Thursday 23rd August 2018
Next on the wish list of places to visit was the famous mountain railway, the Flåmsbana. So today we are Flåm bound.
The initial part of the journey meant backtracking up the FV724 to Olden before turning west.
Towing Kilometres – Today: 215 Cumulative: 22,559
Fortunately we were lucky not to meet any tourist coaches and progressed nicely up to Olden passing the attractive church.
Turning south onto the FV60 we were immediately faced with a steep climb with many hairpins. Halfway up we stopped at a large, busy, viewpoint to take in the views over the fjord. Taking advantage of a dry, uphill, parking spot I jacked the caravan and adjusted the brakes.
After a few photographs we continued across the Utvikfjellet, a high skiing area before descending into Skei. The descent down from the Utvikfjellet was equally steep and I was pleased I’d taken the time to adjust the brakes 🙂
Later, passing the long Jølstravatnet lake, we were delayed a couple of times, by road work convoys, a large herd of goats, and a man who couldn’t wait for the snow to return and was dry skiing up the road.
We had hoped to stop at the Bøyabreen glacier but attempts to find a place to park came to nowt so we moved on.
After taking a short ferry ride from Manhaller to Fodnes we made our way to the Lærdal Tunnel entrance.
This is the longest road tunnel in the world at 24.5km and forms part of the E16 road from Lærdal to Aurland.
The tunnel contains three areas of artificial daylight to break up the gloominess and we were surprised to see that in the middle of the tunnel the temperature was 23°C, 10° more than the entrance.
Very soon we reached our home for the next few days, Flåm Camping. This is a large site, and quite expensive, but it is extremely close to the small town centre, railway station, and port.
