Essence of Norway - Stryn to Geiranger

Wednesday 7 August 2013. We left Stryn behind in the previous entry and now we start to climb up into the mountains. The first photo stop comes a few minutes later.

We had been following a glacial river and the coach pulled to a stop by a bridge crossing the river just above some white water rapids. However, a few seconds ago we passed the rapids tumbling over a small fall and I thought that would make a much better photo. So John from Poulton and I rushed downstream and ended up on a small T-shaped platform of wood, totally unrailed and over the rapids!

We got the photos but if you look carefully you can see that the bridge is empty of tourists and so we were the last back to the coach!

We stop for lunch at the Jostedalsbreen National Park Centre in Oppstryn, about 14 miles from Stryn. Jostedalsbreen is also the name of the glacier that we can see above us, which is the largest glacier on mainland Europe. The centre is another of those grass-roofed buildings and in dire need of a goat...

Our dinner, meanwhile is served in a large conservatory, the gables of which can be seen to the right of the photo. We were four coaches on the tour and it fit us all. The tables were large enough to take four couples each. The benches were covered with reindeer skins. We sat with John and Sue, facing two other couples. The table was generously loaded with bottles of beer, Pepsi, and other drinks. We were against the window so Sue got the honour of being table monitor and passing the dishes out. Soup was followed by freshly poached salmon in a white sauce and rice - yummy! Tea and coffee followed.

After that we went outside to look at the lake and the collection of huge rocks. You can see these on the photo of the centre - each rock had a one foot square on its surface polished to show what it would look like as a floor, worktop or whatever. We admired the lake scenery for a bit then looked round the centre itself which sold reindeer skins and trolls and had record-breaking queues at the toilets... Even the Gents had a queue - which the ladies seemed to find quite gratifying for some reason.

We got back on the coach and started to climb. Lots of hairpin bends and we were on a very narrow road. A few cars were passed going the opposite way. This entailed slowing right down to a crawl and judging the right spot to allow the vehicles to pass.
"Do coaches only go one way along this road?" asked one passenger nervously.
"No... answered the driver. "But don't worry - I'm hoping to get my license next week..."

The guide tells us of an incident from World War II. A British plane and a German bomber had an aerial fight over the mountains one winter which resulted in both of them crashing. On the snow covered mountain survivors from both aircraft met in the same mountain cabin and had to live together to survive, becoming friends. The German bomber was still on the mountainside.

In fact, not long afterwards... But no - this turned out to be a replica. The story of the airmen was made into a film in 2012 called Into the White. Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley from the Harry Potter films) plays one of the British crew. This is a prop from the making of that film. However, the real bomber still exists somewhere in the mountains, whilst the British plane was recovered from a nearby lake and is now on display at the Fleet Air Arm Museum in Yeovil, Somerset.

There are lakes a-plenty in the region. We had a photo stop at the side of this one next to a cafe and hotel with the rather quaint name Dupvasshytta. Don't knock it - 5-star reviews and all. Now we start to climb in earnest. No, not the coach's name...

This little (but 2-way) toll road is taking us to the viewpoint on the top of Dalsnibba mountain, from where we should be able to look down on Geiranger, the town at the end of Geirangerfjord, the fjord and the Thomson Spirit, the ship... The Jostedalsbreen glacier can be seen on the mountain tops and the road down can be seen... down...

We are 1500 meters above sea level - which is also fjord level seeing as we haven't gone through any locks or climbed any hills in the ship. The Thomson Spirit is there but partially hidden on the left of the fjord by an outcrop halfway down. Luckily we will stop again halfway down which will allow the following view of the ship which we last saw in Hellesylt first thing this morning.

We are late returning to the ship. It should have sailed half an hour before we got back to it and we were the first of the four coaches. One of the advantages to being on an official ship excursion is that it will wait for you to return. If you go off independently there is no such guarantee.

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Essence of Norway - Hellesylt to Stryn

Wednesday 7 August 2013. We walk off the Thomson Spirit at Hellesylt and walk up towards the wide waterfall where our coach for the Essence of Norway full day excursion waits. There's time to walk onto the bridge over the waterfall and look back towards the fjord.

As we board our coach, the ship turns to head towards Geiranger, where we will meet it later in the afternoon. Between Hellesylt and Geiranger lie countless waterfalls, mountains, the deepest lake in Europe, hairpin bends on steep roads, a glacier, a crashed German bomber from World War II and a lunch at a National Park Center. Some of these we will see in this entry and others in following articles.

The first photo stop is at Honndøla Bridge. Not particularly old as bridges go, it was built in 1810. The mountain in the distance with the very pointy top is Hornindalsrokken which reaches 5016 feet. There is a tourist information hut nearby which is roofed with turf, as are many of the buildings around here. Incredibly the grass is kept short by lifting goats onto the roof to eat it...

Standing at one end of the bridge is this holed stone. The story goes that wedding parties used to cross the bridge and the bride had to pass through the hole to prove she wasn't pregnant. Quite a few pregnant ladies on our coach apparently...

We carried on to the Best Western Raftevolds Hotel. We stopped for a coffee break here in the garden on the bank of Lake Hornindalsvatnet with a couple of trolls for company!

This is the deepest lake in Europe. It has a legend of a monster like our own Nessie in Scotland and a couple claimed to have seen and photographed it in 2012 - the photos resemble a pair of bicycle inner tubes sticking out of the water. I like to have an open mind but... onward...

The coach takes us to Stryn, where the fashion chain Moods of Norway started in this very hut. Pink is their colour... Each of their garments apparently has "234,243" embroidered in it somewhere - apparently the number of tractors in Norway... Yes indeed... Boys done good though, the chain is now going around the world. There's a branch in Newcastle.

We found a souvenir shop. Reindeer skins, trolls and - oh lucky us - fridge magnets...

Stryn was a very nice town to visit, the glacial river runs through it and several of the party went down to see it. We opted to go the other way into the town. We tried to go down to the river to walk back to the coach but couldn't see a way to get to it without walking through peoples' gardens which we thought might be frowned on. We headed back along the road and came to the coach park that way. We were with a couple who lived just a few miles from us. We met them four years ago in the middle of a similar all-day excursion in Turkey... "Hi" to John and Sue!

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A Brief Stop in Hellesylt

Wednesday 7 August 2013. After the rain of yesterday it was a relief to get up onto the deck of Thomson Spirit and see a bit of sunshine!

It is really early in the morning. We were booked for a full day tour called Essence of Norway and the ship was calling here at Hellesylt for the sole purpose of dropping off any passengers going on that tour. The ship would then sail away and we would rejoin it at the end of the day at Geiranger.

After the rain, the waterfalls were pretty spectacular. We stayed up on deck, a little huddle of passengers together on the front of the Promenade Deck under the windows of the ship's bridge, watching the magnificent scenery glide past us as we made our way into the tiny village of Hellesylt.

The best waterfall, if not the highest, was waiting for us in Hellesylt itself. Flowing under two bridges to join the waters of the fjord. By now the Promenade Deck was fairly crowded and cameras were clicking away merrily! We went off to find some breakfast and to get ready for disembarking the ship. The tour left at 9:30am and it would be 5:00pm before we saw the ship again. This one tour alone was to make up for the two days of rain we had experienced so far in Norway. The weather was brilliant and the tour will include a glacier, mountains, lakes, plenty of hairpin bends and a crashed Heinkel bomber. You won't miss the next entry or two will you?

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Hiding Priests at Thurnham Hall

This week my Mum decided she was taking us out to lunch and decided on Thurnham Hall near Lancaster.

The estate dates back to the 12th century but the hall is mostly 16th century restoration and additions. There is a chapel attached and a pele tower.

The hall has a number of rooms and apartments available to visitors and a restaurant in the wonderful hall with a powder blue panelled roof, oak panelling on the walls and stained glass in the windows. We had our granddaughter, Grace with us. She sneaked her own dinner in, but was quite willing to sample ours as well. In fact she took quite a liking to my chips, until she decided she'd had enough and the last mouthful was deposited onto my arm... Thanks, Grace...

We were allowed to have a look round and were told that the main point of interest - a priest hole - could be viewed as the apartment containing it had no one staying in it. We went up the staircase shown and through a set of doors that came from a sailing ship originally.

The priest hole dates from the days after Henry VIII had severed ties with the Catholic church and Lancashire was reluctant to turn Protestant. Priests faced dire consequences if they carried on celebrating the Catholic mass and a number of houses contained intricate ways of hiding them.

This tiny room is built into the back of the chimney of the fireplace in the adjoining room. It is accessed through this small hole in what is now an apartment kitchen. There is a seat - not much more than a narrow resting place and nothing else. No room to stand up fully, no room to move about. During a search the priest would have to hide perhaps for a couple of days in pitch dark and without making a sound. Fancy trying it? Me neither...

The entrance was hidden by means of an ingenious device. Opening the door to the room containing the access hole raised a screen of apparently solid stone, allowing access to the hole. When the priest was in the hole, the door was closed, the screen of masonry dropped back down, the priest removed a wooden peg and now opening the door left the screen in place. The priest was left to his fate, hoping that replacing the peg would allow the screen to be raised again!

My guide told me he had been on night porter duty and on one of his screens he saw that in the main hall the piano was missing and a priest was standing in its place. He (quite bravely I thought!) went down to the hall and there was the piano and no priest. On returning to his desk, the monitor still showed the priest and he took a photo on his phone of the screen image. He showed me this photo. It may have taken a bit of imagination to turn the blurred areas of light and dark into a priest... but I certainly did not see anything resembling a piano!

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Very Rainy Day in Flam

Tuesday 6 August 2013. Last night we were told that all planned excursions for today were cancelled. The reason was a fire in a road tunnel which was the way into Flam for not only the excursion coaches, but also the guides who provided the commentary on Flam's railway.

This is a famous scenic ride up the mountains and is listed as one of the 100 things to do before you die. Doing it after you die is theoretically possible but, even if they let you on the train, the overall experience is not as good...

So we decided that we would get up really early to make the most of our sailing into Flam, which is at the end of the Aurlandsfjord which a tributary of the Sognefjord, a 204 kilometres long and up to 1,308 metre deep fjord. We had therefore entered this fjord in the middle of the night.

The weather was extremely wet. We went for a coffee and by sitting close to the Lido restaurant, managed to sit outside without getting too wet and then decided to go down for our breakfast.

As we passed through the Lido Restaurant on our way down to the waiter service restaurant on Deck 4 I noticed this little house with a water wheel, made out of bread!

We made a leisurely breakfast in the Compass Rose restaurant and were interrupted briefly when a member of the ship's Destinations Team came down to tell us that the Cunard ship, Queen Victoria, was 20 minutes behind us and that anyone who was wanting to travel independently on the Flam Railway was advised to get off the ship immediately to secure tickets as these would be very limited.

A couple on the next table immediately started grumbling. "They could have told us that last night!" he stormed. Yes I can just imagine the skippers of rival companies having those conversations over ship to ship radio, can't you?
"What time will you get in, because we want to be first...?"

We finished our breakfast and then went up on deck to watch the Queen Victoria sail in. Given the weather I expect that the view from the train was going to be severely restricted anyway and without guides to tell you what you couldn't see, we weren't about to spend on tickets. If (Fran says "when") we go back we will pre-book the Flam train excursion and hope for better weather.

Later in the day we decided we would go ashore even in the pouring rain, just to stretch our legs and have a look at Flam itself. We got to the cabin to find someone else wearing my cap...

The Thomson Spirit was moored in the middle of the fjord and was using her tender boats to ferry passengers to and from the Flam landing stage. It was strange being on a tender boat that wasn't rocking about, all of our other experiences having been on the sea!

The train was loading up, ready for its trip up the mountain. There is a small museum in the nearby station building dedicated to the railway and other forms of transport, i.e. skis. The museum was free to enter and I had a quick look round it, conscious that I was dripping water all over the wooden floors. So was everyone else, but I still felt guilty and didn't stay long. We had a look in the souvenir shops (reindeer skins and trolls) and raised eyebrows to the ceiling at the screams from the American child who suddenly realised the skins came "from an animal, Mommy!!! It's from an animal!!!". Not that we're that much better - I used to work in an agricultural college and amongst the teenage newcomers there was a depressing number who could trace milk to a bottle and then further back to the supermarket, but had no idea where it came from any further back than that...

An hour was quite enough to soak us through. We got back to the landing stage to find a lady covered in mud, who had tried to climb up the waterfall and had come down the quicker way... We got back to the ship and changed clothes. Then we gave the Horizons Bar our custom and our books our attention until it came close to sailing time.

The last tender boat comes back from Flam to the ship. We wait whilst it is winched aboard and then the ship's company go about the business of preparing for departure. We find a spot on the Promenade Deck and watch for the first signs of movement.

There were quite a lot of people out on deck to watch us leave, but because of the rain those numbers dwindled quite quickly once we had been under way for quarter of an hour or so. Flam faded into the distance behind us and we sailed down the fjord, knowing that we would be in bed before we sailed out into the North Sea again.

The continual rain of the day had served a purpose in making the many waterfalls a bit more spectacular though!

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Stavanger Old Town

Monday 5 August 2013. If you have been following our adventures on the Fjordland Wonders cruise (and if you haven't then you can catch up by checking out the last three entries) then you will know we have docked in Stavanger in Norway.

It had been a dull day. By the time we had finished our breakfast it was a very rainy day! This was taken from Deck 7 of the Thomson Spirit, looking along Skansegata. We decided that we hadn't come all this way though just to stay in because of rain! So we grabbed hoodies and went down to Deck 2 to the gangway.

Gamle Stavanger (Old Stavanger) was almost wiped out with the rest of the old wooden buildings of the city after the Second World War, when it was proposed to rebuild the city using modern materials. The City Architect, Einar Hedén, protested and the area to the west of Vågen - perhaps the seediest area possible - was chosen. There were 173 wooden houses dating from the late 1700s to the early 1800s.

Set against the slope down to the harbour at Vågen, every time we looked downwards the side and distinctive red and black funnel of Cunard's Queen Victoria met our glance. There will be a chance to see her in a bit more detail tomorrow, as she followed us into Flam.

The rain seemed to be keeping most of her passengers away though so we weren't subjected to massive crowds in Gamle Stavanger and it was possible to get a feel for the place. Today the seedy image has gone and in fact is turned round so much that the area is now considered quite a trendy place to live. The number of buildings has also increased to around 250. Most buildings are now painted in a uniform whitewash, though originally they were many different colours. The area is reputed to contain the best preserved wooden houses in northern Europe.

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Sailing into Stavanger

Monday 5 August 2013. After the sunshine of the North Sea, we wake early to a dull and overcast day on the approach to Stavanger, our first port of call on the Fjordland Wonders cruise.

The sun is not to be seen and there are spots of rain in the air as we glide past a series of docks and small huddles of houses.

A couple of small islands loom in front of us and we manoeuvre around them, admiring the red topped white lookout hut. We decide breakfast can wait until we have docked.

As we get closer to Stavanger there are some large industrial sites and some large ships docked. We glide past the Island Constructor along our port side. We pass the Rosenberg shipyard that started in 1896 building passenger and fishing vessels but went on to build many tanker ships.

Stavanger appears in front of us and we wonder where we will be moored. A large suspension bridge comes into sight to our left.

This is where we are heading for. The corner of Skansegata, where it meets Havneringen. To the right, the inlet is called Vågen. The new Cunard ship, the Queen Victoria, is docked on the opposite side of the Vågen. We shall glimpse her in the next entry and also will see her in Flam tomorrow.

There is a loud rattling sound. A diesel engined forklift truck appears, pushing a gangway along Havneringen. It enters the controlled area around the ship and the driver skillfully lifts one end up onto the ship. We're here. Now it's time for some breakfast before we get off the ship!

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North Sea Sunshine

Sunday 4 August 2013. We expected to wake up to a rolling, bucking ship. But the North Sea was not only smooth, it was basking in sunshine!

We were onboard the Thomson Spirit cruise ship on our way to Norway for a 7-day cruise called Fjordland Wonders. Before we get to the fjords we need to negotiate Dogger Bank and a few other half-familiar sea areas mentioned on that strangely compelling 5 minutes on BBC Radio 4.

Miss Franny, pretending that the water is warm in the adult pool on Deck 7. I tried it... I screamed... There was a couple sitting up there who must spend all their lives in exotic places, judging from their tans. Either exotic places or Sonia's Tanning Centre...

We ended up a couple of decks down and watched the Spa demonstration and then a demonstration of towel folding. I failed to win a free massage but we were destined to have our towels folded later in the week...

There are a number of oil and gas platforms out on the North Sea. This is the South Arne platform. Actually we saw far more on our way back as it was night when we were going through the relevant bit of North Sea and the rigs were all lit up like Christmas trees. On our outward journey we were slightly further east off the English coast. In fact Felixtowe was the last bit of England we saw...

This is the Maersk Resolute platform. I reckon you would need to be fairly resolute to work on these things... I had been told there were minke whales in the North Sea. With our usual luck they managed to avoid us totally...

We were pleased to find a few past acquaintances onboard. The entertainers in the Horizons bar were New Dimensions and we found Pipit, our waiter from our last cruise on the Spirit waiting to welcome us to our table in the Compass Rose Restaurant. After the day at sea it was the Captain's formal night and a chance to get out the dinner suit again.

In the next entry we will actually arrive in Norway - hurray!!! In the rain - boo!!!

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Fjordland Wonders Cruise Starts

Saturday 3 August. We have left Clacton and are now able to board the Thomson Spirit cruise ship at Harwich International Port.

We have a cabin on Deck 8 which has lifeboats blocking the view a little. But as can be seen here it really is only a little and we are quite happy with our view of Harwich!

By four o'clock in the afternoon, the dockside workers are freeing our cables and the Thomson Spirit starts to glide down the River Stour towards the North Sea.

After a little while the cranes of Felixtowe line the opposite bank of the river and there are several large container ships in dock. The MSC Beryl is shown here. With 14 containers stored over its width and stacked 7 high and room for 22 rows of the huge double size containers, it can carry either 2156 double containers or four and a quarter thousand smaller containers!

We enter the North Sea and leave England heading due east before turning northerly towards Norway. Our trip this time has a day at sea at either end as we head up through the North Sea and back again at the end of the week. In between we will visit Stavanger, then head north to Flam, then in a single day Hellesylt and Geiranger. Our last day in Norway will be spent at Bergen and then our final day at sea before returning to Harwich.

But let's not wish the week away! Over the next few days we'll get to see all of these places, some in rain and some in sunshine! Join us for mountains, fjords and waterfalls galore, old friends and a World War II bomber thrown in for good measure!

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