Our last full day in Norway! And to mark the occasion we'd planned a 9 mile hike along the Besseggen Ridge, apparently one of the most scenic in Norway.
Waking up to wind and rain made us dubious about doing a ridge walk, but we packed up our delightful and very large chalet anyway and set off towards Gjendeshiem. This walk was different in that it was a one-way hike - with a boat to do the other leg. We'd done our research and discovered that the boat went at 9.30, and catching the boat out and hiking back would eliminate any uncertainty out of our day.
Getting there at 9.15 we were dismayed to find the car park was full, and with a slight hint of our Trolltunga experience were made to park (for 100k) on a car park 3km from the boat landing. So much for getting the 9.30 boat we thought! Thankfully the bus to the boat landing was more frequent and infinitely cheaper (free) than Trolltunga's "maxi taxi" and we did make it to the landing for 9.30 - to find that actually there were lots of boats, but these were all booked up until 11.45! Not wanting to stand around for over two hours we made a quick decision to hike the opposite way and try to make the 16.30 boat back.
The hike started with a big and rocky climb, which wasn't overly challenging given it was so early in the day. Rounding a hill, this got even steeper and narrower, in places requiring chains pinned to the rock to heave us up. An hour or so in the track got much wider but very exposed, with dustings of snow on the (windy) sides of the rocks. We wrapped up and headed onwards, just pleased that the low cloud, rain/snow and high winds hadn't materialised...
The next major landmark was the snow-covered summit at over 1700m, marked by a huge cairn. Using the shelter of the cairn for a few pics of the stunning views of the surrounding park area, we then carried on down the ridge.
The ridge was narrow, and by this point we'd started to encounter those who'd actually managed to catch an early boat and hike in the other direction. However, neither of these could spoil the sensational scenery - the sun light up the two lakes either side of the ridge, Lake Gjende a sky blue as it is glacially-fed and the other a deep navy.
Scrambling down off the ride a couple more climbs kept us entertained with spectacular vistas before the descent into Memurubu. Here we were pleasantly surprised to be able to hop straight onto a boat at 15.00 and return via bus to Eric.
Onwards from there we went to Ryfoss - mainly to make inroads into the journey to Oslo rather than anything else. However, the roads (51 & 16) we took were delightful, so our drive was punctuated with a number of stops to admire our surroundings as well as cows crossing, rainbows and snow-poled roads. Our accommodation, marketed as a B&B, turned out to be a large house, decorated with great taste and even better, without any other guests! After enjoying the sunny garden, we cooked ourselves a retrospectively carby dinner and settled down for the evening, tired out from an incredible final day's hiking.
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