Another Short Norweign Saga two 17th September

How do I start to describe this fantastic day of travel by train, boat and bus? I am going to run out of superlatives. I'll give it a try.

The omens weren't good; it was raining, hard. We had to rush to catch the train, we made it, two minutes to spare. Things got better.  The train was modern, plush, with wifi and a power supply to every seat.

 You have to have a reserved seat to travel on this train

The prospects of viewing the legendary scenery seems a little remote . The first hour of the journey is relatively normal, except nearly all the other passengers are Americans or Japanese. The scenery is suburban Oslo followed by sea ports and lowish level agriculture coupled with light industry.  Crossing mountain ranges is always pretty much the same.  You follow a river that is running towards you. This periodically becomes a lake because this flow has to be regulated for safety, electricity and storing drinking water. You then go over a pass and follow another river that now goes the same way as you.  The lake business is repeated. The big difference today is that the pass is over 4000 feet high and is a vast glacially rubbed plateau.  Late summer is the time of least snow, so when you see it, it is north facing and never sees the sun.
Norwegians are incredibly sporty people. This high plateau is their playground.  Trekking and mountain biking by summer and winter sports during the rest of the year.  This train is how they get there and each station a resort.
The line opened in 1907 taking 30 years to complete.  It was all built by hand in the most arduous conditions imaginable.  Tunnelling for example took a month a metre and there are over 200 of them. Let's ride the line to Myrdal where we will be changing trains.

The weather is lifting a little. 

 We are now getting above the tree line and the snow is appearing and, no, I have not changed to black and white.

There's the glacier up on the top. This is now the highest point on the line.  We are on the Hardangervidda Plateau near the station at Fisne, height 1222 metres  (4008 feet) above sea level. You can see how popular the cycle hire option is though not today. 

The line is open all year round so they invest in the equipment that's needed to do the job. 

We start to lose height as we head west to our change of railways at Myrdal.  Here we will be joining the Flambanen which will take us from 881 metres  (2890 ft) down to sea level at Flam. The distance is 20 kilometres down the valley through spectacular scenery.  Almost 80 % of the line has a gradient of 55 % , making it the steepest conventional railway in Northern Europe. It was started in 1923 and finished in 1940. There are 20 tunnels,  one of which does a subterranean 180° turn. There follows a series of photos of the ride down. 

As is often is the case, these pictures really don't do the landscape any justice, mind you the weather didn't help much either. In Flam we buy our tickets for the next stage of the journey.  This is the ferry trip up two arms of Sognefjord, they are Aurlandsfjord where Flam is and Naeroyfjord. This is where our destination, Gudvangen lies. Naeroyfjord is a UNESCO world heritage site. 

Some pretty impressive landscape.  We have now only two stages of this expedition left. We have a bus trip to Voss and finally back on the train again for Bergen arriving at 21-05. Voss is Norway's answer to Queenstown in New Zealand. Home from home for all adrenaline junkies. Without knowing it we were in for a bonus white knuckle ride as well.

The coach driver announces that we are going via the old road, only open in summer and one way, down only.  It is apparently the steepest in Europe and you can certainly believe it as he crawls down in first gear. The whole coach party burst out in spontaneous applause when the coach finally levels out. 

The first picture of the last two was taken from the top and the second from about half way down but believe me it was like riding on the coach at the end of The Italian Job!

When we eventually arrived at Voss, we took the last link, a suburban train into Bergen. We walked to the Not So Basic Hotel and looked forward to a well deserved night's sleep above a nightclub.