{"id":3716,"date":"2022-09-23T06:40:17","date_gmt":"2022-09-23T06:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=3716"},"modified":"2025-12-24T22:27:47","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T22:27:47","slug":"norwegian-fjords-6-geiranger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=3716","title":{"rendered":"NORWEGIAN FJORDS 6 (GEIRANGER)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It’s Thursday 15 September (or at least, it was!).\u00a0 By the time we wake we are miles up the Geiranger Fjord at Hellesylt.\u00a0 Here we marooned a number of enthusiastic hikers ashore.\u00a0 They were going to walk the final section over the mountains to Geiranger.\u00a0 We still had three hours to sail to reach the head of the fjord – but to be fair, the fjord does take the long way round!<\/p>\n

Fabulous waterfalls including the “Seven Sisters” …<\/div>\n
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… amongst hundreds of others …<\/div>\n
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… and mountain tops shrouded in clouds.\u00a0 Very atmospheric!<\/div>\n
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At Geiranger we were ferried ashore on the ship’s lifeboats.<\/div>\n
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Our trip today was up the “Eagle’s Road” which zigzags up the side of the mountain into the clouds.\u00a0 After eleven hairpin bends, at 620 metres above the water, the view from Eagle’s Bend was spectacular.\u00a0 Even if some of the mountain tops were missing!<\/div>\n
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Our ship anchored near the head of the fjord can just be seen!<\/div>\n
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The road itself is an engineering masterpiece, but it was built too narrow to take passing tour buses.\u00a0 Not for faint-hearted drivers!<\/div>\n
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Once over the top we found ourselves in relatively open pastures between the peaks, although even here they were building a tunnel to take the road underground to avoid the risk of avalanches which frequently block it.\u00a0 Snow in winter and rocks in summer.\u00a0 Keep going driver!<\/div>\n
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We paused at Eid Lake near Eidsdal (I told you there were lots of “between” places) …<\/div>\n
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At Nordal we left the “main” road.\u00a0 We turned right onto a gated, private dirt road up a valley to Herdalssetra.<\/div>\n
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This is a cooperative goat farm operated on the transhumance principle. It\u00a0is one of the largest community alpine farm centres for goat farming in Norway, and there is an unbroken tradition of alpine farming here stretching back in time more than 300 years.<\/div>\n
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At one time there were 30 or so co-owners.\u00a0 It’s now down to three.\u00a0 They farm about 450 goats and produce cheeses – soft and hard white cheeses and the traditional caramelised brown cheese.\u00a0 Farmer Giles (not his real name) explained the process.<\/div>\n
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We had a tasting experience and, as we had missed lunch to take this tour, we didn’t under-consume the products!\u00a0 Very tasty they were too!<\/div>\n
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All but two “demonstration” goats had already been taken off the mountains ahead of the snow which is forecast to start tomorrow!.\u00a0 Let’s get out of here – we can’t afford to be marooned up in the mountains till next Spring!\u00a0 An interesting visit, but clearly the operation is now heavily biased towards tourism.<\/div>\n
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Back aboard, things got a bit formal again …<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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… as we sailed back out of the fjord on our overnight passage to Molde.\u00a0 \u00a0It was “interestingly” rough in the open sea as we transferred from Geiranger Fjord to Moldefjord.\u00a0 Luckily the worst of the rocking and rolling was late at night and Glenda’s tablets worked a treat!<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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We survived to write another day!<\/div>\n
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[pmb_print_buttons] It’s Thursday 15 September (or at least, it was!).\u00a0 By the time we wake we are miles up the Geiranger Fjord at Hellesylt.\u00a0 Here we marooned a number of enthusiastic hikers ashore.\u00a0 They were going to walk the final… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-norwegian-fjords"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3716"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4622,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3716\/revisions\/4622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}