Our longest stop of our tour so far has been at Odda (three nights in total). This was to give ourselves a couple of days to get the best weather for the hike to Trolltunga (one of Norway’s most scenic viewpoints but also a bit more difficult access than most).
The town of Odda, which is the base for starting the hike for most, is odd by nature too. It’s partly an outdoors hub from which you can also access the Folgefonna glacier (one of Norway’s largest), but it’s also an industrial town. A former carbide factory towers over the town centre and on the edge of town is an even bigger zinc plant, where huge ships come up the fjord to unload materials and load the refined product.
As we’d come outside of the summer season, the shuttle to the trail head wasn’t running, so we had to take a pricey taxi to the start of the hike early in the morning before the school drop offs. Campers aren’t allowed on the road to the trailhead unfortunately.
At the top of the road there was an area several log cabins in the mountains, it’s a common feature here for people to have a summer cabin. They all looked very cosy.
From the top of the next climb we could start to see the valley that our ultimate goal was in – Ringedal. It looked pretty impressive from here, but we had a few kilometres left to go before the ultimate view point.
A few people overtook us on our way to the main viewpoint as we clambered over a few more ridges and past some small lakes and ponds. A couple of people had obviously camped overnight on the ridge. When we got to the end though, we thought we must have been about the 20th people there that day (it was worth the 6am wake up). And the view was worth it too!
We did have a short wait for a photo, but not long. A kind French guy took a few photos of us on the precariously perched troll’s tongue. Yala was very relaxed about it all (Gareth less so).
The view was amazing, but it’s a bit of an optical illusion as Trolltunga itself sits in an inlet in the cliff face and doesn’t jut out as far as it looks in the photo. It is still a very long way down though!
So after a quick bite and passing on the free photo taking to some North American ladies (who had run up!). We set off on the return leg.
It was definitely more difficult to get to that the Preikstolen viewpoint and, ignoring the weather difference, it felt more special to have hiked over 20 kilometres (there and back) to get there.
And we did have a few more stops on the way back to enjoy the views.
Claire and Gareth go travelling! 