![]() As the train sped away from the city centre, there were fleeting glimpses: of the pleasure craft of Oslofjord of elegant wooden homes climbing hillsides of signs to Bygdøy where museums told epic stories of exploration and the Viking past. I knew enough also to book a window seat on the left side of the train (on the right if travelling from Bergen) to get the best views.Īnd when the train pulled away from the platform, I felt suddenly that, without realising it until now, I had been waiting for this moment for a very long time.Īt first, there was nothing to suggest the drama that lay up ahead. I knew, for example, that on a short November day, only one of the five daily departure times, 08:25, would ensure that I made the entire six-and-a-half-hour, 496km journey during daylight hours. This is, after all, ranked regularly among the world's most beautiful train journeys. The more I thought about it, the stranger this seemed. And I have watched the northern lights in winter and partied beneath the midnight sun in summer.īut for reasons passing all understanding, I had never before travelled the Oslo-Bergen railway. ![]() I have hiked across glaciers in Svalbard and stood beneath the country's only palm tree in Kristiansand. I have been to the northernmost point on the Norwegian mainland (Knivskjelodden) and to its southernmost tip (Lindesnes Fyr, where my sunglasses blew clean off my head and out to sea in a gale). I've been exploring Norway for more than a decade, returning at least a dozen times since my wide-eyed first trip. ![]() On a chilly November morning in Oslo, I boarded a train bound for Bergen.
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