The mountain and fjord scenery is not only dramatically spectacular but never ending: each bend in the road seems to deliver yet another awesome vista… I only wish my pics could do it all justice, but i hope they do at least give you an interest in visiting the place to find out for yourself…

Having not had a decent meal since i last ate with Margie on Tuesday, i decided to treat myself and eat in the posh restaurant on the ferry from Hirtsals to Stavanger. Bit worried to start with when they failed to ask me how i wanted my steak cooked, then when the waitress brought it she proudly told me it had been cooking in the oven for five hours. ‘Medium rare, then?’ says I…. She responded in all seriousness with ‘more on the medium side…..’ Actually it was delicious and in terms of how it was served up, she was dead right and it was nicely medium!

Anybody know how you cook a steak in the oven for five hours and finish up with medium???

Other than that the ferry was tedious but drama free. I had to get up at 5:30 to be ready to get off the ship at 6:30 and was on the road to Flam before 7:00. Not a lot of sleep again, but the journey could not have been more different to the motorway madness of the previous two days.

The roads are narrow and winding, not always great surfaces and so far as i can see there is a speed limit of not more than 80kph right across the country, mostly observed. So all you can do is sloooow down, don’t bother with over taking and have the ability to actually look at the scenery while driving. Suits me fine and the Cat copes with it just fine.

We also had a bonus ferry ride, previously unannounced. I had notice a gap in the road across water between Mortavika and Ares, about 20 miles outside Stavanger and assumed it was yet another tunnel of which there are dozens. Nope, we had an extra little ferry ride!!!

There were two identical ferries on the route, both these push-me pull-you jobbies. Cat attracting attention as usual and a rather lovely sunscape on the voyage over – about 30 minutes. These ferries are still very much the life blood of this part of Norway, despite the tremendous investment in roads, tunnels and bridges between the various islands and peninsulars.

The first pic is the Hardanger Bridge: opened in 2013 it is a suspension bridge with a main span of 4,300 feet which makes it slightly longer than the Gold Gate Bridge. Only two lanes tho’, i dimly recall the Golden Gate is six lanes???

Then we have the Latefossen waterwall, unique in that it consists of two separate streams flowing down from the lake Lotevatnet and as they fall, they join in the middle of the waterfall, just before going under the Norweigian National Road built in 1867–69, making for a spectacular (and wet) view as I drove over the old, stone, six-arched bridge, which you can see in pic number five.

The third pic is from the spot where i stopped for lunch, a couple more of these later…. Fourth pic is yet another stunning waterfall, this time closer to Flam at Tvinde near Skulestadmo.

The final pic is looking back upstream from the Latefossen where you can see the spray from yet another huge waterfall. It’s all down to the geology: very hard volcanic rock means the streams pour over the edges of the plateaux without much erosion of the underlying rock. In several places there were a dozen or more coming off the top of a plateau within a space of a couple of hundred yards, not all as huge or spectacular as Latefossen tho’!

First pic shows you my wonderful spot for lunch and the second shows the weather ten minutes later as the cloud moved down the fjord from the west!!! Yes, i did get very wet, even with the roof on the Cat – it was also pretty cold: 6c and a fresh breeze.

And what a lovely hotel it was!!! The Fretheim also provided us with a really great buffet dinner – like most of these things it works best with the cold food, especially seafood – and they did us proud! First time i have eaten whale so far as i know and the brown goat’s cheese [see the Flam Railway tomorrow] was very – err – interesting.

On the Flam mountain railway tomorrow morning before heading off across the top to Geiranger, so hopefully some more spectacular pics for you……