Day 3 - Oslo to Flam (via Myrdal) - 16th September 2023

Heya,

We got up early, rolled the 40 keg suitcases over the cobblestones and had breaky at the train station.

We found our spacious, plush seats on the train and we were on the four-hour ride from Oslo to Myrdal station. This train ride goes all the way to Bergen and the 7-hour ride in its’ entirety is considered to be one of the most picturesque in all of the world. We were breaking up the ride by stopping at Myrdal, riding bikes to Flam for the night, and getting the train back to Myrdal the next day to continue to Bergen.

Sounds easy right?

The first few hours of the train ride were nice. Nice forests, nice villages, nice mountains in the distance. Then the train started to climb, and climb, and climb. When we alighted at Myrdal Station it was 6 degrees and there was swirly, drizzly, wind, and we were amongst the snow-capped mountains at 867 metres high.

For a bloke who doesn’t like heights, this was a bit much.

Flam, I discovered has an elevation of 2 metres. We were booked into the Flam Marina for the night on the fjords, so I had a decision to make - how to get down the mountain. There were three options:

1) Train - 970NOK - $140AUD for an hours ticket.

2) Zipline and bike - faaaaaaark that your honour

3) Mountain bike… 865 metres down a mountain.

Guess what we chose?

Option 3… kinda wish we had stayed on until Bergen.

We paid to have the suitcases put on the train (120 NOK per bag) and went to the mountain bike hire place while old mate talked us through it.

The first part consists of 21 hairpin turns on angles of about 40 degrees - so unless your an MTB superstar, they suggest that you walk your bike down. This should take 30 minutes. The rest they assured us was all downhill and should be an easy coast. You’re from Australia? Just remember in Norway, the brakes are on different sides of the handlebars. Your back brake is on the right and your front brake is on the left.

They make it sound so easy.

So the rain had stopped and we took off.

After walking down the first 15 bends with gigantic waterfalls on either side our legs were screaming out in pain. We rolled down the last 6 and took a well-earned rest. It took us 40 minutes of intense concentration and watching every step…pretty full on… or to be more exact purely terrifying,

The rest of the trip took us about 90 minutes and consisted of gravel tracks, concrete tracks, tunnels, bridges, railway crossings, and actual public roads (complete with cars and at one stage a herd of goats that were cud-chilling and not moving for anyone!)

No one can’t say that we aren’t having a go.

So in just over two hours we rode down 865 metres of wild Norwegian mountain. How did we feel at the end?

The adrenaline took an age to wear off and we were exhausted, exhilarated, scared, awestruck, cold, hot, tired, and most of all thirsty for as much booze as we could take!

The nice young kid at the terminal only charged us for one bag of luggage (not three) so we locked it all up in a storage locker and walked over to our accommodation for the night.

I necked two cans of Hansa Pilsener before I got to the room (6 bucks for the old European 440ml cans) and we checked into our cute little room with billion-dollar views of the fjord. How could we afjord not to stay here?

We dumped our stuff and by this time it was 5pm.

We hit the restaurant for more pilsener (draft) red wine, chips (Sorlanda chips are the bomb) and then we got a pizza and some roast cod with root veg salad and roasted smashed baby potatoes. Amazing food!!

Side note: the potatoes in Norway are the best that I’ve ever eaten. The salted ships are incredible and the roast potatoes are so sweet. I assume it’s because they're all tiny, new potatoes and this gives the baby veg sweetness - but it could also be the variety. Whatever it is they are incredibly addictive.

We went back to the room with a cheeky Jamesons, cast Jen’s phone to the TV and watched “Wheel of Time.” on Prime Amazon before we both fell asleep on the lounge!!

We then staggered into bed and crashed by 8.30 pm. (The downside of which being that I was awake at 4 am and couldn’t get back to sleep!!)

Huge, exhilarating day, capped off with a great meal overlooking the most pristine fjord. Magic, pure magic.