Goodbye Bergen, hello Hurtigruten

Thursday, 22 January 2015

Making another pre-emptive strike on cabin fever I took the Fløibanen up to the top of the steep mountain overlooking the harbour this morning. Actually it's just one of seven mountains that surround Bergen. It took me a sweaty 45 minutes to run to the top last night so today I allowed myself the luxury of taking the railway.

I also wanted to take advantage of the daylight and have a bit of a walk & run through the forest.

Up on top the ground was covered with patchy snow and ice, and grass and moss - a bit of everything really! I didn't have the cool spiked running shoes that I borrowed in Drammen but I did have my wrist guards on just in case I fell.  

I love Norwegian forests - they are so pretty. 

Bergen has had some big storms recently and a lot of rain, so this has taken a toll on many of the trees, and provided very very icy conditions in some parts. This looks like a frozen river below left, but it's actually supposed to be the trail! It was amazing how clear and thick some sections of the ice were… although it's hard to photograph it:

..and there were lots of icicles around.

After about 30 minutes I headed down the main path back to town which has tonnes of switchbacks..

until I landed just above the houses. These photos are all taken with my phone, so it has mixed success with the low light (it was around 10am as I did this walk/run).  I'm happy with some of them though.

And then it was a 10 minute jog back to our lovely scandinavian home which we will say goodbye to in about 15 minutes when we head off to check-in to the Hurtigruten.