The concluding part to our cruise excursion that had taken us up over the mountains to the Mefjell Crossing Memorial Stones, then to see the Lom Stave Church and Saga Column saw us returning along the Sognefjellet Road and on our way back towards Skjolden where Sky Princess was awaiting us.
The Sognefjellet Road is known as Sognefjellsvagen or the less exciting Norwegian County Road 55, and it incorporates the highest mountain pass – nearly one and a half kilometres – in northern Europe. It’s renowned for its views which were spectacular even on a day of low, full cloud cover like we had.
I’ve mentioned before that I don’t like taking photos through the windows of buses when we’re travelling but the urge took hold of me as we headed for Skjolden. I upped the ISO levels and set the aperture to get a decent chance at fast (and therefore sharp) shots and clicked away as we passed by mountains, valleys, waterfalls, trees, fields of snow, lakes, and tendrils of cloud clawing at all of it.
Excitement on the journey back came as we were negotiating the hairpin bends and narrow road down the mountains on the approach to Skjolden. There were passing points on the road, but not many of them, and the problem was the cloud was thick and clinging to the ground dropping visibility down to very little indeed. Our bus driver drove sensibly, which was nice on account of none of us wanting to die, but we suddenly reached an impasse where cars and vans coming up couldn’t get past us. Now, if you drive then you know that the general rule is that traffic coming up a hill has priority over that coming down, but if you’ve ever seen a bus then you know that traffic that isn’t a bus can take a hike as far as the bus is concerned. Numerous attempts were made for everyone to squeeze over as much as possible; I had some nice views of the rock face a few centimetres from the window for a while too. But ultimately, the wider vehicles trying to come up had to back down until they felt safe enough to pull over onto ground that wasn’t falling away precipitously. When we eventually started driving again we were already overdue getting back to the ship, although we knew we still had time to spare before it left.
Despite our extended jam on the road we still had time to make a final stop, albeit an understandably brief one, and this was the Åsafossen waterfall. From parts of Skjolden it’s actually visible along the road, and it was a very fine example of a waterfall. You can never get tired of seeing waterfalls, and that’s part of what makes Norway such a fabulously beautiful country to visit.
There was a small incident while we were at this stop when one of our fellow passengers on this cruise excursion fell over and smashed his face in quite nastily on the stony surface.
In addition to the waterfall and the wonderful landscape and the cows there was one other point of interest where our bus stopped, and that was a sculpture known as The Hand, but more formally The Wittgenstein Monument.
The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein retreated to Skjolden in the early twentieth century – and his life is a very interesting one, worth a read – learning Norwegian to talk to the locals while there and away from academics that he felt were affecting his thought processes. This monument is only a few years old, made from pine, and contains a speaker in the wrist section that started talking while we were there, almost making a small child fall over in fright before running away crying. Great stuff.
In the next part of this cruise travelogue series I’ll cover our cruise away from Skjolden and what we got up to aboard Sky Princess in the evening.