaches the waiting queues of people waiting for the journey upwards. We get out to the left whilst they enter on the right. Automatic barriers ensure that the correct number of passengers get through to wait next to the track for boarding so that there is minimal jostling and risk of someone falling.

Spot the vertical! The old shops of the Bryggen. Miss Franny is standing under the word Knut.

Two of the shops are having work done to their frontages, but have been hung with painted material so that they keep an approximation of their normal appearance.

Walking through archways (there's one near the middle of the previous photo) takes the visitor through to the very narrow streets of the medieval Bryggen. Most of the original houses have been burned down and rebuilt several times since medieval days, but always to the same design and appearance. As a result if you were suddenly transported back to the 1400s you would find yourself in the midst of the same buildings and street plan.

We say Goodbye to the Bryggen and head back towards the port and our ship. The Øystrand is a brand new ship, built this year (2017) for carrying live fish. Her bows are strangely bulbous. I suppose the captured fish tried to escape by charging en-masse at the hull in an attempt to break it?

A road train is doing trips, a toy troll strapped to the front of the funnel. "Mind that car!!!" it kept shouting...

CMV Cruises ship Columbus looked strangely familiar but it was not until we got home and looked it up that I realised we had actually sailed on her under a different guise. She was built in France in 1988 for the Italian cruise line Sitmar and was launched as Sitmar FairMajesty, but in the same year the Sitmar line was sold to P&O and the ship was sold to Princess Cruises sailing from 1989 to 1997 as the Star Princess.

In 1997 she joined the P&O fleet and was renamed Arcadia. From 2003 to 2010 she served as Ocean Village which was how we came to sail on her in 2010. I took the above photo on 25 April 2010 in Limassol, Cyprus. The Ocean Village brand was a P&O line catering for those who preferred a less formal cruise. When the brand ceased in 2010 she joined P&O Cruises Australia as the Pacific Pearl and was sold to Cruise and Maritime Voyages to serve as CMV Columbus just this year.

The Rosenkrantz Tower is part of Bergen's Bergenhus Fortress. It is a 16th century enlargement of the original castle keep of 1270. Behind the white building can be seen the stepped gables of Haakon's Hall, built at the start of the second half of the 13th century. It was badly damaged in World War II by the explosion of a Dutch ammunition ship, this event being described a few days ago when we were in Stavanger at the beginning of this cruise (see entry posted 15 August 2017).

Costa Magica, built in 2003 was sister ship to the less-fortunately named "Costa Fortuna" and has spent her entire life in service with the Costa Crociere cruise line. We bought some postcards and things from a tiny souvenir shop on the port. The shop owner told us it had rained so hard the previous day that hardly anyone got off from the four ships that were in port that day. We have been incredibly lucky on this cruise!

Back on the ship we take up seats in the Coffee Lounge on Deck 5 and I sketch the coastline of a part of Bergen to the north of the Bryggen Harbour. It includes rocks, water, buildings, bare earth, trees and pine trees - a challenge to make sense of in pencil!

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