The road to Lom and Sognefjellet

From Lærdalsfjordet we took a short ferry trip, between two tunnels, which then took us to Kaupanger. We made an impromptu stop here to visit the stave church. These are churches made mainly of wooden boards, but often with ornate carvings on the corners. We were going to miss out on seeing the most famous example at Urnes, so thought that this might be our last chance to see one. We’d soon be proved wrong.

Our next part of the drive to us past more fjords and lakes glistening where the sun shone the the clouds.

We also passed Feigefossen waterfall, albeit on the far side of the fjord. At 218m of unhindered drop it’s Norway’s second highest.

Our lunch stop also was included a waterfall, but also a bit of culture. First, we saw Åsafossen waterfall, which was lovely, but to be honest was overrun by the competition so far in the trip.

Then we headed down a track on the other side of the road, which took us to the edge of a lake on the opposite shore to the town of Skjolden. A short way up the hillside we came to a small house, which was once the Scandinavian retreat of the philosopher and Cambridge University lecturer Ludwig Wittgenstein. He said he did some of his best thinking there because of the landscape’s “quiet seriousness”. You can read more about him and his house in this Financial Times article:

https://www.ft.com/content/4ebc0304-ce5c-11e9-99a4-b5ded7a7fe3f

Unfortunately we didn’t realise, but you can go inside the hut if you pick up a key (from a petrol station in the town), but we did peak through the window. Back to the car park where we to a photo of a random giant hand and then we were on our way up another mountain pass – Sognefjellet.

The climb up to Sognefjellet was even higher than the Aurlandsfjellet pass of the previous day at almost 1400 meters. We took our time coming over here, it was another other worldly landscape although had marginally more facilities/ places of interest.

Then we descended into Lom a quite lively little town and a gateway to Jotenheimen National Park and various outdoor pursuits. After deciding against a very quiet campsite on the edge of town we chose one right in the middle, which had been a lodging since 1897. They also did dinners, so we decided to take the evening off cooking for ourselves and treated ourselves to some local produce.

Just before bed we took a short night-time stroll to have a look at Lom’s own stave church. Here it is at nighttime, you can compare it to Kaupavanger’s version in daylight next time!