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Friday 10th we rented mountain bikes from the towns’ campsite. We didn’t get started until well after midday as we were the first tourists of the season and they hadn’t assembled their new mountain bikes for the season yet. We were catching everyone off guard! The bikes were pathetic , although 18 speed, the gears didn’t have much value and you had to pedal downhill
!, as there were a problem with the hubs. We struggled up the foothills to see Trollsteigan ( Troll’s Ladder), a series of a dozen hairpin turns doubling back on themselves in order to ascend a cliff and take the road into the next valley. We stopped ¼ of the way up as our wobbly legs couldn’t take it anymore and had a picnic beside a gushing spring melt stream. Later we rode to Trollveggan (Troll’s Wall) and gazed in awe at Europe’s’ tallest vertical wall ending in an overhang. Evidently 2 weeks prior 2 guys spent 14 days on the face of this wall climbing it. This was the talk of the town as food parcels had to be air-dropped to them. They were evidently sponsored by some rock climbing magazine. Anyway, that night all we were good for was to sit like vegetables in the local cinema as we were so tired. The movie HEAT redeemed us, Al Pacino and Robert Deniro at their finest !!
Saturday 11th was like one of those days where you have a sneaky feeling that you have been abducted by aliens, and have somehow lost a whole day in the process without it feeling like that amount of time has passed. We awoke at the record time of 5.30am as there was a bus to catch and we had to get the first one as off-season there aren’t many, and we needed a good start if we were to complete all the bus and ferry legs to get to Geringer in one day. We were there in plenty of time, and on an empty stomach, only to be told that there was a 2 hour delay because we had to wait for the train to come in. After that it took literally hours to get anywhere. There were long waits between the various legs of the infrequent local bus services - lucky we had a pack of cards handy ! and have been continuing the same game of gin rummy which was started at the beginning of the trip and is one big progressive game. I won in the end of course !!

We killed 4 hours in on town waiting for the next bus, only to arrive at the bus stop and read the small print on the timetable which said that this bus only runs during peak tourist season! ARRGGHHHHH!!! Rather than wait for another 4 hours, we hitched and got the funniest looks from people. They probably have never seen a hitch hiker in this part of the world. After half an hour of showing our legs a nice lady gave us a lift, and she made a couple of scenery stops on the way there so we could appreciate the view. The approach to Geringer was spectacular, as you descend down another Troll’s ladder from the mountain plateau to the valley floor in a very short space of time. It was a nice afternoon, and the fjord was a deep navy blue and the steep walls of the enclosing mountains were very dramatic. The Geringer fjord is one of the smallest, but more impressive ones in western Norway. The struggle to get here was more than worthwhile, and because there were no tourists it was all ours!! WE camped rough that night in a sheep fielOn Sunday we went for a huge walk up to a lookout to overlook Geringer. It gave an impressive view and was very gusty. Time made us turn back and collect our bags for the next ferry leg was about to leave. It was just a small car ferry, and we sat on the upper deck in the sun to watch the scenery go past as we slowly snaked through the narrow confines of the fjords. It looked very wild and rugged.