Welcome to Olden!

Olden is a village situated the mouth of the Oldeelva River in the Oldedalen valley along the Nordfjord in Norway. About 500 people live in this village, which is only 3/4km in size.

When we arrived at this port I was immediately struck by how picturesque the place was. Here we were on top of a river, surrounded by steep, tall, green hills and typical Norwegian architecture. It truly is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to and this memory will stay with me for a long time. Unfortunately the photos don't do it justice - blame the photographer ugh!

View from the top of the ship. The village centre is situated in the top third of the image. Notice how the ship docks right at the side of the road.

Closer view of the village centre.

We took a trip at this port because, when we looked at the port on Google Earth at home, it was clear that there wasn't really much here. We did enjoy our trip (which was essentially just a sightseeing tour) but to be honest, we really could have made a full day out of just plodding about looking at the buildings and taking photos etc.

The trip that we took was a cruise down Oldavatnet Lake on a small boat. It was a nice trip (though cold on the lake) but the best bit was the drive through the small villages on the way to the lake. We passed some beautiful places like these...

Opposite side of the fjord

Oldavatnet Lake

From the lake we could see a glacier (Briksadalsbreen), which is essentially a "finger" of a much larger glacier and was really quite amazing. The glacier looked quite small, but this is the middle of summer here and apparently the size of the glacier depends on not just the temperature but the amount of rain too. Apparently, the season has been a little drier here than usual.

Briksadalsbreen (glacier)

After the lake trip we drove back through the outskirts of Olden before arriving at the village centre where the shops are (not many I hasten to add!). The centre was beautiful and had a cute little church which was built in 1759.

Towards the village centre

Old village church

Sailing back out past Olden we past some other pretty towns, like this one here...

Cute town which we passed on the way back through the fjord.

And of course we took a couple of pics of ourselves - the trouble with couples holidays though is that you always come back with a ton of pics of you both separately! The first one is me (obviously) and the second one was Andy which was taken outside at....midnight!

A rare image - it's not often that this gal posts pics of herself - especially not of her body!

Andy - outside at midnight!

Ok, that's your whistle stop tour of Olden. Next stop...Trondheim.