After a night of rain Paul woke up saying that he had slept well and was feeling better. This was a concern because the day before it seemed like he was coming down with the flu which would have been a very dumb way to start a road trip. We had breakfast of bread, Snofrisk and hot tea in the campground kitchen and talked over our day’s plans: Ferry at Bruavik over to Brimnes. Turn right to go to Loftus. Get a place to stay for the night then go to the Hardangervidda National Park and play all day. We finished breakfast, folded up the map and packed up our campsite which included the dread stuffing of the sopping wet tent into the stuff sack.
We started our drive heading for Loftus after the ferry. Well before we reached the town however a truth was beginning to dawn on us. ALL the roads were as bad as the one yesterday. In fact some were decidedly worse. I felt really bad about not sharing the driving on the road coming into Loftus. We had mistakenly taken a turn up the mountainside away from the fjord’s shore. The road leveled out about halfway up the mountain so that we were driving straight through the village orchards with a grand view down to the water and far mountains. It was spectacular but given that the lane was only wide enough for two baby strollers to pass each other and several farmers were bringing their tractors and pick-up trucks coming the other way Paul couldn’t pay much attention to the view.
When we finally did make it to Loftus we were so rattled by the drive to get there that we decided to just have a short look around and then leave. We would camp closer to the Hardangervidda Plateau to save ourselves having to ever take the Loftus road again. So back down the road we went this time taking a left at Brimnes. Very soon after choosing to go left the scenery changed from quaint farms at the base of the fjord to a wild high misty realm of black cliffs riven with waterfalls. There was a campground that looked promising at a town called Sæbø. We rented a hytte for the night and got information about hiking the plateau from the campground host then headed off again up the mountain. We saw a sign for a turn off to Vøringfoss and turned off not knowing that we had happened on a major attraction. The Vøringfoss is a deep gorge with four large waterfalls pouring over its sides. Great billows of mist pillow out endlessly from the falling water and moss grows straight down the rock walls. We stayed a long time.
Campground hytte in Sæbø.
On top of the Vøringfoss gorge there was a large red building which turned out to be a hotel built in the grand old style of the lodge at Yellowstone. The Fossli hotel’s interior was painted the same shades of sea foam blue and green as were in the church in Ulvik. There was a wood paneled great room where one could get tea and coffee and cake with a fire roaring in the fireplace. It was tempting to stay but we opted to forge on to the tundra at the plateau’s top instead gambling that the fire and food would still be there on our return trip.
The Fossli hotel at the top of the Vøringfoss.
From Vøringfoss the road became easily wide enough for two vehicles. We began to go through tunnels, one corkscrewing itself up through the rock which increased our altitude very quickly. I’ve never been in a corkscrew tunnel before – it was quite impressive. We were in tourist country now, the wealthy kind like Aspen or Vale as we drove higher and higher towards the plateau’s top. Mostly this showed itself in the sudden increase of second-home hyttes spread out over the landscape. The hytter were similar to others we had seen only bigger and fancier with a lot of wood carvings and all with turf roofs. In one made-for-tourists village we even saw some true Vale-like condos stacked together along a hill all with turf roofs.
Finally we reached the top of the Hardangervidda plateau. The Hardangervidda landscape is of rolling hills of lichen-rich tundra that reindeer roam from one side to the other grazing on. White boulders are scattered over the land at random and there were many bodies of water from ponds to rivers to rather large lakes. Once the top of the plateau is crested the sense that one is in a land of summer and vacation homes vanishes and it seems as if you are the only one who exists in a great bowl of dusty-green land. We turned off onto a one lane road to get to the park’s hiking trails far out into the middle of the boulder strewn lichen-y vastness.
Lichen to the horizen.
Boulders strewn about.
Abandoned sod roofed houses.
I could have walked forever but it started to rain and we were still nervous about Paul maybe being sick so we regretfully retreated back down the mountain through the corkscrew tunnel to the Fossli hotel for tea and cake. There we lost our bet that they would be still be open but that was okay because we had our hytte down in Sæbø already reserved with its wood lined walls and tea-heating hot plate.
We didn't see any reindeer much to my disappointment. We did see some cows however.
Sæbø is wonderfully situated. The town, which is little more than a few farms in a box canyon at the plateau’s base, is too far down the from the top of the plateau to be in the thick of the tourist excitement and other than a bed and breakfast and our campground it seemed to ignore the reality of tourists altogether. After a quick hot plate dinner we wandered though the few buildings of the town coming upon a small road that led up into the canyon. There was a sign posted on a pole saying that this road was once a medieval cattle trail that herders would use to get their sheep off of the Hardangervidda down to the fjord water where they could be traded for goods coming from ship. Again we could have walked forever but this time it was darkness rather than rain that had us turn back.
Walking back into the box canyon.
