Sognefjellsvegen (it’s more amusing if I don’t inform you how that’s said) is a preposterously-beautiful stretch of toll road along County road 55 in Norway, between Gaupne and Lom. it is the very best mountain pass in Northern Europe and a heavyweight contender for the maximum breathtaking pressure of my existence.
i was back in England for a few months in 2014, and my buddy Anais and that i decided to capitalise on the reality Scandinavia is a stone’s throw across the North Sea (and that neither people were there but). A budget-airline flight and Europcar rental reserving later and we were in Bergen, with our sights set on a 467 mile power to Oslo.
Arriving in Bergen
Bergen itself is a picturesque harbour metropolis set between sprawling mountains reduce into meandering inlets. walk around metropolis and also you’ll discover it difficult no longer to get swept up in the fairytale architecture, the laidback college-metropolis ecosystem and the marketplaces humming with the odor of whale meat, caramelised cheese and tomato mackerel.
After a leisurely couple of days there, we had been on the street to Solvorn. Anais felt uncomfortable using at the right facet of the street, so i thought complete using responsibilities even as she made sandwiches in the passenger seat. It took me a while to realize the headlights couldn’t be switched off – they have been set to stay on because of the region’s large community of tunnels.
on this first leg we stuck our first stomach-losing visuals of the infamous brobdingnagian Norwegian fjords. The steep lands rising like a wall of God out of the water make you sense about as enormous as a rummaging dirt mite.
We also drove thru Lærdal Tunnel,the longest avenue tunnel inside the world at a whopping 15.23 miles lengthy. The architects have been compelled to take special measures to ensure motorists passing via it didn’t cross insane or lose attention. this kind of measures turned into to mine big open areas out at intermittent junctions deep in the mountains. those are successfully giant halls with ragged, stoney partitions, lit up by using violet-blue lights that give the impact of a Disney caricature diamond mine. If those aren’t enough to keep you unsleeping, the 850ft differential in elevation (and the subsequent tools-moving) will.
We spent our night in Solvorn consuming £13 pints of beer (paying more than £10 for a pint of beer is a popular pastime in Norway) and admiring, from the lowest of the valley, the tranquil village cut into the hillside. The settlement is surrounded through mountains on three facets and freshwater on the fourth. Calling it “tucked away” might be a sarcasm.
A drive into another world
After a sleepless night we set off on the street again, this time for Lillehammer thru the aforementioned Sognefjellsvegen (trace: you don’t pronounce the ‘g’). The course we wrote in Anais’ living room a month earlier didn’t include this historic vacationer road, however a person at an apple farm in Solvorn chastised us for even considering no longer taking it.
My iPod became loaded with Scandinavian singers and bands, which – if you recognise any Scandinavian singers or bands, you’ll apprehend – served simplest to emphasise the airy great of the world slowly panning beyond our apartment car.
There had been gaping open spaces juxtaposed with claustrophobic tunnels and narrow passes. We crossed whitewater rapids and skirted crystal-clean lakes. you could’t help however surprise on the ingenuity of mankind in this environment – that we managed to now not simplest traverse the twists and turns of the panorama in the first area but to create methods to achieve this at 70+mph.
We drove beneath more Lovecraftian rock formations which, no matter their awe-inspiring value, can become pedestrian when you’re fixated on accurately navigating hairpin turns. the road wrapped itself around nimble banks subsequent to the disturbingly-ideal water under. There had been no limitations to act as contingents for misjudged corners. I noticed myself gripping the guidance wheel pretty tight on sure bends. I attempted now not to allow Anais notice. After an hour or so, the street started to raise into the Sognefjell mountain location, and i was compelled to drop down to fourth, then to 0.33, and subsequently to second equipment as the engine whined in protest.
The descent
After achieving what regarded like a top we pulled over to present our panting automobile a relaxation. The region we pulled over turned into in clean sight of Galdhøpiggen – the tallest mountain in Northern Europe. The jagged skyline and asymmetrical summit became crowned inside the distance on rows of lesser mountain heights. The air was thin and brisk and i all of sudden felt the altitude. I ate a crusty sandwich and shivered in my flip-flops, t-shirt and shorts.
the street in advance meandered among 10ft globs of snow and ponds of aquamarine water. The deep vegetables and blues that so lively the fjords we’d driven thru to get here had been now replaced with bleak greys and browns, which made, to their credit score, the intense, azure swimming pools appear all of the extra vibrant.
As we ploughed on alongside the mountain pass, sleet swept throughout the street. The cold crept into the automobile thru the windows, despite the heaters blaring. The wind by hook or by crook managed to whistle thru the tightly-sealed windows.
We dropped into a plummet back in the direction of the actual global, ears popping. We battled a mounting coat of rain at this new depth and finally entered thick forests, that, given the context, made us half-assume having to swerve to keep away from a wandering troll.
i will officially propose this pressure as one of the most stunning and varied inside the global. It combined all of the exceptional things I’d come to like approximately mountain degrees: the wildness, the colors, the significance, and, crucially, the feeling that the pressure of civilisation has grow to be a far off memory. Sognefjellsvegen (adequate, it’s son-ya-feh-jels-eh-ve-jen) placates all those things with an different-wordly Iceland-like volcanic barrenness that makes you feel such as you’re riding thru a Sigur Ros song. It felt like a celestially-scripted ‘exceptional-of’ sample of what Earth can look like.
Upon arrival in Lillehammer, a metropolis stricken by a 20-year wintry weather Olympics hangover, we felt like we have been in a global decimated with the aid of some type of 28-Days-Later pandemic. Granted, we have been journeying in summer, however it changed into hauntingly deserted. Our hostel turned into built into the train station, and the simplest enchantment the clerk on the table could suggest, with a shrug, turned into the ski bounce.
After that we drove to Oslo, simply in time for the Brazilian FIFA international Cup Finals among Germany and Argentina. We spent in extra of £two hundred on nowhere close to the amount of drinks that money ought to have produced. Oslo isn't virtually a metropolis to spend time in without money. i used to be asked for pocket trade via a person in a white tuxedo.
The experience in advance might take us through Sweden and Denmark in which we finally Easyjet’d domestic from Copenhagen, however Norway ended right here.
The whole journey was scheduled on a whim. It’s smooth to neglect that there’s an ass-load of culture and landscape anticipating us just a few hours of sky far from Gatwick Airport. I live in Australia now, and i make a company factor to make the most how near Mainland Europe is to England each time I’m home. i encourage you to do the equal, and Norway, separated from us best by using the North Sea, and approximately as unique topographically from England as you could imagine, is as desirable an area as any to start.