Thursday, July 29, 2010

Home again..

Shetland is safe for a while again. Me and Peerie Trowie are safely back to the sweltering heat of Vestnes.
Off with the winter jacket which was so useful in Shetland, long underwear tucked safely away in a drawer, and back to sunshine, shorts, smoked pork cutlets, and having a nap in the afternoon. ;)
Honestly though, the Shetland weather wasn't all that bad, and quite surprised me in fact. The over indulgence in intoxicating liquids didn't surprise me, and wasn't all that bad either.
Obviously, from my point of view, visiting Shetland was all about catching up with family. And of course introducing the new wife.
It was also great to meet some new folk who I'd only encountered online before, Kozetland1 and EM. Gentlemen both, and very enjoyable company for a little drink at the Sandwick Social Club.
I'll likely look back over the Shetland pictures I took, and maybe come up with some posts from them, perhaps to the embarrassment of some folk. ;)

But first, the journey home.
The flight to Bergen was nice, exactly one hour, and although the weather looked nice it got duller and greyer as we drove north. We stopped for a late lunch at Østereidet, on the north side of Osterfjorden. Here's what view there was, towards Bernes.

I'm afraid I'm not really a fan of that area of Norway, so we made our way as quickly as we could, north to Sognefjorden. When we got to the ferry at Oppedal we had to wait for ages. I think that one of the ferries had broken down, and although another one had been brought in, there was a bit of a backlog.
Sognefjord is the longest of the Norwegian fjords, and at well over 1200 metres deep in places, it's also the deepest. Normally I'd get a decent sunny picture, but this is the best I could do.
When we got off the ferry at Lavik we headed east along the fjord to Vadheim, turned north to Førde, and east towards Jølster. As it was getting late we meant to find a cabin in the area of Jølstravatnet, but ended up going north into Våtedalen (the wet valley) to Egge, a place where we'd stayed before.
I really must get around to doing a proper post about holiday cabins. Anybody thinking about a holiday in Norway, but scared by the price of hotels, will see that it's not too bad. Anyway, here's the one we stayed in.
When we got up this morning the sun was shining and Norway was looking beautiful again. I took this snap of the river which runs down through Våtedalen. The river is fed by melt from a glacier, and can have a very weird cold green colour to it, which this picture doesn't really show up correctly. Because the river is so cold the temperature in the valley can be quite a few degrees below normal, so it's a good place to stop in hot weather.
Back on the road, and scenery like this was the norm. A little bit hazy, but calm and the temperature was climbing towards the mid 20sC
We headed north to Anda to get the ferry across Utfjorden to Lote. Here's a nice picture from the ferry of the edge of a small glacier called Glegnalundsbreen.
I'll continue this tomorrow with some more nice pictures, but for now I have to go and check on the quality of the duty free we bought. ;)

Yun's aa fir enoo.

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