NOTE: The Norwegian language contains a lot of letters that are not on my keyboard. In most cases, I have typed in English without them.

Monday, June 16th, 2025
Sylte, Norway
Distance travelled 78 kilometres

This time I did awake in complete darkness. Unnoticed by me, our room had both thin ”privacy” curtains and proper, thick ones. Lucie had drawn the latter after I had gone to sleep. My iPhone revealed that it was 07:30 !!!

Our plan for the day was to try and visit at least the top of the pass at Trollstigen. We understood that the blockage caused by falling rocks was somewhere on the serpentine itself and that the visitor centre at the top was still open. That was only about forty kilometres away, so there was no real urgency. We were also entertaining the idea of a hike of some sort, at the top, because there was a marked route. That would depend upon external factors like the weather – and outside of our window it was raining merrily.

First, it was breakfast. It seems that most hotels in Norway take that meal pretty seriously and the Valldal Fjordhotell was no exception. There was, once again, a veritable cornucopia of foods on offer and, as usual, it was hard to know where to start. Being English, I do, of course, have a preferred “order”, so I started proceedings by choosing chocolate flakes from eight types of cereal – and went from there. As for the savoury portion, the absence of shrimps was compensated for by no less than four separate types of pickled herring to accompany the smoked salmon, together with an array of hams and cheeses. The latter included “brown” cheese which, given its separate billing, must be some kind of speciality. We both tried it. It had a distinct, slightly “tangy” taste, but I would never prefer it to a nice soft or blue cheese and now I can speak from experience. Strangely, or perhaps luckily, there was no bacon when I looked in the warmers, so I enjoyed a boiled egg with bread that was again warm. When I looked again, there was bacon, but frankly, I was already too full to even contemplate eating any.

We returned to our room to wait out the drizzle. We had various weather Apps between us and, naturally, these painted conflicting pictures. There was a small area of consensus about a dry period occurring after 12:30, so we hung around reading until the rain obligingly began to ease about noon. Lucie was at pains to point out that it was probably then, or never. We gave it time to stop and went for then. With a possible hike on the agenda, we dressed in hiking gear and waterproof coats and set off on the Harley practically on the stroke of 12:30.

At first the going was very damp indeed and, without my special waterproof biking jeans, I drove quite slowly to keep the splashing to a minimum.

We drove uphill, on route 63. For most of the initial part of what was an almost continuous ascent, this paralleled the wild river Valldola that entered the fjord next to our hotel. The sheer power of the water was obvious from its churning channels and the white foamy crested waves of its surface.

As we were becoming accustomed to, the flora changed as we climbed steadily upwards. It started with farmland, where there were a lot of strawberries growing and got progressively harsher the higher we climbed. The trees slowly dwindled in stature, foliage and number until we again came to some fairly bleak moorland. It was still Taiga (there is that word yet again) in the majority but, at the very top, there were no trees at all and there was far more snow everywhere than on our previous experience at that same altitude. It was very barren up there indeed, made seemingly harsher by far more rugged terrain. At least the road was dry up there and, after having made the ascent almost entirely in third or fourth, I managed to get into fifth gear as the road flattened slightly .

At the top of the pass there was an impressive visitor centre in the typical modern Norwegian style of angled concrete and glass. There were a lot of people. We had followed several coaches up the slope and these disgorged a couple of hundred passengers from some fjord cruise. It was the sort of outing where the folks were all wearing a sticker with the number of their bus, in case they somehow forgot it, if you get my meaning. They milled like lost sheep until the guide appointed for their designated bus rounded them up, sheep-dog like and herded them in the right direction !

When we first arrived, there was absolutely nothing to see because the whole valley in front of us was obscured by thick, white cloud. Viewing platforms abounded, but there was nothing to see at all.

I said to Lucie that what we needed was a bit of wind. Maybe God, or one of the scary Norse ones, was listening again, because the wind rose almost immediately. In literally a few seconds, the whole of the roadway, from its distant ingress at the bottom of the pass to the crest, a few hundred metres away to our left became visible.

It would have been quite a climb in any vehicle, let alone on the Harley, but we will never know now. To our right, about what would have been two-thirds of the way up, a series of serpentines had been covered and, in a couple of places, totally obliterated by, falling rocks. From our elevated vantage point, these did not look that big. However, tiny, ant like vehicles and even tinier people were hard at work trying to shift the debris – and against them, the rocks were far from tiny. It was quite obvious from the scale of the task in front of them that route 63 would not be opening again any time in the immediate future.

The clouds suddenly closed in again (bad luck buses 5 and 6) so it was time to leave. The total wild, rocky, ruggedness of the possible hiking route, coupled with the gusting wind and threat of rain was enough to convince us that we would not be walking to the real heights. Climbing to the start of the route was difficult enough – and that was just for tourists.

We visited the Gift Shop and managed to find a Christmas tree bauble with ease (we usually never can, when we decide to look). We also bagged a fridge magnet for our neighbour who was watering Lucie’s plants. That will teach her a lesson !

Then we sat outside and ate the Norwegian equivalent of a Czech “Fidorka” biscuit. It even said Fidorka on the box and it was actually very similar to those we get at home.

We loaded up again and began a leisurely descent through the climate zones.

When we reached the farmland stratum, more specifically the strawberries part, we stopped at a small cafe/restaurant called Jordbaerstova (Valldalsvegen 476, 6210 Sylte).

Unsurprisingly, given the plants in the fields all around, Jordbaerstova means strawberries.

It was typically “First World”, stuff. We drank a (very good) coffee and a hot chocolate and ate a huge slice of strawberry cake that had an astral deliciousness coefficient and a higher still calorie count – even though we were not really hungry …. At least Lucie bought some home-made jam as presents.

Outside, it was spitting with rain again. This not only made us glad we were not hiking somewhere high-up above, but also gave us an idea for a song.

We were aware that the hotel restaurant was totally booked in the evening for a social event. That being the case, we filled up the tank of the Harley for the next day’s endeavours and bought a bit of cheese and some crackers in the Spar shop – in case we got hungry, or even if we did not ….

Then we returned to our hotel. In the corridor outside was a time-lapse picture of a vehicle ascending the Trollstigen pass on a clear night.

Back in our lovely room, we spent a few minutes putting all the pillows (returned onto the bed by housekeeping), back on top of the wardrobe and chilled out while it drizzled lightly outside.

In case you are pondering the fate of the cheese and biscuits, we did get peckish – it all disappeared rather nicely thank you !

Then it was shower and bed – we had a long way to go the next day.

You can see the whole ride here……