{"id":3769,"date":"2022-10-01T16:20:43","date_gmt":"2022-10-01T16:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=3769"},"modified":"2025-12-24T22:27:47","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T22:27:47","slug":"norwegian-fjords-9-stavanger-day-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=3769","title":{"rendered":"NORWEGIAN FJORDS 9. STAVANGER DAY 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Stavanger is the biggest city we’ve seen in a while.\u00a0 In fact there are only 3 cities bigger in Norway – Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim.\u00a0 About 122,000 people live in Stavanger – almost as many as live in Torbay!<\/p>\n

Today we are abandoning ship for a smaller (interestingly named) high speed model …<\/p>\n

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This will take us on a tour of the local waterways and, in particular, Lysefjord.<\/p>\n

However, before any real sightseeing could be done we had to have the compulsory coffee and waffle-stop!\u00a0 Moored outside the visitor centre, we saw two large experimental fish farm pens – fish-GLOBEs!<\/p>\n

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Historically, fish pens have just been large circular netted compounds – and during our time in the fjords we have seen hundreds of them – at least 20 this morning.<\/p>\n

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There are a number of significant problems with these nets.\u00a0 There is huge organic contamination below the nets, fish lice can (and do) infect the crowded populations and antibiotics used to treat the fish are released into local waters. Escaping fish themselves constitute a serious risk to wild populations – they are bred for rapid growth and not for competitive life in the wild.<\/p>\n

FishGLOBEs, are made out of polyethylene (HDPE) and float. They have sophisticated monitoring and control systems with automated feeding.\u00a0 The early globes were each 3,500 cubic metres with capacity to grow 250,000 post-smolt salmon to a weight of one kilogram. Later versions are larger and enclose 7,000 cubic metres of water.\u00a0 However, I bet they cost a great deal more than kevlar nets!\u00a0 And big net pens can be over 50,000 cubic metres and contain over a million salmon – so there’s an issue of scale here!<\/p>\n

Onwards!\u00a0 There is only one crossing of the Lyesfjord, but can you see it? …<\/p>\n

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… and the village, Lysebotn, at the end of the 42 km fjord is listed as “rather isolated” (clearly not my photo – thank you internet!)<\/p>\n

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In my book, any village served by a single road like that (with its 27 hairpin bends) is entitled to be called “rather isolated”!\u00a0 Of course the residents could always row in and out!<\/p>\n

Along the walls of the fjord there were hundreds of waterfalls –<\/p>\n

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… and we sailed through the spray of some…<\/p>\n

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Then we came to Preikestolen (also known as Pulpit Rock).\u00a0 This is a steep cliff which rises 604 metres above Lysefjord\u00a0 \u00a0At the top of the cliff, there is an almost flat area of approximately 25 by 25 metres.<\/p>\n

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You can just see it, immediately above the tip of the flag pole.\u00a0 And in close up …<\/p>\n

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When you consider there is three quarters as much rock face below the water (450 m) as above, you get a feeling for the magnitude of this mountain face.<\/p>\n

While stunning from the water, it is apparently one of Norway’s most hiked-to destinations.\u00a0 In the season 5,000 people a day visit the rock.\u00a0 There were dozens up there the day we visited.\u00a0 All standing close to the edge of the flat area looking away from the precipice and the view while taking selfies for Twitter etc.!<\/p>\n

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(Clearly not my photo, but I count at least 85 people on the rock including one toddler!)<\/p>\n

The 3.8 km walk to Pulpit Rock takes about four hours to complete.\u00a0 That seems a long time.\u00a0 There’s a clue to this apparent slow pace when you hear that in 2013 the route was “improved by Nepalese sherpas”!\u00a0 Yeah right.\u00a0 Take the boat!<\/p>\n

Funnily, I could have sworn that Pulpit Rock was on the North wall of the fjord.\u00a0 But it’s not, the boat must have turned round when I wasn’t concentrating!\u00a0 In my defence, there was a lot of distracting scenery about!<\/p>\n

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On the way back to Stavanger, we passed back through the narrow fjord entrance where the water is only 13 m deep (that’s terminal moraines for you!) …<\/p>\n

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This really is a great trip – especially in the fabulous weather we hit upon!\u00a0 There are lots of islands and summer houses on the way “home” for tea.<\/p>\n

One more edition to follow!<\/p>\n

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[pmb_print_buttons] Stavanger is the biggest city we’ve seen in a while.\u00a0 In fact there are only 3 cities bigger in Norway – Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim.\u00a0 About 122,000 people live in Stavanger – almost as many as live in Torbay!… <\/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-3769","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\/3769","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=3769"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4625,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3769\/revisions\/4625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}