Norway and Croatia

The first stop after the airport was Lillehammer, two hours north of Oslo. We climbed the long staircase beside the Lysgårdsbakkene ski jumps, built for the 1994 Winter Olympics, and looked down from the top over the landing hill and the town by the lake.

From Lillehammer we turned off the main road and took the scenic route over the mountains towards Rondane. At Sohlbergplassen a curving concrete platform among the pines looks out over the lake Atnsjøen to the Rondane peaks, the view the painter Harald Sohlberg made famous. We sent the drone up over the forest.

In the evening we crossed the bare plateau of Dovrefjell and walked out across the heather to Viewpoint Snøhetta, a pavilion with a soft, wave-shaped wooden interior and a big window facing the Snøhetta massif. It was late, but at this time of year the light lasts well into the evening.

After a stop in Dombås we drove down Romsdalen, arriving at our cabin near Åndalsnes late at night.

We woke up in a cabin with a big window onto the forest. In Åndalsnes we took the Romsdal gondola up Nesaksla, straight up from the harbour where a cruise ship was moored, and spent the middle of the day walking on the mountain above the town: past small lakes on the plateau, with the peaks and the green valley of Romsdalen on one side and the fjord on the other.

In the afternoon we drove up Isterdalen, stopping for cows strolling down the middle of the road, and climbed the hairpins of Trollstigen, the Troll’s Ladder, to the viewing platforms at the top. Below us the road zigzagged down the cliff beside the Stigfossen waterfall, which we passed again close up, by the old stone bridge, on the way back down.

A short car ferry took us across the fjord to Molde, where we spent the night. The next morning we walked among the old wooden houses on the hill above the town before setting off for the coast.

North of Molde the Atlantic Road hops from islet to islet over a chain of bridges, with nothing but open sea beyond. We stopped by the curved Storseisundet bridge, walked the path around the little island of Eldhusøya and watched the waves, and admired a pair of old Volkswagen Beetles in the car park.

Back via Molde and the ferry to Vestnes, we drove on to Ålesund. First an aquarium on the edge of town, with rays and fish from the coast around us, then the climb up the hill of Aksla for the classic view over the Art Nouveau town, rebuilt after a great fire in 1904, its harbour and the islands.

In the evening we took another ferry and drove south into the mountains, where we stayed two nights.

Geirangerfjord is one of the two Norwegian fjords on the UNESCO World Heritage list. We spent a whole sunny day there. In the morning we took the ferry from Geiranger to Hellesylt and back, past the Seven Sisters waterfalls and cliff-side farms, with a cruise ship anchored in the fjord. In Hellesylt a waterfall rushes right through the village under the road bridge.

Back in Geiranger we walked up above the village, with views down to the cruise ships, and in the early evening drove up the hairpins of the Eagle Road to the viewpoint at Ørnesvingen. The day ended by the roaring river in the village, crossing it on a walkway.

On our way south we stopped at Briksdal, where an arm of Jostedalsbreen, the largest glacier in mainland Europe, ends above a turquoise lake. The path up the valley passes the thundering Kleivafossen waterfall, and at the top the blue ice comes down to the water.

Then a long afternoon drive, with a ferry across the Sognefjord, to Øystese on the Hardangerfjord.

We spent a day in Bergen. We walked along Bryggen, the old Hanseatic wharf with its row of painted wooden houses, past a big three-masted sailing ship moored in the harbour, and took the funicular up Mount Fløyen to the forest and the view over the city.

We came back from Bergen by bus. On the way into Norheimsund we stopped at Steinsdalsfossen, a waterfall you can walk behind on a path under the overhanging rock. Our base for two nights was Øystese, a village on the shore of the Hardangerfjord.

On the way back east we drove to Gudvangen, at the end of the narrow Nærøyfjord, and spent a grey lunchtime in a Viking village of turf-roofed houses, trying archery and watching a Viking warrior show. Through the long tunnels to Flåm, where the railway museum has a big model of the Flåm Line, and then up the hairpins to Stegastein, a wooden platform jutting out 650 metres above the Aurlandsfjord.

From Stegastein it was a long drive in the rain over the mountains, through Gol, to Oslo, where we arrived late in the evening.

We had one day in the capital: the sculptures of Vigeland Park in the morning, Aker Brygge on the waterfront, then the new MUNCH museum and the white marble roof of the Opera House, with its foyer of curved oak. That evening we drove back to a hotel by the airport.

An early flight took us from Oslo to Split, and a two-hour drive down the coast to Tučepi on the Makarska Riviera, a resort village of pebble beaches below the grey wall of the Biokovo mountains.

The last three days were all about swimming: in the hotel pool, with goggles and snorkel in the clear water off the beach, and on an inflatable mattress in the sea. In the evenings we walked along the seafront. On the last afternoon a bus took us from Makarska to Split airport and the flight home.