Ålesund - Stordal - Vaksvikfjellet - Voll - Trollstigen - Geiranger

Monday 5.9.16

The weather is supposed to be great, so I wake up at 6.30am - I'm already amazed by the sunrise in front of my hotel window and after a quick breakfast at 7.45am, I'm in the car driving towards the low sun in the east. The most beautiful views are next to the road, on small houses reflected in mirror-like fjords and lakes, with beautiful autumn colors - my God, it's beautiful! The GPS sends me the wrong-right way. I read about the old Rose Church in Stordal yesterday, but I forgot to enter it into the GPS today. By entering "Geiranger", the GPS now takes me to Stordal, where I wanted to see the old stave church. However, it is closed and I can only take a few nice photos. It is 250 years old and is said to be beautifully decorated inside.

The sun is shining from a cloudless sky and I realize that if I drive from here to Geiranger, I will miss the Trollstigen. So now I have to drive across the country to the north to reach the Trollstigen and then to the south to reach the Geirangerfjord. A bit cumbersome and I have no idea how long I will still be sitting in the car. But with the landscape around me - actually not a problem.

I only briefly follow my GPS and then turn right from the road onto a small road that winds up to a plateau, where a sign says that I am now crossing the Vaksvikfjellet.

The road is no longer asphalted here, there are sheep on the left and right at the edge, I only see a handful of houses, but there are lakes, small gurgling streams, and snow on the mountains in the distance.

Fantastic. I reach the road again after about 20km, turn right, and pick up 2 Czech women until Voll. But since they speak very little English, the conversation value with them is rather low, and I pretend that I have something to do in Voll. I quickly go shopping there and continue driving.

I am at the lower end of the Trollstigen at 12:30pm.

Wikipedia says: "The Trollstigen is part of Provincial Road 63 and leads from Isterdal in eleven hairpin bends with an incline of about twelve percent up to the summit. It overcomes an altitude difference of 405 m and reaches an altitude of 700m above sea level. In the further course, the road reaches a height of 850 m. Halfway, the road, which is part of the Golden Route, also leads over an impressively roaring waterfall, the 320-meter-high Stigfossen. The pass road is framed by the mountains Bispen (the bishop, 1,450 m), Kongen (the king, 1,614 m), and Dronninga (the queen, 1,701 m). The route is only open in summer due to the weather and can be driven from around mid-May or early June until the end of September. The road was opened for traffic by King Haakon VII on July 31, 1936, after eight years of construction. It is still only a few meters wide today, sometimes almost single-lane, so you have to give way to oncoming vehicles. Due to the rugged terrain, there are hardly any opportunities to stop. Only at the beginning of a high valley can you linger on a large parking lot or stop at the Trollstigen Fjellstue. A walk of a few hundred meters takes the visitor to Utsikten (the view), a viewpoint from which you can overlook the entire course of the road. On June 16, 2012, Trollstigen was officially inaugurated as a Norwegian Scenic Route."

The huge waterfall plunges down under and next to the road. The hairpin bends are not as bad as expected.

At the top, there is a modern visitor center and a footpath to two suspended viewpoints. Great pictures. But I see clouds coming behind me - unfortunately from the direction I have to drive now. Departure at 2pm.

The route now is completely different from the steep ascent of the Trollstigen. It doesn't go down in such curves again, but for now, it stays at the same elevation and is in a rural area, with sheep on the road, lonely farms, beautiful views.

Before the descent to Geiranger, there is another viewpoint. Unfortunately, the view is pretty bad, the clouds prevent the sun and so the green mountains look rather black. I arrive at the hotel around 4pm and I don't feel like driving on more winding roads today. I actually wanted to go up to Dalsnibba, but that would be another 30 or 40 minutes of driving on curves, so I decide to take a short walk through Geiranger, which I had imagined to be much bigger.

The room is not that great. It's more like a basement, above a ventilation generator that constantly hums. The Geiranger Hotel is a pretty ugly building that dominates the panoramic view of the town with its lower annex. Supposedly a 4-star hotel, and also quite unavoidable for my stay since there aren't that many houses in the town.

I walk through the "town", which consists mainly of souvenir shops, a closed tourist information office, and a few small shops/cafes, most of which are closed.

The souvenir shops are open until 9pm and also sell a wide range of sportswear. Although luckily there is no cruise ship in Geiranger, the town is quite busy, especially with Americans and Koreans. I get an ice cream and sit by the mirror-like black water, enjoying the view. It's dry, but quite cold and unfortunately without the sun.

The hotel has a terrace on the 7th floor. There is no service here. I want to treat myself to a glass of red wine with this view. I get it at the bar and skeptically see that the "best wine" for 95 kroner (about 12 EUR) for a 0.1L glass comes from a 2-liter cardboard box. When I then realize that the wine glass is completely dirty all around the rim (I can no longer see what was in the glass before...), I complain about it and the woman at the bar wants to pour the wine from the dirty glass into a new one, when I protest again and demand new wine. A bit confused, the woman finally does that and I move to the terrace with the expensive hooch, download my pictures, and write in my diary until it gets too cold. In the room, as always, I eat my brought bread with cheese and walk down to the harbor in the dark.

Sleeping is only possible with the window closed because there is a ventilation generator humming right below.

220km Ålesund - Stordal - Vaksvikfjellet - Voll - Trollstigen - Geiranger