Bergen; Saturday, 28 October, 2006

Almost the whole of today was spent travelling. More than 3 hours to get to a small town, less than an hours there and then another three hours to get back, it would have to be special. In some ways Flåm, the ultimate destination of the day is a little bit of a let down, but it’s not the town that I've actually come to see.

Getting to Flåm is one of the most impressive and breathtaking journeys you can take. From Bergen the normal Norwegian train runs along the edge of the Fjords for a while, passing through countless tunnels and crossing back and forth over rivers until it turn inland and rises to a plateau in the mountains. In late October you can see the snow line approach, and then by the time you get off the train at Myrdal it looks like Winter has taken a very firm grasp. From here the journey gets even more spectacular.

The Flåmsbana runs the 20Km from Myrdal at 864.3 metres above sea level to Flåm at sea level. Dropping at gradients of 1 in 18 (the steepest gradient of any normal railway on the planet), curving round on itself including doing a full 180° turn in a tunnel inside the mountain. At one point you can look across and see the railway at Myrdal, and at two different levels on the side of the mountain. Part way down the train stops at a small gap between two tunnels by a massive waterfall with an opportunity for the passengers to get off and take photos.

After the journey down there is very little that Flåm could do to match the trip. Instead it cashes in on the tourist market with a selection of souvenir stalls and shops which is only surpassed in my experience by Tat Land (AKA Santa park, Rovaniemi, Finland). If your flabber has not been too gasted by now you can top the sensory (and credit card) overload off with an alternative return to Bergen by way of a fjord ferry and then bus. Given that the return ticket price on the train was only a little more than the single I had already decided that it would be financially more prudent to come back the way I came.

The added advantage of doing this was that I could spend the journey down looking out of one side, and the journey back out of the other (the better views on the whole are from the left hand side). Back at Myrdal I had a fifteen minute wait for the train back to Bergen, where I contemplated the folly of wearing clothing that was fine at 9C in Bergen and Flåm, but a little too thin in the sub zero temperatures of Myrdal. Thankfully, the sun was still just out, and there was no wind so it wasn't too bad.

By 7pm I was back in Bergen and after stopping to have a look around the Bryggen at night (not that much, they don't floodlight it!); a quick sandwich (Once again Breakfast was almost enough for the night); and discovering that you can't buy any beer except alcohol free after 6pm on a Saturday in the Fjord areas, I headed back to the hotel for another gloriously long sleep, extended even further by the final act of summoning winter, the clocks going back.