Tuesday September 13, Near Grotli

September 14, 2016

Tuesday September 13, Near Grotli

The Troll's Ladder....we drove up this, see the size of the cars coming up!

I really don’t know where to start, today has been probably one of the most scenic and amazing days in all our travels and the weather gods played their part with a sunny day and temperatures around the 20 degrees. We did three huge climbs and two descents with so many hairpin bends that we lost count. And the scenery was just draw dropping amazing, countless huge waterfalls cascading down the mountains and the gold of autumn covering the hills.

We had a good start to the day, chatted with Conny and Gerhart then stopped at the Esso service station to do the emptying and filling before popping down the road about a kilometre to a Stave Church, which once again was not open. But as we entered the church gate we noticed a sign saying Commonwealth War Graves, so we walked around the whole cemetery but couldn’t see anything. There were some ladies tending the graves and we asked them about the sign. They were delightful, and only had a little English but we managed to communicate and they took us to a grave stone of an Unknown English Soldier. But after trying to explain where we could go to see more and not succeeding, we understood they wanted us to follow them in their car. Off we went and the first stop was at a military base obviously to get advice on War Graves. Not being successful there we followed them back into town to another cemetery where they showed us several more, one of which was named. Such a special start to our day, we gave them a little gift from NZ which they were thrilled with, Thank you ladies.

Then it was off on Highway 63 to climb the spectacular Trollistigen or Trolls Ladder as it is known. We had read much about it and seen pretty scary videos of it which made me a tad nervous. Not far from town we started climbing on quite a narrow road and before long we were snaking up the mountain, clinging to the side with 11 very tight hairpin bends. Thankfully we met only one car, and very glad we weren’t doing this in the summer season when hundreds make this trip.

After lunch outside the Information Centre (which was closed!) we walked along the great paths that lead you out to a view looking down on the road we had just come up, rather impressive. The alpine plants covering the mountain side are turning gold and red and with the sun on them they just glowed. As you can well imagine the camera was clicking madly.

We moved on through the high altitude plateau with rocky ponds and the whole scene was just golden, and can now understand why this is called the Golden Route. Many stops for the photographer along the way. Winding down from this plateau wasn’t too dramatic and soon we arrived down at another breath-taking fjord and the town of Valldal, obviously a very popular holiday destination by the rows of permanent caravans in a number of sites close to town. Four km’s out of town and our luck ran out as we watched the ferry just leaving, so it was a 30 minute wait for the next one to take us to Eisdal. It was 23 degrees and off came the jeans and merino singlet and on with a tshirt and shorts.

Once on the other side we were soon climbing again up and over another range, more hairpins, more waterfalls and more great scenery and finally from the top we looked almost straight down to the Geiranger Fjord, with the town of Geiranger at the head of it. No wonder this is a very popular tourist spot. Somehow through a multitude of hairpins we clung to the side and descended into town, narrowly avoiding a truck and quite a few cars! We had thought we would end the day here but somehow the number of tour buses and large hotels didn’t quite fit the bill, so after a brief walk we continued the drive, not realising that we had an even bigger climb and many more hairpins to negotiate. It started off with pastoral land and large trees but as we got higher the trees got smaller until we were above the tree line and snow was packed in valley’s beside the road. It was just over 1000 metres when we reached the top and meandered through another alpine plateau with some quite big lakes.

It was almost 6pm when HW63 met HW 15, and soon after turning east we spotted a nice rest area well off the road surrounded by mountains, waterfalls and two small lakes along with two other campers. Camping spot for the night found….and the “man” really deserved a beer tonight after a day of hard driving.