Sunday Run - Måndalen

We took a little run round to Måndalen (The Moon Dale) today. Weather wasn't great, temperature struggling to reach 25C, and the sun was making a fairly poor effort at shining.
Måndalen is a valley that I've driven past many times as it's on the main road to Åndalsnes. I've always meant to turn up the valley for a look, but always been hurrying, so a Sunday run was the only answer. It's about 45km from here, on the south side of Romsdalsfjorden. The village at the head of the valley is fairly typical of a lot of local communities. Shop, Church, and a lovely view.

We headed up the valley to Skarsetra, a small setter at the top of a narrow toll road, (40 kroner charge). The road climbed fairly quickly to the setter at 562 metres above sea level, and I have to admit that this particular road is more suitable for a 4x4 than a saloon car.
Here's the views from Skarsetra.

The cabins and sheds all have rather overgrown roofs, but this shed was the winner for growth.

After a bit of a walk around we headed down again.
Driving roads like these it is very handy to have the SatNav on just to show where the road is going to turn.
Satellite navigation is a great thing, but having two navigators in a car can be something akin to a nightmare. My SatNav is nicknamed 'Greetin Gertie', and the other navigator is lovingly referred to as 'Tröttlin Trowie', although she was busy trying to force her finger nails through the sides of the seat, so didn't say too much today... Women, huh!, I've driven many a worse peat hill road in Shetland ;) .
On the way back down we got a couple of pics down into the valley. This view is towards Måndalen, and Romsdalsfjorden.

And this one is a view down to Venås.

At one of the turns in the road I took this snap to give an idea what the road is like.

Down in the valley they are creating a museum of old farming buildings. These buildings have been moved here from other locations and rebuilt onto new foundations.
These ones are old store houses which would have been used to store grain, hams, and other foodstuff. Hence they were always built up from the ground.

Here's a close up of some of the tools hanging on one of the walls.

There's an old farm house.

And a barn.

The door of one of the store houses caught my eye. Beautiful carving.

It's interesting to note that these buildings may be many hundred years old, so artwork like that is rather special to see.
Another form of artwork on one of the stores was some old tagging, and much like modern taggers, these old graffiti artists only used the last 2 numbers of the year, so we can only guess in which century this person left his name.

The text reads: "SKREVET 16/4 - 74 KNUT ARE MYRANN" (Written 16/4 - 74 Knut Are Myrann). It would be interesting to try to find out where the building came from, and who Knut Are Myrann was, but I guess it's almost an impossible task.
Some of the fencing around the houses are made in a very traditional style, just using branches and bits of wood which are of little other use.

Leaving Måndalen I took this nice picture across Romsdalsfjorden, looking towards Åndalsnes.

To avoid a tunnel on the way home we took a detour around a mountain road between Vågstranda and Hjelvik. I started to notice that most of the mail boxes had paintings on them, like these ones.

But the art prize really belongs to these two, just above Hjelvik.

Just before we got to Vikebukt we stopped to get this picture looking across Romsdalsfjorden towards the town of Molde. With a cruise ship, the Mona Lisa, a German ship, which actually looks like a ship instead of a floating hotel, heading in the fjord towards Åndalsnes.

Last picture, you'll be glad to hear, but interesting nevertheless. At a couple of places along the side of Tresjorden, near Daugstad, folk are still drying hay by traditional means. Great to see that not all old farming practices have died out.

Onywye,
yun's aa fir enoo.