A Beautiful Train, Flåmsbana (Flåm Railway), Norway

Zagan the motorhome’s on the upper grassy terrace of Flåm Camping, or the Penthouse Suite you might say, as we’re looking down over the wet tents below us and, a short distance further, at the Flåm Railway terminal in, you guessed it, Flåm (N60.86303,E7.10643). I’m willing to bet you silently pronounced Flåm as ‘Flam’, but that tiny O is the David to the Goliath A it sits above, and it’s actually pronounced ‘Flom’. It set us back 230 NOK to stay here, for two of us without electricity, roughly £21, and again the showers are annoyingly extra.

Zagan at Flåm Camping

The E16 was kind to us last night. The lay by we’d parked up in was a bit of an emergency kipping spot, being so close to a main road, but was right up against the Aurlandsfjord, a branch off the majestic Sognefjord. That said we’d occasionally hear the 80kph limit being blown wide open by a Norwegian in Bluebird, making an attempt at the World Land Speed Record, despite anything over 84mph would land ’em in jail if caught. Just 20kph over the limit would land the wannabe Donald Campbell’s with an eye watering €436 (£370) fine – see here for more info. We overheard an American tourist talking recently and, paraphrasing, he said “Norwegians are like children, and the government is their parents”. Which briefly means, to me, the government taxes the hell out of everything they don’t want the denizens here to do. It seems to work mind, we’re officially in the 4th happiest country in the world (from the 2016 World Happiness Report). The UK is in 23rd place, behind Germany (16), Mexico (21) and Israel (11).

Ah, where was I? Flåm, yeah, in fact I’m still here. We nipped the 6km round the corner this morning having taken our breakfast watching ferries plying the cliff-bound waters of the fjord. We’d a good idea there’d be no freebie overnight motorhome parking here, as it’s again a small village sat between steep rock and deep waters, and we were right. ‘No Overnight Parking’ signs stare dolefully down from lampposts across the place, although there’s stacks of free daytime parking if you just want to come and do the railway thing and skip off gleefully. After a few day’s hard(ish) driving, Team Zagan voted for a night’s campsite kipping.

With Zagan on flat wet grass, off we headed to the nearby train station to see if we could get on any of the afternoon’s trains, which run about 10 times a day. Perhaps being so late in the season, coupled with overcast skies and the lack of a giant cruise ship blotting out the light, there was stacks of room on the trains. Each can take 500 folks, and the screens in the ticket office indicated all the departures had loads of space. 440 NOK each and we’d a couple of return tickets, each direction covering about 20km and taking an hour – about £42 each, a similar experience-cost as the awesome Aiguille du Midi and the fogged-out Tatras viewpoint at Tatranska Lomnica.

The Flåm Line opened back in 1940 after a mere 16 years of tooth-and-nail hacking and blasting at rock to get something like a level-ish surface to run a line on, eventually creating a life-line for goods, post and people when there we no roads leading here. The topography around here is just a bonkers, it’s all cliff-face and rushing torrent. The roads are mad. The train line is mad. Only the boats, and even cruise liners look tiny when viewed against the gaping majesty of these sea-inlets, seem a sane option for getting about. As Zagan isn’t a boat, we’re keeping close tabs on him for any sign of eye twitching which might indicate he’s finally had enough and is about to fling himself from some improbably hairpin bend on high.

Most of the tunnels were hacked by hand, using dynamite in the stubborn bits

The locals here have a reputation for being tough. Before they could build the railway they had to build a road to shift materials, men and tools. The road is now used by folks who get their mountain bike taken up by the train – we raced some of ’em down the hill. The train won, just.

The train was fun and, as it says on the tin, it was beautiful, reminding us of a similar, if smaller-scale journey in Greece. It’s Norway’s 3rd most visited tourist attraction, so pulls in big money. Coaches line the parking area, intriguingly registered everywhere but Norway. We can only guess it’s cheaper to move your far-eastern folks about in a Latvian-registered vehicle and put the driver up in local digs than to use a local vehicle and driver. Folks still use the line for its original purpose: to get to the main Bergen line 860-odd vertical meters above us, and we found almost everyone left the train at the top, leaving us nigh-on alone for the return journey.

Flåm Village, where real people live, set a bit inland from the weird transit post against the sea

Flåm railway heading for the hills through ten stations, twenty tunnels and a bridge

Mountain bikers on the workers road alongside the train

Amazing galleries set in the cliff – the tunnel twists 180 degrees in the rock which is why you can see two openings, one above the other

I spent most of the 2 hours with my head out the window like a happy dog

Blowing your own trumpet’s a pre-requisite for working in the tourism industry, but this is a pretty cracking little trip

Waterfall stop on the way up…

Waterfall stop on the way back down…

Dramatic close up on crashing water!

Ju enjoying tunnel number 11 on the way up, or was it tunnel 10?

Galleried tunnel, vertical river and almost-vertical worker’s road

That kind of sums Flåm up I reckon: a place of transit, a teeny weeny village with hundreds of thousands of feet tramping across it lugging backpacks or rolling cases on wheels. That said, there is a pub in town, and a nice bit of wooden architecture it is too. Only the £100 hit to our finances we’d already taken, and the sure knowledge we were about to pay through the nose, finally prevented us from nipping in for a beer and some grub. Instead a side door drew us in: off-sales. I’ve a Flåm-brewed Porter waiting in the fridge for me (a mere £5.50) and Ju has a can of cider (a snip at £3.90).

Flåm’s pub with off-sales door to the left. The pub was heaving.

We’re not paying THAT much more for beer than we would in a pub at home, but the fact we’re not in a pub makes it a mental challenge to accept the high prices

The map’s been out again, and I’ll be honest: Norway’s wearing us down. There’s SO MUCH TO SEE, EVERYTHING IS SO EYE-POPPING, and it’s SO HARD TO GET ANYWHERE, we’re almost tempted to split and head for Sweden. No, no, the thought of a Lidl stacked with cheap beer and being able to eat out for less than £5000 isn’t influencing us at all. Not yet though, we’ve more to see here and the weather forecast’s gone all yellow-orb and 25 degrees, so onwards we go. Through about 10 miles of tunnel…

While I’m moaning about the roads being hard going around here, at least I don’t have to motorbike my way along a train line!

Cheers, Jay

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