There must be thousands of walks we didn't do whilst we were in Norway, but of those there were a handful we would have liked to have done, if the weather had just been a bit more amenable. The most notable of those we bypassed last week was Preikestolen (Pulpits Rock), to the NE of Stavanger.
This is a bit of what the tourist brochure says about it:
Preikestolen, on the Lysefjord ... is one of Norway's biggest tourist attractions. More than 270,000 people hike up to the breathtaking mountain plateau every year.
This is the plateau in question, made striking by the fact that it is block of rock with its sides falling almost vertically for 600m into the fjord below:
The minor deterrent to us doing this 'must do' summit was the thought of the crowds (bear in mind that those 270k people are not spread evenly through the year and we were there in mid season), although we could largely have avoided that issue by setting out at first light.
The major deterrent related to the car park (room for over 500 cars, plus tour buses, so I read), which charges 200NOK (just shy of £20) to park for the day (overnight parking is prohibited). It wasn't the charge, per se, that put us off, as we would have paid it if we had been in the area in good weather. However, as the forecast showed rain every day until the end of time (or at least as far out as the long range forecast goes), we weren't going to fork out £20 to walk for hours in the rain with a high probability of having no views from the top.
Preikestolen wasn't quite the straw that broke the camel's back, but we are no longer in Norway. Having driven past lots of places we would have explored at greater length, had it been a bit less wet, we left the country a week earlier than expected, catching a ferry from Kristiansand back to Denmark on Monday morning. We left Kristiansand without a cloud in the sky and arrived to a wet day in Denmark - harrumph!, I said.
Happily, the weather has perked up. So much so that we went 'mountaineering' today. More of that in my next post.
This is a bit of what the tourist brochure says about it:
Preikestolen, on the Lysefjord ... is one of Norway's biggest tourist attractions. More than 270,000 people hike up to the breathtaking mountain plateau every year.
This is the plateau in question, made striking by the fact that it is block of rock with its sides falling almost vertically for 600m into the fjord below:
The minor deterrent to us doing this 'must do' summit was the thought of the crowds (bear in mind that those 270k people are not spread evenly through the year and we were there in mid season), although we could largely have avoided that issue by setting out at first light.
The major deterrent related to the car park (room for over 500 cars, plus tour buses, so I read), which charges 200NOK (just shy of £20) to park for the day (overnight parking is prohibited). It wasn't the charge, per se, that put us off, as we would have paid it if we had been in the area in good weather. However, as the forecast showed rain every day until the end of time (or at least as far out as the long range forecast goes), we weren't going to fork out £20 to walk for hours in the rain with a high probability of having no views from the top.
Preikestolen wasn't quite the straw that broke the camel's back, but we are no longer in Norway. Having driven past lots of places we would have explored at greater length, had it been a bit less wet, we left the country a week earlier than expected, catching a ferry from Kristiansand back to Denmark on Monday morning. We left Kristiansand without a cloud in the sky and arrived to a wet day in Denmark - harrumph!, I said.
Happily, the weather has perked up. So much so that we went 'mountaineering' today. More of that in my next post.
Have always wanted to visit Norway, never got there. Mind, it is expensive!
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