I've been lazy in updating this blog, concentrating my energies on daily posts over at thegateposts.blogspot.com instead. Here's a bit of a catch up:
A couple of days after my last post we left the glorious Lofoten Islands and started wending our way back south. Stopping at a few lovely locations on our way, the first stop of relevance to this blog was at the National Park Centre at Storjord (which National Park? I have no recollection!). There we pondered going up a big hill, but it was too late on the day we arrived, so that day we made do with a short stroll along a gorge:
Mick asked me to pose in front of this waterfall and I obliged
The following day was foul, so thoughts of the big hill were abandoned in favour of a much shorter and easier waterfall walk. Perhaps the rain helped, but the volume of water was impressive:
A few more days of driving and we arrived at Steinkjer. It was raining yet again, but in need of some exercise, we waited until it eased late in the afternoon and headed up Oftenåsen, the most local hill to the town. On top was a refreshment hut (only open on Sunday afternoons) and the world's largest garden chair:
The chair made up for the lack of view due to the weather.
More driving (there's a big distance to be covered between the Lofoten Islands and the western fjords) over the course of a few days, including another stop in Trondheim (the only town visited on both our northbound and southbound journeys), took us to the Atlantic Highway. In the hope of being able to appreciate the stretch of road better from above, we walked up a hill. Unfortunately, it was raining again, severely curtailing the view. We did visit a lake with a tiny bothy-like hut...
...and I'm sure the ridge above would have been a good walk on a nicer day.
That brings us to a couple of days ago, when we found ourselves in the car park for the Trollskyrka walk.
We hadn't arrived there with any thought (or, indeed, knowledge) of the walk. Rather, it was a last ditch attempt for somewhere to park for the night, having already visited and rejected five other locations (and all time record!), but having spent the night it seemed silly not to walk a couple of miles or so uphill to visit the Trollskyrka.
Continuing the run of wet, cool weather, it rained on us for the entirety of this walk, which made it worse that half way up to the cave system (that being what the Trollkyrka (Trolls Church) is) we realised we hadn't picked up a torch and thus weren't able to explore the caves once we got there. In the interests of not getting more stuff wet than was necessary, we had gone out packlessly, and thus also didn't have with us any food or drink, which wasn't a problem, although after some slow, rocky terrain, and having set out at gone noon without having eaten lunch, we were more than a touch peckish when we returned.
One advantage of the rain
The ropes weren't really necessary; the rock was really grippy.
Yesterday afternoon, the wet weather finally let up (more or less) for us to walk above the town of Åndalsnes to an airy viewpoint.
The arrow points to the viewing platform
Interesting solution to path erosion at the start of the walk. It zigzagged further up the hill than we expected...
...before we got to the eroded, muddy, root-infested path, which continued until...
...we got to the bit laid by Nepalese Sherpas. They do build impressive stone staircases.
Mesh floored viewing platform, protruding out over a whole lot of nothing.
That brings us to today and I've written (or, rather, cribbed from t'other blog) a separate post about that.
A couple of days after my last post we left the glorious Lofoten Islands and started wending our way back south. Stopping at a few lovely locations on our way, the first stop of relevance to this blog was at the National Park Centre at Storjord (which National Park? I have no recollection!). There we pondered going up a big hill, but it was too late on the day we arrived, so that day we made do with a short stroll along a gorge:
Mick asked me to pose in front of this waterfall and I obliged
The following day was foul, so thoughts of the big hill were abandoned in favour of a much shorter and easier waterfall walk. Perhaps the rain helped, but the volume of water was impressive:
A few more days of driving and we arrived at Steinkjer. It was raining yet again, but in need of some exercise, we waited until it eased late in the afternoon and headed up Oftenåsen, the most local hill to the town. On top was a refreshment hut (only open on Sunday afternoons) and the world's largest garden chair:
The chair made up for the lack of view due to the weather.
More driving (there's a big distance to be covered between the Lofoten Islands and the western fjords) over the course of a few days, including another stop in Trondheim (the only town visited on both our northbound and southbound journeys), took us to the Atlantic Highway. In the hope of being able to appreciate the stretch of road better from above, we walked up a hill. Unfortunately, it was raining again, severely curtailing the view. We did visit a lake with a tiny bothy-like hut...
...and I'm sure the ridge above would have been a good walk on a nicer day.
That brings us to a couple of days ago, when we found ourselves in the car park for the Trollskyrka walk.
We hadn't arrived there with any thought (or, indeed, knowledge) of the walk. Rather, it was a last ditch attempt for somewhere to park for the night, having already visited and rejected five other locations (and all time record!), but having spent the night it seemed silly not to walk a couple of miles or so uphill to visit the Trollskyrka.
Continuing the run of wet, cool weather, it rained on us for the entirety of this walk, which made it worse that half way up to the cave system (that being what the Trollkyrka (Trolls Church) is) we realised we hadn't picked up a torch and thus weren't able to explore the caves once we got there. In the interests of not getting more stuff wet than was necessary, we had gone out packlessly, and thus also didn't have with us any food or drink, which wasn't a problem, although after some slow, rocky terrain, and having set out at gone noon without having eaten lunch, we were more than a touch peckish when we returned.
One advantage of the rain
The ropes weren't really necessary; the rock was really grippy.
Yesterday afternoon, the wet weather finally let up (more or less) for us to walk above the town of Åndalsnes to an airy viewpoint.
The arrow points to the viewing platform
Interesting solution to path erosion at the start of the walk. It zigzagged further up the hill than we expected...
...before we got to the eroded, muddy, root-infested path, which continued until...
...we got to the bit laid by Nepalese Sherpas. They do build impressive stone staircases.
Mesh floored viewing platform, protruding out over a whole lot of nothing.
That brings us to today and I've written (or, rather, cribbed from t'other blog) a separate post about that.
No comments:
Post a Comment