With thanks to Silversea for this Norway cruise
More photos coming later, when the wifi is faster
So today was the start of the great test.
Regular readers 😄 will remember that on my Azamara cruise from
Wellington to Sydney last year, when we got to Fiordland, the Norwegian captain
was disparaging of what we Kiwis consider some of NZ’s most spectacular
scenery. “We have this in Norway,” he said, “but the colourful little towns in
our fiords make it prettier.” New Zealand’s fiords have no colourful little
towns. We just have untouched nature. It’s what we do.
Yes, it stung, I admit it. So, here, and
now, I get to see the Norwegian version for the first time. We woke this
morning on the final approaches to the town of Flåm, permanent population 450,
at the end of an offshoot of Norway’s longest fiord. Fjord, I suppose I should
be writing, since they gave us the word.
And yes, it was pretty: little
pointy-roofed red and white houses along the edge of the water, surrounded by birch trees and tucked
below soaring, sheer, rocky cliffs topped with Indian snow. Being June, there’s
lots of green: mown hayfields, wildflowers, fruit trees, pines.
Our first obligation was to take the Flåm Railway, which passes through 20
hand-dug tunnels to climb the steepest track in the world, criss-crossing the
tumbling Flåm River into which a succession of high-as waterfalls feed. Yes,
‘spectacular’ covers it.
We got off at one point to look at and try
to photograph a roaring waterfall that instantly spat spray all over everyone’s
lenses, while a woman in red on a cliff top beside it swayed and gyrated to
music for about five minutes, pretending to be some sort of waterfall nymph.
Just the twelve times a day, through the summer, if you’re wondering. Then we
got to Myrdal at the top, where we went into the hotel and ate waffles with jam
and cream (which I had written about from research for a story a few months
ago, so it was closure for me) and then I went for a wander to look at the lake
and the waterfalls before we took the train back down again.
Flåm has a permanent population of 450, but
a huge volume of annual visitors, mostly from cruise ships like ours, although today
there was also a long line of coaches disgorging what mostly seemed to be
Chinese tourists, as well as an assortment of nationalities from Bergen on the
train. So tourism is now the main industry, and there are lots of souvenir shops
(heavy on trolls, reindeer skins and cold-weather clothing), cafés, bakeries
and accommodation. There’s also a good (free!) little museum about the building
of the railway line and what looks like a vertical zigzag road up the side of
the fjord. Also, some nifty-looking home-made vehicles for using on the railway
line, some developed from motorbikes, others just bicycles.
Then, with a bit of a sigh of obligation, I
set off on foot back up the valley towards the next village but one, where I’d
spotted a pretty church from the train. It was 3.5km there, gradually uphill,
on feet already complaining from cobbles and unsuitable shoes, but I was
compensated by the tumbling, turquoise, gloriously clear river, the pretty
wildflowers growing along its banks, the cute houses with their neat gardens
and orchards, the peace and quiet and, most impressively, the sheer cleanliness
of it all. NOT ONE BIT OF LITTER at all! So very commendable.
So I got to the church where, being Sunday,
there was a service taking place, sat briefly in the graveyard, and then
route-marched back down to Flåm, sore of foot but pleased to have had the
exercise, fresh air, sunshine, and taste of nature - although still reserving judgement on the fiord/fjord issue. A soak in a Jacuzzi on deck
back on Silver Shadow helped with the
barking dogs; and then there was the sailaway on a golden sunny evening, along
the fjord with its waterfalls, little villages by the shore, and mysteriously
random houses perched high on perilously steep hillsides. There was pizza on the deck
as it all slid past; then work in the library high above the bow with great visibility but deeply regrettable jazz musak, which was, later on, mitigated by a tenor singing Nessun Dorma and other
gratifyingly populist (and tuneful) songs in the theatre before bedtime.
Highpoint today was being asked by Steve
McCurry to take photos of him on deck with his wife and baby daughter, on his
huge and heavy Nikon. Slightly diluted by his clearly not remembering me from
our half-hour interview the day before yesterday; but probably payback for my
having described him in that post as ‘physically forgettable’.
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