And so we come to the end …

Or do we? We shall come to the end in due course, but first let us begin from whence we left off. We had left the Norwegian town of Ulvik and were cruising the Maurangerfjord and the Furebergsfossen. The scenery in these fjords is simply stunning. I decided to pen my last missive whilst sitting on the Observation Deck. On this ship, it is Deck 9. Captain Clarke kindly (not) took a photo of me as I was sharing our experience. It is very difficult to describe the fjords. To describe them as being steep mountainous terrain leading down to beautiful waterways is simply not to describe them well. That said, the other issue that one has is that one doesn’t want to make them all sound the same when, in reality, they are all very different but, in some ways, the same! In other words, they are all steep mountainous terrain leading down to meandering waterways but they are all very different. Some of the waterfalls are spectacular, others not quite so dramatic but still with drops of several hundred metres! Of course, everyone knows that the Norwegian Fjords were, in fact, designed by Slartibartfast. Slartibartfast is a Magrathean and a designer of planets. He won an award for the design of the Norwegian Fjords!! If you don’t know who Slartibartfast is, just put his name into Google!!

So, back to the fjords. There is one other thing that is difficult about the fjords and that is taking photos through the window. True, there are some outside decks. Notably the sun deck that is above the Observation Deck and also the Promenade Deck (Deck 3) but there is one thing to remember about cruising in Norway … it isn’t very warm! In fact, it is blinkin’ freezing!! Standing on an outdoor deck in temperatures of around 11 degrees with a Northerly wind blowing at around Force 3 is not for the feint hearted. I did pop out at one point with the full intention of taking some photos but decided against it as quickly as I decided to try! As a consequence, some photos do have a bit of a reflection on them, but that is the way it is.

Some detail about the bridge which we gleaned from a limited commentary as we cruised down the Hardangerfjord. The bridge is one of the longest suspension bridges in the world and is the longest tunnel to tunnel bridge in the world. The bridge connects the municipalities of Ullensvang and Ulvik. It is 1,380 metres long and is exactly 100 metres longer than the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco (the longest is the 1915 Çanakkale Bridge in Turkey which is 2,023 metres long – something for the next quiz night!). To photograph the bridge from the ship is really quite difficult, so I confess to have got this one from the Internet.

Whilst I am not normally one to use Wikipedia, I did find the information about the tunnels rather interesting: On the south end of the bridge, cars immediately enter the 1.2-kilometre (0.75 mi) Bu Tunnel that goes under the village of Bu, while on the north side of the bridge, cars immediately enter the 7.5-kilometre (4.7 mi) Vallavik Tunnel which includes a 500-metre (1,600 ft) long segment to a roundabout inside the tunnel. At the roundabout, cars can take another 500-metre (1,600 ft) long tunnel that leads to Ulvik or they can take a 7-kilometre (4.3 mi) long tunnel to Granvin. Just imagine building those tunnels too! Apparently, the entire construction project took just 4 years to complete.

It would be remiss of me not to mention on board life. One of my concerns before this cruise was the idea of being locked up in a tin bath being slung around like a cork in a whirlpool with a bunch of people I neither knew nor liked! Ok, now I don’t use these words often so make the most of it … I was wrong! Firstly, the ship has fantastic stabilisers which mean that even in a rough sea (not that we have had any rough sees, the strongest sea we have had was a Force 5 and that was only for a short while) the ship is stable. Yes, you will feel it moving, but not to any great extent. Mostly the people on board are really nice. We did meet a lovely lady called Marcia on our very first morning on the ship. We shared a table with her and her partner for breakfast (you don’t have to share, but we just thought it might be interesting to speak to others on the cruise). Marcia is a bit ‘northern’, she comes from Bolton, and she seemed to latch on to us from that very first morning. We see her quite a bit around the ship and she does tend to start every encounter with “sorry to be a pain but …”. That said, it is easy enough to avoid meeting someone if you really don’t want to and she isn’t that bad!

We have met a few others on board. There is ‘Blow ‘n’ Go’ from Benidorm (well they’re not really from Benidorm but they just remind us so much of the two characters from the TV comedy series! I do hope they never read this!! There is John and Jean from Sherborne in Dorset. John really wants an electric car but has ‘range anxiety’ and just can’t get over it! There’s Annie and Caroline (Annie is a singer and her name isn’t even Pearl!) who live in Suffolk, there is Michelle who was crushed by a bus when she was three but survived and is now a published poet – she is on board with her mother and father who tells everyone her story! We’ve actually met lots of people and they have all been, without exception, all been very nice. We pick on Marcia a bit but she’s really only trying to be friendly!

Actually, I should explain a little about the ship. It is called the Borealis after the Northern Lights and is one of three ‘small’ ships owned and operated by Fred Olsen. The ship is 237.94 metres long with a maximum width of 34.45 metres. Its gross tonnage is 61,849 and it was originally built in 1997. It was acquired by Fred Olsen in 2020 and completely refurbished. There is a capacity of 702 cabins for a maximum of 1,360 guests and 662 crew. Its sister ships are the Bollette and the Balmoral. The Borealis is the fastest of the three ships but our average cruising speed has been around 12 nautical knots which is about 13.8 miles per hour! To put this into perspective, we passed Dover at around 5pm this afternoon (in thick fog, you couldn’t see a thing!) and will arrive in Southampton at about 4am tomorrow morning! Not exactly a speed boat, but very comfortable indeed.

It would be remiss of me not to include one last image of a waterfall. Waterfalls feature heavily in a trip to the Norwegian Fjords and to end with this one which is on the Maurangerfjorden⁩ just puts things into perspective. It is absolutely massive. If you look at the bottom you will see some vehicles driving across the bridge at the bottom of the fall which just shows how big the waterfall really is!

Last night was our last night on board. We finished our cruise off with a visit to the Observation Deck where one of the on board singers was doing a Freddie Mercury tribute act. What was amazing was that this guy, Howard Johnson, was such a soft singer and played gentle songs when he was doing his ‘day job’ but as soon as he got dressed up as Freddie Mercury, his inner Freddie was unleashed! It was such a laugh and we couldn’t have finished off with anything better! We have had a wonderful time and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The people have been great, the service has been exceptional, the food has been excellent. So what now? Is it the end? Well, yes and no. It is certainly the end of this particular experience but we’ve enjoyed it so much that we’ve already booked our next cruise! Next year we will be cruising to Gibraltar, Spain and Portugal. If we booked on board we got a 5% discount on the next cruise. It would be rude not to!! So that’s it, we’re done. It is time now for Rudy to get some sleep, we docked at 4am!! For now, Rudy will return to his slumber …