This morning we had to leave Melkevoll Bretun after 3 nights. I was gutted to leave this magical place. We set off down the valley towards the lake. The weather was quite clear and it wasn’t long before we had to stop to do a photograph. The view back towards the glacier was beautiful and we hadn’t been able to see it on the way in 3 days ago because of the thick mist and rain.
As usual we blindly followed the sat nav after setting it for Geiranger. That wasn’t the actual destination though as I was expecting there to be a right hand turn that would take us up to Dalsnibba. Dalsnibba is apparently the highest fjord view by road in Europe at 1500 metres. Blindly following the sat nav doesn’t always work that well as after traveling for a couple of hours we arrived at a place called Hellesylt where the sat nav “lady” told us to board the ferry. Well I wasn’t expecting that! Sounds like a song! Yeah, that came as a bit of a surprise and looking at the map on an iPad I realised that this ferry would take us all the way to Geiranger from the opposite direction which had not been the plan at all. Lynne checked the price of the ferry and found it was in the region of £58 so we quickly decided to drive all the way back and approach Dalsnibba the way we intended in the first place.
That turned out to be a 2 hour drive but well worth it as some of the places we passed had views to die for. We stopped a couple of times for photographs and these were the results. One was the most complete rainbow I think I’ve ever seen, the other just a fantastic view with light breaking through the clouds after a downpour.
I’ve lost count of the tunnels we’ve gone through and this journey turned out to be no exception. The weird thing this time was, we were following what I think is a motorhome but with massive wheels and a military look. We followed him through 2 long tunnels and part way through came past a green light which I took to be a traffic light. This would suggest that the road was going to be too narrow but not long after the light we came upon cars coming the other way. The big military thingy in front made it quite a squeeze to get past. I’ve still not worked out what purpose the green light was serving.
Not long afterwards we came across the right hand turn for Dalsnibba. Turning onto the road you immediately arrive at a toll booth and have to pay 140 NOK for the privilege of using the road to the top. The drive up wasn’t as difficult as I’d expected though there were a lot of very tight hairpin bends to contend with and it was raining all the way up till we got closer to the top and the rain turned to snow! Yes it’s August 25 and it was bloody snowing! When we got to the top there were a lot of people about, looking at nothing, because there was no view on account of thick fog and snow falling. Absolutely amazing! I suggested wildcamping and waiting for the fog to clear. Lynne was ok with that so we settled down. It didn’t take long till we heard voices raised in excitement because the fog suddenly parted at least partially revealing the view of Geirangerfjord far below us. Fantastic, cameras and tripods appeared from nowhere. And not just mine either, there were lots of people suddenly setting up tripods and big lenses to try to capture their own take on the scene. The image below was mine. Once again a panorama stitched together in Photoshop.
After a while the crowds seemed to disappear and we were left with just us and a young German couple who looked like they were setting up to camp the night too in a small caravan. It was then that I noticed a camera bag sitting on a stone slab at the corner of the car park not more than 6 or 7 meters from us. There were literally no people other than us two couples. I went to take a look and could see into the open bag and there was a Nikon 85mm 1.8 lens on top of what looked like a woolly hat. I went to the German couple and in my best German said, entschuldigung, sie sprechen sie Englisch? Yes was the reply, I asked him if that was his bag and he replied that it was not. I asked him if anyone asked to let them know I had it inside rather than leave it where it was as anyone could come and just drive off with it.
As we sat talking about how sick someone would be to lose the bag and hoping someone would come back for it, a new wave of people were turning up. I had visions of someone getting a hundred miles away before realising it was gone. However, half an hour or so later Lynne commented on a man with a camera, saying it looked expensive because it was brown or something. I said, no it’s just a cover on the camera. At that point I watched the man and his wife and they were definitely looking stressed. It became obvious they were looking for something. I picked up the bag and walked out, I hadn’t walked more than 10 steps when his wife saw me holding up the bag and ran towards me with the biggest grin of relief and delight on her face that I’ve ever seen. I actually thought she would throw herself at me and knock me down! Instead she just hugged me and couldn’t thank me enough. Her husband too just kept shaking my hand. I had thought at first that they were Japanese but they turned out to be Chinese. He explained to me that as well as the 2 lenses in the bag, the other was a 300mm prime lens, there were cards in the bag with a months worth of photographs from their trip! I can fully understand how devastating it would be to lose something like that. So after a lot of furiously happy handshakes and hugs and him with his arm around my shoulders while his wife took a photo they went off only to return 10 minutes later when they saw us sitting in the van. I opened the door and they proceeded to thank us again and then the husband decided he would like to look around the van. It seems they don’t have anything like that in China! This really was an uplifting encounter with two lovely people and having done my good deed for the day I have to confess to feeling quite smugly good about myself.
Wandering Wildman 