Day twelve was a day of spectacular views, toe curling roads and many many tunnels. We said goodbye to Jason and Julie, hopefully we will meet somewhere else in the world in the future. They are making their way back to the UK now with the next trip planned to Morocco in the New Year.
From the campsite outside Bergen we drove to Flam with the intention of taking the train ride up into the mountains. The drive to Flam was through some great scenery.
Everyday we take umpteen photos as each time we turn a corner is another fantastic view. We also went through about 20 tunnels, the longest on the way to Flam was 11km, which we thought was pretty long! When we got to Flam there was a cruise ship in town and I counted 15 buses and hundreds of cars in the car park with more arriving all the time. The train takes 500 people each time and the boards were only showing about 50 spaces on the next one. As it was an hour each way we decided it wouldn’t be that much fun for Finn if it was so crowded and we could end up not even having a window seat. So the decision was made to move on and to drive a section of the Snow Road, officially a part of the Aurlandsvegen tourist route. This road climbs from sea level up to the Stegastein viewpoint which is 650m above sea level.
The viewpoint has a spectacular observation platform that projects out over the fjord below with a glass front. Luckily when we arrived there was nobody else there so we got some great photos. By the time we had done a little walk round the summit the carpark was full and a tour bus had stopped. Another interesting fact about this viewpoint is its toilet has apparently been voted the best in the world. It was rather impressive as it had a glass wall looking out towards the fjord.
We then had the hair raising drive back down before entering the worlds longest road tunnel which is 24.5Km long. This made our previous 11km tunnel seem very short. It is a rather impressive tunnel as at intervals to break up the monotony they have sections where the roof has blue lights and the walls are green instead of the normal white light.
Once we got back into the daylight it was another quick hop on a ferry from Fodnes to Mannheller and a few miles later we had found another picnic spot for the evening right by a beautiful lake which we are sharing tonight with two other large Motorhomes.
Overnight – Vatnasete N 61.3331 E 6.92512
Miles Walked – 2.8
Miles Driven – 166
Weather – hot and sunny
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