James & Heather Travelogues

After Oslo, we boarded yet another train and headed north. The first stop was the town of Flåm, on the coast of Songefjord fjord (sort of an appropriate name really). On arrival there, we spent a few hours lazing in the sun admiring the beautiful scenery that one expects amongst the fjords. Eventually, our ferry turned up and we crossed the fjord to Ballestrand, a small village where my father and his partner met us, for the drive to their home village of Fjærland.

Fjærland is a tiny village, consisting of no more than about 300 residents and sits at the end of the fjord of the same name. It was to be our temporary home for a couple of weeks (with a slight break in the middle for a trip to the Arctic Circle), and is a beautifully, relaxing location to hang out in. One of the main features of Fjærland is that there are a couple of glaciers located at the top of the mountains surrounding it, which many people visiting the area go climb up. For the more sloth-full, there is also the Glacier Museum that is essentially a cut-down version of the Science Museum, covering glaciers only. The highlight of the museum when we were there was the wide-angle cinema display (about 140 degrees all around) that runs a 15 minute movie flying over the glaciers.

Other activities that we engaged in were cycling (albeit not very far), berry-picking (Fjærland is teeming with wild raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, etc) and going on hikes around the surrounding valleys (to the extent that our bodies or more really our laziness would allow us). Our other major activity was to go fishing on the fjord itself. The water was freezing cold (although a beautiful green/blue colour) and the day we went promised rain, however Heather and I borrowed the small boat from my dad and his partner and putt-putted across the 1km or so wide gap. On my second cast, I land a herring that I duly let go (it was too small to keep I thought, although for a herring it was actually quite big). However later, Heather landed a reasonable sized cod and I landed one of similar size followed by a huge one (ok, it was about 12 inches or 30cm long). These we did keep, and they tasted very nice when cooked that night.

Tomorrow is our last day in Fjærland as we catch a ferry to Bergen at around 2pm. Before that, we may try getting to one of the glaciers and touching it just to say we have done…