Thursday – Olden and Brikstal Glacier
Today, we arrived in Olden, a small village not dissimilar to the one we visited in the previous port. Once again, the Marco Polo was berthed alongside a quay surrounded by high, impressive, snow-capped mountains.
Once again, Tracey and I were on Escort duty (we’ve done very well out of it, so far…); today, coaches took us up the valley to Briksdal Inn, from where our groups decamped to small 7-seater cars known as Troll Cars, to take us towards the glacier. In many ways, we were extremely lucky to have done the tour at all. Heavy rains have created untold damage right across Norway in the last couple of days, and it was only yesterday that the main road to Brikstal was reopened at all, after being closed due to landslides.
From Brikstal Inn onwards, there are no proper roads, but there is a footpath, and a track built specially for the Troll Cars; other tours that didn’t include said cars had to walk it the whole way ( a good 45-60 minute trek, I’d say). Unfortunately, even the Troll Cars had been affected by the weather, and a part of the track had been washed away in the rain, meaning that passengers had to transfer from one car to the other via a short walk up some steps alongside a huge waterfall.
Eventually, after much Troll Car too-ing and fro-ing, we arrived at the point where everyone has to walk no matter which tour they’re on. What begins as a steep ascent soon flattens off, and the footpath becomes much easier to walk. A roughly 15-20 minute walk brings you out, finally, at the Brikstal Glacier.
This was a first for me; I’ve never seen a real glacier before, and I wasn’t disappointed. Although it has retreated over the years (there are markers along the way, telling you how far down the glacier used to come, and in what years), it’s still very impressive. A lake at the base of the rocks provides a great setting, fed by a waterfall of the glacial water as it finds its way down from way up high. The snowy glacier itself is light blue in colour, with jagged edges and a surface crinkly with crevasses… absolutely marvellous…. a great photo opportunity!
On our return journey to Olden, we made a couple of short stops for photos of the fjords, and were back in time for lunch.
After lunch, we took a gentle stroll through Olden itself. There isn’t a great deal to look at , but we did take some good Marco-Polo-in-Fjord shots and found a quaint wooden church. There are a couple of shops, too, but nothing that was of any particular interest to us (everything seems notably more expensive here than anywhere else).
In the evening we had the first, of what we expect to be many, ‘bing-bongs’; notifications across the public address system, from Richard our Cruise Director, of there perhaps being something to see in the sky…
On his word, hundreds of people piled out onto deck, mostly at the front of the ship, in the hope of seeing the Aurora Borealis. Sadly, it was all a bit of an anti-climax this time around, even Richard had described the sighting as being ‘flickering in and out’, and not more than 0.5 on the lights-ometer (not very much at all, then…). Some folks, clearly, had hastily bounded out of bed and grabbed the first clothes they could put their hands on; others were more organised, and appeared carrying mountains of camera equipment and tripods (not sure how successful they’d be, though, with the ship rolling about as much as it was). We stayed up there for abouut 20 minutes or so, with our backs to the front wall of the ship, looking out into the sky. There did appear to be a vague glow up there, and because it was definitely not the moon (cos that was on the opposite side of the sky), ergo, it must have been aurora… just not very strong… yet.
