Runde Island

Runde 

Runde is joined by a bridge to several other bits of land joined by other bridges until an express ferry seacat connects to our base in Alesund. Our bus driver today was Yorgen.

At a bus stop: ling heather

My idea was to take the bird sight-seeing boat round the island, but the various trips were all booked. So we had to walk from the camera position to the upland in the distance. The hardest bit was the sudden climb: like up the Nut at Stanley, Tasmania.

Good view once I got up there and looked back.

Up among the bog cotton, unseen from the boat, the Great Skuas defend their territory against walkers. The whoosh of the wings is powerful.

There was not a great variety of birds. Apart from gannets, that white streak of a colony on the cliff,

these were the best.....

This puffin, with a beakful of sand eels which it never ate in all that time, sat about for ages before....

taking off for a burrow.

A family. We met many intrepid kids up there. This is about 300 metres up.

Meanwhile, one of the boats has cormorants to look at.

Trollstigen - the Troll's Steps

The Trolls Steps or Trollstigen both down and up

It was supposed to be a triangular trip, but there was no bus for the last leg. So we got to go back up the ladder and do the trip from the other direction. It was driver Svein who looked after us this time.

Here comes another bus round the top bend. It needs the whole road to get round. Other traffic has to wait.

From below......

looking up to the perched viewing platform (top left), which juts out over a long drop of 200 metres to the bottom of the valley.

On the return journey the cloud had gone, making a walk to the viewing platform well worth the effort.

Approaching the platform. Made of concrete, rough and polished, and shiny steel rails and rusty metal.

On the platform, courtesy of George from NSW.

The scheduled service bus makes its stop for the scheduled 25 minutes for all the tourists to have a scenic fix.

A closer look DOWN.

Fjordland Feasts part 2

Alesund is on the coast, so the mountains are a bit different, a little lower, the sides less steep (a relative term only) and there is more water than mountains, the further you go out.

No railways here, but buses and ferries abound.  In fact you depend on good drivers of both.


So here's Rune (pronounced Ru-ne), who we enjoyed chatting to for a couple of trips, and who facilitated the connections we needed to make.


Worth their weight in gold these guys.

The cruise ships come right into the main street, and hoards of folks disembark from them.

We kept bumping into the ships.  There are one or two scheduled each day at the popular tourist spots, as you will see.

Geiranger Fjord

 This ferry took us to one of the best.


It's a photo-feast all the way

& you need all your camera batteries to be fully charged each night, to cope with the next day.




What's to see...

But look closer...

Those moments come along...  by just keeping clicking away...
   and then they are gone again...
But wait...
  just around the corner you are bowled over by...

- which from a slightly different angle and light looks like :

And it goes on...

The ship of the all conquering vikings...


is brought out

for people to compare...

and on the way back...

the cruise ship...




is seen in a better proportion.

And on our way home,

our whole bus

regularly crosses

on the larger ferries

- with us inside it !

Fjordland Feasts (part 1)

From Trondheim, the train took us up into the REAL mountains of Norway, the high ones, the ones that still have ice fields & glaciers on them...

The Rauma Railway takes you from the main Oslo line, down the steep sides of the valley, beside, around, and through, it seems, the many waterfalls !

It is a marvellous adventure, all the more because it seems most folks on the train are trying to get the same great photo-shots as you are - which generates its own form of camaraderie, joint fun over those that don't work, & celebration over those that do !

Suddenly, the mountains & their sheer sides are towering over you.



One...   or a hundred photos
cannot convey...
what it is like...
to look up...



from way down below..





only awe / silence is warranted.

North of the Line: Arctic Circle

From Trondheim to Bodo is 600 very scenic kilometres, and 10 hours by train.

Coastal inlets...

rushing torrents....









time to gaze as the skies change.

Up to the top,
where streams start
from the treeless bogs.......

to the Arctic Circle, marked by the cairn, and, for road travellers, by a Centre.
Of course it is just coincidence that the AC is at the high barren watershed. It could have been in forested country. More dramatic up here.

On the very long map of Norway.
It folds up like a concertina, and can be quite a juggling act.

Two Bodo seacats
 at work.
Very popular for
the coastal runs. 
This green ship says Green Reefers. Logistics of chilled and frozen products.

10 o'clock at night from our room.
Waiting for the sun shining on the skerries to tip the horizon at 67 and a half degrees north.

The clear sky had some high cloud drift in by midnight, so the whole sky was not white. But it did serve to show by the red glow that the sun was just below the horizon in the north.

On the way south, we all got out near the Arctic Circle to stretch our legs (and feel the breeze). This Dutch lady had come up from Sweden and right to the top end, but the weather was against them. This was the risk we chose not to take, and to be content with good visibility at Bodo.

Clear weather on the top was soon taken over by grey gloom for the rest of the ride. We had picked the occasional sunny day. Poor Scandinavia, like most of northern Europe, has had a late and wet summer.