Tag Archives: Scenery

Troll Freaks

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Sunday 24 August 2025 – Jane had come up with what seemed like a very decent way of spending a day for which we had no pre-planned activities scheduled. We would head towards the coast at Åndalsnes, about 100km to the north west. If the weather there was as good as the forecast was for here, we could take a cable car there that promised to give us excellent views over the fjord, Romsdalsfjorden (and so it sodding well should, at £40 per head for a return ticket!). There were various Things To Do Or See en route, so if the weather closed in we could still get some touristing done.

The route to Åndalsnes is as straightforward as that from Oslo to Dombås – simply drive along the E136. The road basically runs along one side of the valley created by the Gudbrandsdalslågen river, and so provides some great valley views as one drives along.

The road leads through an attractive town called Bjorli, which features an unusual roundabout decoration.

We had started out in sunshine, but it soon became clear that the weather was closing in somewhat.

and we got some nice dramatic scenes as the walls of the valley rose beside us.

A very attractive roadside church grabbed our attention (devotees of this blog, of which there must be possibly one or two, will know that we love Interesting Churches)

and so we stopped to take a more detailed look and some more photos.

Sadly, even though it was Sunday, it was closed, so we didn’t get a chance to look in. Personfully swallowing our disappointment, we moved on towards our next stop, which would be the Troll Wall, Trollveggen. We passed a very handsome building which I think is called Horgheim Gard

and parked up at Trollveggen, which is the tallest vertical rock face in Europe, about 1,100 metres (3,600 ft) from its base to the summit of its highest point. Actually seeing the highest point was a bit of a challenge, as you can see,

but we both had a shot at taking a photo of the most dramatic bit (that we could see, anyway).

One of those was shot on a Samsung phone and one on a Nikon Z6III. It’s a tribute to the quality of modern phone cameras that there’s not a lot to choose between the two, in terms of image quality.

In the first of those two pictures you can see a railway line, and Trollveggen has a railway station building,

which is a stop on the Rauma line (more on this later), which normally operates between Dombås and Åndalsnes, though I believe it’s affected by a landslip at time of writing. Beside the station building is an exhibit commemorating the secret mission to transport Norway’s gold reserves from Oslo via the Rauma line to Åndalsnes, and thence overseas, during WWII; it was disguised as mundane cargo. The successful enterprise was facilitated by the Norwegian resistance fighters and held significant symbolic importance for the Norwegian people.

There’s a visitor centre there, with the obligatory troll for selfie-hunters

and, rather morbidly, a monument to the people who have lost their lives either by trying to get to the top of Trollveggen or by jumping off the top – it’s a magnet for lunatics base jumpers.

Note, in reading the list of names and dates, that base jumping from the top of Trollveggen has been illegal since 1986.

Having refreshed ourselves with coffee and cake at the visitor centre there, we decided that the gondola idea was unlikely to give us great photo opportunities, so we merely started our journey back towards Trolltun at that point. Jane had, of course, found other points of interest for us to take a look at as we wended our way. Unsurprisingly, the weather improved as we moved away from Trollveggen, and we got some more decent views en route.

The second photo above was taken at the entrance to a path leading down, past a decent view of the valley and via a slightly perilous path

to a view of the Kylling Bridge.

This is a major landmark on the Rauma Line train journey, which might possibly live up to its billing as “the world’s most scenic train journey” as nominated by Lonely Planet in 2023, except for the landslip which has closed it for now. But it’s a very striking piece of engineering, designed by Norwegian engineer Joseph B. Strauss and taking some ten years in the construction.

Fortunately, we were able to see it in peace; a coachload of punters arrived just as we were leaving.

The next stop was at a waterfall, Slettafoss, which was also reached by a somewhat perilous path.

For some reason, at a bridge by the path, there’s a boutique selling Lapp souvenirs.

After clambering about there, we set off for our next riparian encounter, which is not only not signposted, it’s actually inaccurately located on Google maps. Fortunately, Jane had done her homework and knew that we had to take a path down past an abandoned farm.

This path was, you guessed it, slightly perilous.

Going down…
Down a slippery bit
Down a nice steep bit
Round a slippery corner
Through some branches
And round a final slippery bend

It was the most difficult of the paths we’d encountered today. And was it worth it?

Yes. It was. It’s actually the confluence of two waterfalls, and it’s really quite dramatic.

I’m really glad that we visited these sights on the return journey from Trollveggen, as the last of these was far and away the most impressive. However, we were not done; there were more Things To See!

The first of these isn’t even a formal tourist site, just a ramshackle house beside the road that Jane had spotted as we headed out that morning. But, disused or abandoned as it seems, it’s a remarkable building.

Our final stop was, sadly, not as rewarding as it might have been; the open air museum and church at Lesja closed its doors at 3pm, and we arrived there too late to see it in detail. The setting is quite striking. You can see the buildings of the museum as you drive down towards it

and the church sits above its surroundings like a sort of miniature Durham Cathedral

Because the church is part of the museum and maintains the same opening hours, we couldn’t look inside, but it was still worth a wander round the outside.

The graveyard is quite extensive, and runs down the side of the hill behind the church,

and to one side is a repository, possibly of displaced gravestones and other relevant fragments.

And so ended a very pleasant day of trolling about the place. The scenery has been fantastic, some of the sights have been really dramatic and all in all I think we can declare Phase I to be a great success. Tomorrow we head into Phase II, back in Oslo, with which neither of us are familiar, so we hope to be able to see and share some interesting experiences from our time there.

A Musk-see sight

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Saturday 23 August 2025 – In yesterday’s post, I said that the plan for today involved tramping around looking for local wildlife. The activity was described as a “safari”, which conjures up images of hot, sunny conditions and being ferried around between exotic photo opportunities in a robust 4×4. However, we’re in the Norwegian midlands, and so realised that it wasn’t going to be hot, and the forecast suggested that it wouldn’t be sunny, either. So our getting-up activities involved a certain amount of rumination about how much protection we’d need against the almost-certain cold and the apparently likely rain. We also knew that there would be, as I said, a certain amount of tramping about, quite possibly up and down the side of mountains and maybe even in and out of Norwegian woods. So I was also concerned about not getting too hot, since the forecast temperature was some 12°C. In the end, I opted for more protection against the rain than against the cold.

At breakfast, and at the suggestion of the hotel staff, we stacked up a couple of sandwiches each so that we could take a packed lunch with us for the day, and set off for the two dozen kilometres to Hjerkinn, where we would meet up with our guide for the day. On the drive over, we noted a couple of things to be explored on the way back.

We arrived at a windswept car park which featured a few huddled groups of folk who, like us, were expecting a safari,

but there was no immediate information about what to do. There was a troll there, which was laughing at us,

but that was it. I realised at this point that I had probably got the balance between wet and cold wrong in my gear selection – it was chilly and there was a stiff breeze.

After a while, though, some chaps emerged from the building and it became clear that they were the guides for the day. There was a bigger group, around a dozen, who were going with one guide; and we had our own chap, Jakob. But we all piled into vehicles together and headed down the road for a few minutes to the starting point of the day’s safari. Jakob immediately led us off on our trip. I asked him what the plan was for the day, and it was straightforward enough: walk for a couple of hours in the hope of finding our quarry; spend some time eating lunch and watching it; and then walk a couple of hours back. Simples!

We crossed a river,

went under a railway and then headed along a track up the side of a hill.

The scenery was immense

and the wind was strong and cold; but walking up the hill was a nice warming activity. At one point, Jakob stopped and said, “Ah, I can see them already”. He was doing that thing that expert guides do all over the world and which annoys and impresses me in equal measure – picking out an animal from its surrounding scenery, even though it’s entirely invisible to my eyes.

Believe it or not, there’s a Musk Ox in the middle of that picture. In fact, it became clear that there was a small group of them, maybe some 700 metres away, which I could just about make out if I used the 30x telephoto of my phone.

It was clear that we would have a bit of a trek to get to the point where even I could see them with my naked and streaming eyes.

Jakob gave us a choice of route – we could take an easier, but longer way round, or we could do a shorter yomp across the intervening brush which should get us near the animals more quickly. We opted for the brush route, which took us across and through moss, lichen and small scrubby plants of various sorts.  The going was not easy.

but it conveyed the authentic Norwegian safari experience wonderfully well.  We even got to see Musk Ox poo.

Before you get too excited about that, let me show you the scale of this defecation.

This, remarkably, is the poo of an animal which might weigh half a ton. Jakob explained that it was winter poo – more details promised later.  We also, by way of balance, came across some summer poo

which was larger and, unsurprisingly, fresher. This demonstrated that we were actually using a track that a Musk Ox might choose as a route from A to B, via W and C.

We finally got to a place where even I could make out the beasts, some 250 metres away.

We were not the only people out looking for Musk Ox; I hope this picture gives some perspective of what could be seen with the naked eye.

We were not allowed to go any closer than this to the Musk Oxen. We had been told before we embarked on this diversion that that this was the case. I had thought that it was in order to afford the Musk Ox some protection from the ravages wrought by humankind. That’s not the case. The distance rule is for the protection of humans, of whom Musk Ox are not even slightly frightened. Jakob explained that the animals are very protective of their rather large personal space, and can be aggressive if people get too close. In fact, a handful of people get killed by Musk Oxen every year.

So – 250 metres.  Time to get the Big Camera (or, rather, the Big Lens) out.

We could see a family group – female, male and two calves. They seemed utterly unaffected by the proximity of the E6 main road going close by.

The E6, in fact, is a barrier – if they stray beyond it and can’t be shooed back, they have to be shot before they cause aggro.

Jakob had brought a spotter scope with him and was able to assist Jane in getting a couple of shots through it on her phone,

and the results are pretty good; but I was pleased with the results I got, particularly when three of them formed a nice family group photo for me.

Female on the left, 4-month-old calf in the middle, male on the right, distinguishable by the bulk of horns on his head.

I took a little video, also.

We spent probably an hour watching these, whilst we ate our lunch, and Jakob gave us a great deal of information about Musk Oxen, on which he is something of an expert, having written a thesis on the beasts at University.

They are not, despite the name, cattle. They are actually related to sheep and goats. Once you know this, it’s obvious from looking at the heads and eyes. It also explains the habit of the males during mating season of establishing superiority, and hence shagging rights, by running full tilt at each other, which is a disturbing sight.

They are mind-bogglingly stupid, apparently. Several die each year because they will charge an oncoming train, for example.  The area we were in used to be a Norwegian Army training area, and one Musk Ox apparently charged a tank several times. He actually survived, but minus one of his horns, which must have felt as odd to him as it would have looked to us. They are very agile, and will climb steep mountain sides, a la goat, but should they lose their footing it rarely ends well. They are also subject to dying from pneumonia. That said, they are very tough creatures, being able to survive in winter temperatures down as low as -60°C. This explains their winter poo – during extremely cold weather, they stop growing entirely in order to conserve what energy they can derive from what grazing they can dig up from beneath the snow. In summer, when the temperature climbs, they can simply go higher in the mountains to avoid the worst of the heat. And their poo reflects a more normal metabolism.

The big surprise to me is that they are not native to Norway, having gone extinct here some ten thousand years ago.  They were reintroduced from Greenland, a process that was far from straightforward and which took several attempts over the course of centuries, starting in the 18th century and only really succeeding in the 20th.  The group we were watching was part of a population in the area which is managed to only around 200.

We had been joined by the others in our larger group, and they drifted off to watch another pair of oxen just along the way.  We passed them on our trek back to the start.

There are a couple of Musk Ox there, honest.

We took the longer but easier way back to the van.

The way out (3km)
The way back (5km)

and Jakob explained to us a somewhat left-field, but lucrative, industry based around a lichen, the White Curl lichen, which is ubiquitous here. (By the way this is one of the several species collectively known as “Reindeer Lichen” because… er… they form the major part of the diet of reindeer).

These tiny little clumps are prized. People pick them dry them and then sell them – to model railway enthusiasts, who use them as trees. It’s a million-crown industry, apparently.

Generally, the colour and variety of mosses and lichens in the area is remarkable.

So ended our Musk Ox safari, six of the possible 200 animals sighted, altogether a satisfactory day out. The expected rain never materialised, further underlining my poor clothing decision-making ability. Although I found it very chilly at times, it could have been a lot worse; but I really could have done with an extra layer. Never mind – we saw our Musk Oxen and we were happy.

On the way back, we stopped off at the two places we’d noted on the way out.  Firstly, Dovregubbenshallen, which is a remarkable huddle of buildings just beside the E6. The wooden construction and turf roof is in the traditional architectural style called “Gudbrands”, which is a feature of the Gudbrandsdale valley, this region.

Translated, its name means “Old Man’s Hall”, or “King’s Hall”, and it has links with the well-known saga of Peer Gynt. Ibsen’s play confers the name “Dovregubben” to one Jotun Dovre who fostered and raised Norway’s King Harald, called Dovefostre as a youngster. I’m not sure that Edvard Grieg, in writing the part of his Peer Gynt suite called “In the Hall of the Mountain King”, had the cafe there in mind…

The cake (well-deserved, I’m sure you will agree) was good though.

The other place we wanted to visit was, again, a set of striking buildings beside the road.

This was Fokstugu Fjellstue, Fox Cottage Mountain Lodge, which turned out to be a pilgrim hostel and retreat, based upon a sheep farm.  There’s a pilgrim route, Olav’s Way, stretching from Oslo to Trondheim, on the coast, and this is a place where pilgrims could stay.  It looked a bit run down, frankly – the church was closed and some of the building structure was crumbling. But it’s a handsome site.

And that was it for the day – an active and full one, and perfect preparation for my deerburger evening meal back at the hotel.

We have one more day in Dovrefjell before heading back to Oslo to mooch around there. No formal activity is scheduled on our agenda, but Jane has just informed me that she has a few ideas.  I’ll come back to these pages tomorrow to see what it was we got up to.

 

Day 12 – Radicofani to Acquapendente – Down, Right Cheating

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Sunday 25 May 2025 – I’ve just learned that today is Towel Day. I hope you all know where your towel is. Today, mine was in my backpack against the need to dry my feet in case of an unsuccessful Ford (Prefect?) crossing. Admittedly, that likelihood was faint, as there were no fords on today’s walk, but still; I knew where my towel was.

Another thing I learned is how to pronounce Radicofani. I had been putting the emphasis on the “fan” bit of the word, but this is wrong. It should, rather, rhyme with “cacophony”. I hope this nugget comes in useful for some of you at your swish dinner parties.

And so to today’s walk, which was dull, but had points of interest and produced many photographs. The dull bit was the actual walking, which was largely downhill, on dirt roads and in pitiless sunshine. The temperature was not high – still around 20°C – but it was hot in the direct sunlight; and we spent some two-and-a-half hours walking downhill, on the gravelly, dusty strade bianche (the “white roads” of Tuscany) under those conditions. I am normally as in favour of downhill walking as I am sullenly against uphill work, but 150 minutes of quite steep descent is quite hard work.

Before we started our downhill walking, though, we were given a good breakfast and taken, along with another couple of British pellegrinos, to the centre of Radicofani. Time was getting on by that stage, so we didn’t spend a lot of time in the town, but did look around a bit before starting to walk towards our destination for the day, Acquapendente. (I should point out that Acqua was not at all Pendente during the day – the forecast was for sunshine, with no rain.)

We looked first into the cathedral, the church of St. Peter.

The altar piece is, unusually, ceramic (terracotta with polychrome glazes) and by Andrea Della Robbia, a 15th-century Florentine sculptor.

A side chapel held what was possibly another piece from the Della Robbia workshop.

Across the street is the church of St. Agata with yet another such piece.

Neither, sadly, provided us with a Timbro, a stamp for our credenziali passport.

The lady who drove us into the town pointed out a square we should visit, the Piazzatta del Teatro, as a very Tuscan square. It is, indeed, very pretty.

It’s also, probably, the last typically Tuscan thing we’ll see, since Radicofani is the last town in Tuscany if you’re heading south on the Via Francigena.

The tower that makes Radicofani so easily identifiable from distance is a fortress and is up a bloody steep hill from the town, so I hope you’ll forgive us for not toiling up there. I suppose I could have tried getting a drone shot at it, but frankly we wanted to get on with the walking (this being before it was borne in on us how tedious it would be).

The fortress has a personality associated with it, the local equivalent of Robin Hood, Ghino di Tacco. In 1297, he took possession of the Fortress, dominating the territory with his deeds and raids, but always taking care to leave his victims enough to live on. To some he was a “punisher of injustice and powerful men”, for others simply a “daring bandit.” In Radicofani, there is a square with his name

with, at the far end, an artwork portraying him in action, which can be seen with the tower in the background.

So we departed Radicofani

and headed down on the endlessly downhill dirt road

which at least gave us a decent view back up to the fortress and tower.

Because we were still at altitude, we got fabulous views to combat the tedium of tramping downhill. The favourite local volcano, Mount Amiati, was clearly visible

and you could just make out steam rising from a local thermal pool driven by the volcanic forces at work;

there are, apparently, five thermal baths around the area, courtesy of the local volcanoes; Radicofani sits atop the other.

A word here about water. A fellow walker (and much more adventurous hiker), Ian Burley, who is currently scrambling up and down dangerous slopes in Spain, asked about the availability of water along this route. His current wanderings have taken him to the wilds of the Spanish wilderness where he is undertaking the sort of hard-core hiking which Jane and I will never do; he has to take litres of water with him every day. We, however, have never had any problem with keeping hydrated. We take maybe three litres between us each day and have yet to finish half of what we’ve taken; possibly a reflection of the relative coolness of the weather at the moment. The Via Francigena is well supplied with sources of potable water, which are well signposted.

The Radicofani tower dominates the landscape for a long time as one descends along the Via

but one can sense the landscape changing,

and becoming less suitable for arable farming and better suited to sheep.

We came to another of those unusual junctions where the correct way is down, not up.

and grimly carried on down.

About half way down the descent there was a rather nice pilgrims’ rest point

better suited, I suppose, to those going up than to those descending. There’s even a selfie point.

so a solo traveller can set up his or her phone to take the selfie using the frame.

A corn bunting watched us carry on down

and we passed a heap of sheep.

Quite why they were bundled together like this at the top end of a field we don’t know. The geology showed that some significant land movements had happened over the aeons

which is why the land is unsuitable for crop farming, I guess.

Eventually, we reached the bottom of the descent, at Ponte a Rigo. The S-cape app said that we could take lunch there, and we were hoping that a bar that had escaped the notice of Google Maps would materialise; but no.

Just a church.  A sign shortly before had had the icons of a fork and a cup, which had raised our hopes, but presumably they were referring to the picnic spot there.

It was occupied when we arrived, but the people, a Swiss couple of bicigrinos, were just departing and we had an affable chat with them, and wished them luck on their onward journey – up into Radicofani! Bloody lunatics.

The tedious descent in the pitiless sunshine morphed into a slightly less tedious walk in the pitiless sunshine along a farm track beside the road, past a few rural features of note: an enormous multi-arch irrigation boom;

some aestivating snails;

and a field full of flowers that we didn’t recognise.

(I realise that the category “flowers that Steve doesn’t recognise” extends to almost all of the botanical universe; but Jane didn’t recognise them either, and that’s unusual). At first, Jane thought it was just a field overtaken by weeds. but it was clear there was systematic planting at work

so Jane consulted the internet to discover what this flower was,

and read that it was buckwheat – just before a sign showing that the internet isn’t all fake news.

The crop belonged, we think, to the farm we next encountered, which had an encouraging sign that maybe there was a punta ristoro we could rest at.

Don’t ask me why that aeroplane is there

And there was;

there, beside that dirty great truck.

I suppose we could have availed ourselves of it, but it wasn’t that attractive a prospect and we weren’t that desperate. So we moved on. We passed a possible resting point with some kind of reference to Pope Boniface on it,

an Agriturismo establishment at a place called Torricella

and the border marking the end of Tuscany.

Shortly thereafter, we came to Centeno, another place which the S-cape app inaccurately had told us that there was the possibility of a rest stop. Google Maps was of the opinion that there was a trattoria there, but it would be closed, because it was (a) Sunday and (b) after 2pm. And so it was.

From Centeno, for the next 5km or so, walking the Via simply means walking along a main road, which is unpleasant and potentially dangerous. Our arrangements involved phoning a pre-arranged number to be driven along that 5km stretch and dropped at Ponte Gregoriana so that we could complete the walk to Acquapendente. Since this involved an uphill pull, I was thinking “bollocks to that; let’s just get a lift to the town”. Fortunately, Jane was of the same opinion as me. Sitting in the shade by the trattoria and the town defibrillator, Jane made contact with Senora Morena del Segato and she said she would be along in 10 or 15 minutes. During those minutes, a couple of ladies came by looking dispirited. They were, like us, Brits walking the Via, and had set their hearts on that trattoria being open, and were really despondent that it wasn’t; plus one of them wasn’t feeling too well.  It transpired that they were also headed to Acquapendente and so we invited them to join our lift; fortunately Morena was open to the idea and she whisked us off to the centre of the town. This means we’ve sort of cheated, in that we didn’t walk that final 4km or so up into Acquapendente. But you know what? I don’t care; deal with it.

Having cheated our way into central Acquapendente, our next game was to get into our accommodation, which was a B&B called “Il Teatro”.  Jane found us the theatre OK

but getting into it was another thing. Fortunately, Jane had the contact details for the owners and they WhatsApped us directions so we could get in. Just inside the door, reassuringly, were our suitcases.  All we then had to do was to manhandle them up three storeys to our room. Once Jane had sorted things out with the owners, it all worked rather well – a decent room with breakfast materials provided in the little kitchen (including Twining’s finest Earl Grey!) so we could construct something for ourselves in the morning.

It was nearing 3pm by this stage, and we both wanted some lunch; so, for once, eating took priority over hygiene and we set out in search of a restaurant in our walking gear. A central restaurant, Albergo Toscana, was still prepared to serve us lunch, so we took our seats near the bar whilst, in the neighbouring room, a raucous gathering of Italians was also embarking on their lunch.

We were a bit surprised, halfway through our lunch, when Morena turned up at the restaurant. She explained to us that the group were celebrating someone’s 80th birthday. I may be rude about Italians and their predilection for noisy conversation; but I have to hand it to them for the singing. When Brits sing “Happy Birthday” they inevitably start in the wrong key and miss the high notes; but the Italian crew were bang on in their rendition.

We had an agreeable meal – no gin available, but the beer was good – and then, to settle lunch down, we went for a walk. Obviously.  Acquapendente isn’t a tourist town like San Gimignano; it’s largely just this place where people live and work; but there were one or two things worth exploring.

For a start, this is the first Italian town we’ve walked through where there is a decent amount of street art.

There’s a fine town hall

and some attractive corners.

The church of St. Antony and St Catherine

is obviously Confessional Central for the town; there were no fewer than four confessional booths in the church! It has some nice trompe l’oeuil work around its paintings, so it’s difficult to work out what is and isn’t marble, for instance (spoiler alert: none of it is)

and there is an intriguing dark-faced figure on one wall, which we think is a black madonna and child in the tradition of Madonna of Loreto.

There is a cathedral

with some very dramatic artwork on display (though we’re not, frankly, sure what each artwork represents).

Some, like this one, have been made from flower petals – very impressive work.

The final thing we went in search of was the Barbarossa Tower, a clock tower. This is (sigh!) above the town, so we toiled up streets and steps to find it.

At least, after doing all that climbing, we got a decent view over the town.

And so a day of tedious walking has, in fact, been rather interesting; our “cheating” meant we got a decent chance to wander around and appreciate Acquapendente.

We have a couple more walks to do before we get another rest day. I think my underwear supply will hold out until then. Tomorrow, we head to Bolsena, some 23km away. On paper, it doesn’t look too arduous a trek, but I’ve been wrong about that before now; but at least we are promised a rest stop about halfway along. Stay tuned to see how the day unfolded, won’t you?