What I did in the land of ice and snow
Thanks for the comments yesterday, perhaps I was a little overly dramatic but sometimes it's nice to just have a big panic. Gets it out of you. Amusingly a day at work has done me the world of good and feel much more positive.
So the weekend before I went my voice began to disappear. Monday morning the doctor said 'probable laryngitis' which didn't really hurt but made talking very difficult plus I felt physically drained. This did not make for an easy 0620 hours flight. Got up, got the bus and got the flight. In Haugesund about half an hour early. When the hell did flights arrive early?! As with any Ryanair flight the airport itself was miles away from anywhere and once in Haugesund I did nothing but leave it.
Got chatting to a Norwegian student who was on the flight who was heading up to Bergen as well. Always nice to shoot the breeze while your waiting for buses, ferries and other public transports. Norway being a good socialist* state has pretty good public transport for reasonable rates, handy given I can't drive. Three hour bus journey from Haugesund to Bergen was reasonably quiet with one interruption for a ferry journey. Ferry journey was spent nattering about fishing and skiing and caused me in my ill and tired state to leave my Rapha merino wool top on the ferry. I could mention about my mp3 player but at a tenner it's not worth the words but my Rapha top was expensive, good quality and a good fit. Worse as it was a Christmas gift from my mother oh and also my only 'second' layer for doing outdoor stuff.
Arrived Bergen for lunch and wandered around in a daze. I have to say my first visit to Bergen I was not impressed, fairly modern city and the old Hanseatic league era houses looked quite tacky. Found somewhere to get a quick snack but just didn't have the motivation to stay so quickly got a train ticket to Myrdal where I hoped to walk down to Flåm (pronounced 'Flom') about 20km away. Got the train as it rained. It rained and it rained and it rained all the way to Myrdal, except in the tunnels. Myrdal as the link informs you is nowt but a train station for a branch line to Flåm and the railway itself, the 'Flåmsbana', is famous for the view and engineering feat to build it.
Got off the train and viewed the rainy valley before spending the next hour or so investigating trolls in the tourist shop window. Typically the rain ceased as I got on the train and I began to consider getting off and walking but i'd been up since about 0400 and it was now about 1800 and I really didn't fancy a 4-5hour hike in a foreign country for laughs and giggles. My malaise effected my enjoyment of the train journey as every time I looked out the window a voice inside said 'you should be walking'. Waterfalls tumbled hundreds of meters to the ground, rocky cliffs butted out into the sky and the railway line curved back on itself several times as it snaked in and out of the mountainside.
I should have walked.
Arrived about an hour later in Flåm and staggered to the camping site, set up and slept. When I say sleep what I actually mean is wake up repeatedly in coughing fits, bright light (for a camp site) and the habit of various people to test the acoustic qualities of a fjord valley; sound your horn at the right place and you get double digits worth of echoes. Pretty nifty, if you happen to be a bored truck driver. So I awoke and wandered down to the tourist info to enquire about hiking.
"It's dangerous" he says.
'no shit' I think.
"there have been many rockfalls" he says,
'Really? You surprise me! Anyone would think that the regular sound of truck horns, ships fog horns and helicopters might destablise the rock! What would I know, i'm a foreigner...'.
So after the tourist information refused to divulge any information to me as a tourist I decided to wander into the hills anyway. If this was Scotland I would be very sceptical of such activity but could get a OS map easily. Fortunately not everyone in Norway is so negative, the DNT (Norwegian Trekking Association) mark there paths withbig, red T's. Did I mention the guy refused to sell me a map? I'm not an idiot I can see them on your top shelf there.
Map for very short local walks led me to the start of a waterfall path which itself was part of a DNT path. At this point I do have some pictures but they are on a traditional camera so I will finish writing for tonight and see if I can get them for tomorrow...
*Ok it's a constitutional democracy...thingy like the UK.
So the weekend before I went my voice began to disappear. Monday morning the doctor said 'probable laryngitis' which didn't really hurt but made talking very difficult plus I felt physically drained. This did not make for an easy 0620 hours flight. Got up, got the bus and got the flight. In Haugesund about half an hour early. When the hell did flights arrive early?! As with any Ryanair flight the airport itself was miles away from anywhere and once in Haugesund I did nothing but leave it.
Got chatting to a Norwegian student who was on the flight who was heading up to Bergen as well. Always nice to shoot the breeze while your waiting for buses, ferries and other public transports. Norway being a good socialist* state has pretty good public transport for reasonable rates, handy given I can't drive. Three hour bus journey from Haugesund to Bergen was reasonably quiet with one interruption for a ferry journey. Ferry journey was spent nattering about fishing and skiing and caused me in my ill and tired state to leave my Rapha merino wool top on the ferry. I could mention about my mp3 player but at a tenner it's not worth the words but my Rapha top was expensive, good quality and a good fit. Worse as it was a Christmas gift from my mother oh and also my only 'second' layer for doing outdoor stuff.
Arrived Bergen for lunch and wandered around in a daze. I have to say my first visit to Bergen I was not impressed, fairly modern city and the old Hanseatic league era houses looked quite tacky. Found somewhere to get a quick snack but just didn't have the motivation to stay so quickly got a train ticket to Myrdal where I hoped to walk down to Flåm (pronounced 'Flom') about 20km away. Got the train as it rained. It rained and it rained and it rained all the way to Myrdal, except in the tunnels. Myrdal as the link informs you is nowt but a train station for a branch line to Flåm and the railway itself, the 'Flåmsbana', is famous for the view and engineering feat to build it.
Got off the train and viewed the rainy valley before spending the next hour or so investigating trolls in the tourist shop window. Typically the rain ceased as I got on the train and I began to consider getting off and walking but i'd been up since about 0400 and it was now about 1800 and I really didn't fancy a 4-5hour hike in a foreign country for laughs and giggles. My malaise effected my enjoyment of the train journey as every time I looked out the window a voice inside said 'you should be walking'. Waterfalls tumbled hundreds of meters to the ground, rocky cliffs butted out into the sky and the railway line curved back on itself several times as it snaked in and out of the mountainside.
I should have walked.
Arrived about an hour later in Flåm and staggered to the camping site, set up and slept. When I say sleep what I actually mean is wake up repeatedly in coughing fits, bright light (for a camp site) and the habit of various people to test the acoustic qualities of a fjord valley; sound your horn at the right place and you get double digits worth of echoes. Pretty nifty, if you happen to be a bored truck driver. So I awoke and wandered down to the tourist info to enquire about hiking.
"It's dangerous" he says.
'no shit' I think.
"there have been many rockfalls" he says,
'Really? You surprise me! Anyone would think that the regular sound of truck horns, ships fog horns and helicopters might destablise the rock! What would I know, i'm a foreigner...'.
So after the tourist information refused to divulge any information to me as a tourist I decided to wander into the hills anyway. If this was Scotland I would be very sceptical of such activity but could get a OS map easily. Fortunately not everyone in Norway is so negative, the DNT (Norwegian Trekking Association) mark there paths withbig, red T's. Did I mention the guy refused to sell me a map? I'm not an idiot I can see them on your top shelf there.
Map for very short local walks led me to the start of a waterfall path which itself was part of a DNT path. At this point I do have some pictures but they are on a traditional camera so I will finish writing for tonight and see if I can get them for tomorrow...
*Ok it's a constitutional democracy...thingy like the UK.