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From Eidfjord to Hardanger plateau

The wildest and most remote regions of Europe

After a few hour drive from Odda, I can see Eidjord in front of me, a village at the deepest,darkest reach of Hardanger fjord.

This is Norway of your picture postcard dreams. There's the ink black fiord, the
sheer face of mountains, and the scale is other-worldly. This fjord could make the
QE2 seem like a tugboat.
The temperature is about 10 degrees warmer down here than up on the mountain.
It's almost like travelling to another country.

Eidfjord is a small thoroughly idyllic place. There's the village proper with around 650
souls and then another 400 scattered around the Eidfjord kommune -the
Norwegian equivalent of a community council.

While most communities along the Hardanger fiord are lucky to have one small, all-purpose village shop Eidfjord has three large ones, selling everything from cat food to hunting rifles.

"None of these shops would survive without tourism. They make more in the summer season than they do in the rest of the year combined,"says Mr. Sandvik twirling on his chair.

The Hardangervidda Natursenter at uper part of Eidfjord and the Norsk Fjordsenter at Geiranger will soon find their way into all the holiday package tours so visit now
before the coaches arrive.

A 225 panoramic cinema screens a breathtaking film montage of scenes from the area they call 'the ceiling of Europe', allowing you to soar like an eagle over the snow-capped mountains.

During the 20-minute movie, set to music by both classical and New Age
Norwegian composers, you visit remote places that would otherwise be
inaccessible, completely immersed in the experience.

Hands-on exhibits in the centre develop the film themes, allowing you to feel the
textures of the ice, the wildlife and the age-old rock through which the
fjords were carved.

Our first stop at hardanger vidda, you can see the glacier near
Finse in the background.

Once we has climbed up out of the fjords my car speeds up across the
relatively flat expanse of the Hardangervidda, or Hardanger highlands.
This is one of the wildest, most remote regions of Europe, an area half the size
of Northern Ireland with only the railway and one road running through it.

The rest of it is only accessible on foot or on surefooted pony. The vidda, as
Norwegians call it, is the largest high mountain plateau in Europe.
It resembles the Cairngorms, only it is higher, more windswept and studded here
and there with massive glaciers - the luminous jewels of the last ice age.

I spent a few days with my wife hiking across the vidda and in those days nature, as ever,proved a source of great revelations.

The biggest revelation is the freedom of the vidda. This is a wilderness without
estates, castles, and gamekeepers, an expanse without fences across which anyone
can roam freely, camp freely and where anyone can try their hand at fishing or hunting.

There are over 1,000 miles of hiking trails winding back and forth across the vidda.
Mountain huts punctuate the wilderness at useful distances so you can put up in the
hut at night. Some of the huts are staffed and offer sumptuous candlelit dinners,
others are simple bothies stocked with supplies for which - this being Norway -
visitors simply leave money on trust.

Royal Rangers Norway Postcamp 2007

Our postcamp we did after the Eurocamp 2207 in Norway (Eidfjord). Die Slideshow zu unserem Nachcamp vom Eurocamp in Norwegen. Used Song: John Reuben - Higher

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Voringsforss Waterfall, Eidfjord, Norway on Flickr - Photo Sharing!...

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