Who's Counting?
Stryn – 13th June
Who’s counting? I am of course as I love statistics and numbers.
Today we travelled from Voss to Stryn, that’s 275 kilometres, 2 mossie bites, 7 geocaches, 8 hours exploring and 1 meal stop. The rest of the statistics are below – did you really think you could get away that easily?
Towns
Flam: The town is at the end of the Aurlandsfjord and is geared up to service the cruise ships and the Flamsbana Railway tourists. There are tourist shops and many food outlets selling Kid (goat) burgers. For us it was purely sightseeing as you need to book a year in advance to stay there, a package deal for the train and catch covid if you linger too long with 6,000 or so people off the Euribia. The Flamsbana train ride is 20km long up an 866 metre altitude gained through 20 tunnels.
Laerdals: small quiet town that made the best coffee so far, had a cool geocache, a vintage car rally event and some old buildings.
Kaupanger: Another small town with a stave church, which isn’t, because the boards go the wrong way.
Brykjelo: town with a bizarre collection of sculptures all shoved onto a small lawn
Other towns not worthy of a photo: Olden, Loen and Sogndalsfjora
Fjords
The Lonely Planet Guide recommends that if you only have time to see one fjord in Norway you should visit the Sognefjord. With Norway having 1000-odd fjords it is pretty hard not to miss them. We came across the Sognefjord in our travels, plus many more as per below…
Aurlandsfjord a 29km branch of the Sognefjord, average of 962 metres deep and surrounded by 1,800 metre tall steep mountains.
Laerdalsfjord a short branch of the Sognefjord
Sognefjord, nicknamed the King of Fjords because it is the largest and deepest in Norway. It is 205 kilometres long, over 1,000 metres deep and on average the main section is 5kms wide.
Sogndalsjord is a 21km branch of the Sognefjord
Fjaerlandsfjord, Kjosnesfjord
Innvikfjord a sub-fjord of the much larger Nordfjord
Tunnels
As usual we went through numerous tunnels, but I stopped counting and recording the lengths because we achieved the ultimate, the Laerdals Tunnel, it is the longest road tunnel in the world at 24.5km. To keep you awake there are light shows and pull-over points with simulated natural lighting, and if you are a tunnel enthusiast you can even get married in the tunnel.
Animals Nearly Killed
There are no fences in the mountains, sheep and cattle freely wander on the road, but that’s okay there was a warning sign a kilometre up the road. Other animals almost killed could include cyclists and tourists, maybe another day.
Ferries
We caught the ferry just north of Laerdals and south of Kaupanger, short ride, but exciting because at the Kaupanger end you drive straight off the boat into a tunnel. You can see from the photos that the Kaupanger cars come straight out of a tunnel and immediately stop to queue for the ferry.
As we are getting used to, the West Coast of Norway is WET, as can be seen by the water on the windscreen.
Some other photos...
Costs
All in Norwegian Krone: 487 petrol (half a tank), 297 lunch, 352 groceries, 164 ferry, 26 parking in Flam = 1326 Krone = more than the budget allowed, lesson learned is don’t buy petrol on the same day that Roger has to restock his beer.
Today’s ABBA tribute is ‘Tivedshambo’ (1981) for the spectacular fjord scenery of Norway
Throughout the forest and valley
We rarely see female beauty
But now we have the opportunity
To create some memories to bring back home
They’re good to have when you get old
as a comfort for things we then have to go without