We had nevertheless tried to book a cruise on Britannia just before the pandemic for some reason but that plan had been scuppered and we’d put the ship out of our mind once more. However, following a better experience on Royal Princess’s sister ship, Regal, coming out of the pandemic lockdowns and some enjoyable cruises on the next generation along in the Princess fleet in the years after and seeing that Britannia had undergone a bit of a refresh to bring it kicking and screaming into the 21st century we started to reconsider. In May 2023 we made it aboard Britannia after booking a late deal just two months earlier.

As is so often the case with a cruise on a P&O ship, we started just along the coast at Southampton.

I don’t often post photos of what our cabin looks like on cruise ships, largely because for familiar ships it’s not something I think will be interesting to anyone who might read any of the travel write-ups on this website. That’s not to say I don’t take those photos, though, because we often like to taunt friends and family on social media with an “Oh, woe is us! This will be our home for the next week or two weeks while we explore strange new lands!” post. That said, I do know that there are people absolutely obsessed with what a cabin looks like, what a bathroom looks like, etc. and in this case, since this was a new ship, but mostly because I have some things I want to point out, I shall present some pictures.

Let’s take a look at our balcony cabin on Britannia, which was cabin C621. Further back than we typically cruise but beggars can’t be choosers when you’re booking late. We liked the look of this cabin; muted but modern decor, good-sized TV opposite the bed, an additional chair so two entire people could sit down at the same time. But… the bedside cabinet count came to one which was the first annoyance. With a long draw on the desk this wouldn’t have been too bad but the bedside charging points also came to one and that was nowhere near the side I usually sleep on and therefore nowhere near my phone which plays sea sounds at night and has the alarm set to avoid missed breakfasts and port excursions.

Sea sounds at night? On the sea? Yes. I have tinnitus and silence is unpleasant, and leaving the balcony door open is both frowned upon for environmental reasons and something you only do once when trying to open the door to the room before you learn an important science lesson in air pressure dynamics of moving vessels.

To a typical cabin bathroom on Britannia now – I guess; I’ve not been in anyone else’s to be fair – and first impressions, like the room, were that it was bright, airy, modern. A large shower cubicle with a glass door was good. However… the gymnastics involved in getting out of the shower, shimmying around the small space onto a towel without stepping on the tiled floor with your wet feet and skidding off into the mirror, just to get enough room to close the door so you could actually commence drying was a chore. A small chore, yes, but one that the layout caused. And I’m easily irritated.

The balcony was no surprise for a ship of this class in that it was barely worthy of the name. Seats that can’t face the sea unless you’ve had your legs amputated at the knees only make sense when you consider the conspiracy theory I’m just now inventing that this is all a plan by the onboard spa to create sore necks for those who actually like looking at the water on order to generate more massage bookings. That said… it’s always nice to get outside in a little private space of your own, even if it’s just a quick look at the stars at night followed by a “Jesus! That wind’s bitter! I should’ve put some clothes on!”

With it being a bright day in Southampton we decided to go crazy and head up to the top deck and soak up some of the atmosphere of those boarding and getting ready to enjoy a week ahead cruising up to the Norwegian fjords. There were a lot of families around because it was half term – not a time we typically will pick to cruise in but this worked well with my wife’s work schedule – but it wasn’t too hectic. It was, however, quite chilly, so we had one revolting Piña Colada each beside the pool area – very artificial-tasting and it started to separate out as we were drinking it – before making our way to a lounge.

We ended up at the Crow’s Nest. Despite Britannia being derived from the Royal-class, itself an evolution of the Grand-class, both of which were initially designed for Princess, Britannia did have a few unique design quirks and the Crow’s Nest was one of them; a spacious area high up at the front of the ship with panoramic windows out to sea. It also had its own drinks menu with some exclusive offerings, which was nice to see, although the ones they actually had available were few and far between and not of great quality. Nice idea, poor execution. We ended up having one cocktail here then grabbing something larger to take back to our cabin ahead of the sail away from Southampton.

I’ve included scans of the Crow’s Nest drinks menu on Britannia, simply because you just know that someone, somewhere may be looking for them yet be unable to locate them in any of the other million places they’re uploaded on this increasingly awful internet we’ve allowed to fester. Just bear in mind that this is a snapshot of available drinks (well, in theory) and pricing from May 2023, and if you’re reading this site in the future – and if my recently-completed twelve-part course on What Direction Does Time Flow In? is any guide then you will be – then things may be different. And by different I mean more expensive. Wouldn’t it be great if drinks prices went down one year? Can you even imagine!?

Back on our balcony it was time for us to leave Southampton – always a good time even if you’re not on a cruise – and the first sight was that of MSC Virtuosa sailing out down the Solent ahead of us.

“Good prices but terrible reviews,” I mentioned to my wife. “I can’t see us cruising with MSC at all based on what I’ve read online.”

One year later we’d be on that very same ship sailing down that exact same stretch of water. Just goes to show what I know.

Not long afterwards Britannia was on her way too.

In the next post in this 2023 cruise to Norway on Britannia travelogue series I’ll break with tradition and not jump to the next day but continue with what we got up to on this first evening of a new P&O Cruises ship for us: dinner in the Limelight Club and entertainment from Chesney Hawkes.

The meal before the show was perfectly fine even if, as on our previous experience at the Limelight Club, it didn’t exactly excel. What we most enjoyed was that we’d arrived to queue early enough that we were seated with a great view close to the stage. Each table was nicely-spaced from neighbouring ones too, making Britannia’s design of the club far superior to that on Iona, in our opinion.

And after the meal, Chesney Hawkes took to the stage. There’s not a lot to say about this other than he was very talented, had a very polished set, was very funny, and had some great anecdotes. A very good performance that I think anyone would enjoy whether you like his music or that of his dad’s band, the Tremeloes, and if you get a chance to see him perform then we’d definitely recommend it.

Photos of parts of Chesney Hawkes’ show in Britannia’s Limelight Club are below. I have video too and may add that in at some point.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series it’s a sea day aboard Britannia and a chance to take a look around this new ship for us.

I have eased off taking pictures on the cruise ships over the years – not that you’d really be able to tell if you took a look through my cruise history photos here or elsewhere online – as we’ve cruised on some ships or with some lines often enough that there’s little new to see, and even with some new-to-us cruising experiences, once you’ve cruised a lot you tend to see the same things over and over again and it’s nicer to just enjoy it rather than try to capture it all. However, Britannia is P&O’s only Royal-class design of ship so I was keen to see how it compared to other ships in the P&O fleet and to the similar class that Princess operate.

Some pictures of the top deck of the cruise ship to start with, simply because I made sure to take my camera with me when we left the room for breakfast in the buffet. It was a little overcast to start with and with this being the North Sea in May, it wasn’t very warm, hence the lack of many other people around.

One of the things we’d seen in photos of Britannia from years ago was a lot of straight lines in the decor and design, although we knew she’d had a refurbishment that had tried to round and soften some of that. On the top deck you could still see a lot of straight edges and symmetrical layout, but it worked there. The huge deckchair – a staple feature of P&O cruise ships – was also present.

You can’t take photos from the top deck of a cruise ship without making sure that there’s a wake view in there, somewhere. Everyone likes that ship’s wake.

Inside Britannia it was easier to spot more flow and curving elements in the furnishings and layout. There’s no doubting that Britannia’s design was very stylish across every venue we ventured into even if the darker colours sometimes made a place feel a little claustrophobic when the designers were possibly looking for cosy.

Britannia’s atrium was a lot better than older photos of it showed, and the central art piece was nicely abstract, but the layout and design of the decks around it with those thick pillars kept bringing to mind a sort of shopping mall from the 1990s feel. To be fair, though, we rarely hang around the atrium areas of any cruise ship, largely because the space makes them so very noisy and completely at odds with the relaxation we’re after when we travel by sea. Good for five minutes of people-watching, sometimes, but for us it’s a hub to get to better places – well, hopefully – and not somewhere to hang out.

A large point of booking a balcony for us is that it does give us the perfect spot to relax, soak in those sea views, and not get deafened by music and tens of dozens of people trying to hold audible conversations over that deafening music. With our slow amble around the outside and inside of Britannia done, and once we’d judged we’d given our room steward enough time to clean our cabin, we returned to it for a cup of tea with the sea air, our books, and one another for company. The morning’s cloud cover had disappeared but the sun was behind us and our balcony was in the shade so it wasn’t the warmest place to be, but still fabulous.

We don’t do an awful lot on sea days normally but prior to this cruise on Britannia we’d booked the additional cost Afternoon Tea at the Epicurean. We’d had this before on P&O and enjoyed it – although Virgin still wins the cruise line afternoon tea prize for us, I’m afraid – and it was good, but it wasn’t quite as good as we remembered. Some people on a table near us had some allergies that needed to be catered for and that seemed like that took an awful long time to resolve for them, leaving them sitting like lemons while we and others made our way through the food selections and teas. Yes, of course we had a glass of fizz with it. We were on holiday, I’ll have you know.

The afternoon tea filled us up nicely enough that we decided to forego dinner in the main dining room. Cruise lines like to put their formal nights on sea days if they can so this saved us having to dress up too smartly, although we were then limited to certain bars and lounges. That was okay with us, though, and we spent a bit of time in The Live Lounge being entertained by P&O’s house band, Pulse, performing a mix of songs from the 1970s.

We grabbed a bite to eat in the late-night buffet, just because we could and it had now been long enough for that afternoon tea to weigh less heavily in our tummies, then called it a night.

In the next post in this Britannia cruise travelogue series we’ll be making our first stop in Norway when we arrive at Stavanger for the first time in nearly ten years.

If you’re on a cruise ship that visits Stavanger then you won’t have far to walk as the berths are right beside the old town area – Gamle Stavanger, as it’s known – and other interesting spots aren’t much further away. For us this meant we didn’t have to get up too early to make the most of our time in the port but we were still awake before Britannia had fully come alongside. We were able to watch plenty of cruisers disembark for tours or to head ashore early while we had a leisurely breakfast.

The old town area of Gamle Stavanger was where we wanted to head first. It’s impossible to miss with the ship docked right next to it, but if you do have any trouble then simply look for the largest grouping of white buildings.

We’d been to this part of Stavanger back in 2013 but we did have a specific reason for wanting to return to the cobbled streets and white, wooden-fronted buildings again. When we’d looked into the details of this cruise and mentioned it to my in-laws they’d scoffed at Stavanger’s mention and remarked that they’d been several times, it wasn’t very interesting, and there was a canning museum there that they’d stated was the most boring place they’d visited on Earth.

For us, though, this is the sort of thing we look out for. It might be boring. It might not. But doing different things or having good, old-fashioned, new experiences every now and then is all part of the joy that is travelling in general. And we’re very contrarian too. Tell us that something’s not worth doing and there’s every chance we’re going to try it. We’d made up our mind that the Stavanger canning museum would be the first thing we’d visit.

Something that hadn’t been ashore when we’d visited Stavanger before was the very colourful street art pictured below. Stavanger Houston was created by Houston-based artist GONZO247 in 2018, a gift from the Texas city that is twinned with it.

Being in Gamle Stavanger brought back a lot of fond memories from the 2013 cruise to Norway that had really cemented our love of this form of travel. It was great to see certain buildings and actually remember them, although I tried to snap some different types of shots on this occasion too. I enjoyed getting up close to the various mosses and other plants growing around the place.

One thing you’ll see whenever you look at anyone’s photos or videos taken from this historic area of Stavanger, though, particularly if they’ve cruised to Norway, is a shot of the cruise ship showing just how big it is compared to the buildings and how close it is to them too. I took almost the same photo of Britannia below as I did of Crown Princess the decade before and I can assure you that if we visit Stavanger in the future on another ship there’s every chance I’ll take the same shot again.

In the next post in this series I’ll show off some of the photos from our visit to both the canning museum and printing museum that was all part of the same complex and you’ll be able to find out whether we thought it was as boring as we’d been told to expect.

Gamle Stavanager was almost demolished in the 1950s but the city architect decided to clean up and restore the by-then near-derelict buildings, and many generations of cruisers would like to thank him for this decision. It’s a very attractive location in an otherwise fairly industrialised city as you can see for yourself below.

In case you’re wondering whether I took another photo of our cruise ship from the same place I’d already taken a photo of our cruise ship, Britannia, when wandering through Gamle Stavanger earlier in the day, then I’m happy to report that of course I did.

As we reached the end of Gamle Stavanger, getting close to our next intended destination, we came across a sculpture, marker stone, and a little bit of street art commemorating the Norwegian philosopher, scientist, and poet, Henrik Steffens, who was born in the city in 1773.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll be taking a look around the third of the museums we visited in Stavanger, the Maritime Museum.

Across from the fairly narrow harbour of Stavanger there looked to be waterfront cafés, restaurants, and shops, and so we headed that way. It would also give us a nice view back towards Britannia at the cruise dock and that’s the sort of thing you’ve got to take photos of when you’re cruising or other fans of cruising will shun you. I like a good shunning as much as the next person, but sometimes it’s nice to oblige.

There was another interesting-looking ship alongside at Stavanger and this turned out to be MS Rogaland.

Rogaland was built in 1929 and served as a coastal liner between Norwegian ports with cargo holds, including cold storage and the capability to transport live fish. In 1944 Rogaland was alongside in Bergen unloading cargo when another vessel, Voorbode, taking explosives from Oslo for the Germans ran into difficulties and came in for repairs. It was close enough to Rogaland that when the German-requisitioned trawler suddenly exploded the ensuing wave knocked Rogaland to the bottom of the harbour and cracked her hull. She was subsequently raised, repaired, and used for other purposes through the decades until 1989 when historical ship enthusiasts bought her with the intention of restoring her to her 1929 glory. That goal was eventually scaled back to return her to her 1964 state instead and that’s more-or-less what you’ll see today.

Back to our walk around Stavanger; we soon came across Fargegaten, and you’ll know you’ve reached it too when Willy Wonka passes by you with shades on, muttering how it’s all a bit too bright and colourful for his liking. Ignore Willy Wonka. Fargegaten is beautiful. Every building – most wooden-fronted – is slightly different from its neighbour in style, and often painted in the most contrasting hues from the colour palette. The result is a vibrant explosion that could probably cut through the gloom of a rainy day, but luckily for us it was nice and sunny.

It won’t take you long to look around Fargegaten in Stavanger unless you stop in any of the businesses eager for your tourist money, and we might have done the same ourselves except it was impossible to miss the street art all around and we are very fond of street art. We ended up following roads – “Is that another one down there?” we’d ask each other – and soon strolled away from the busier area catering to visitors both from Norway and the cruise ship. Stencil work was most prominent from what we saw, some of it not quite obvious as to intention but plenty that proclaimed their messages loud and clear. Some good stuff here.

Before we finally hit a watering hole to reward ourselves for a good day’s exploration and cultural immersion we made a quick detour to take a look at the Valberg Tower. Built between 1850 and 1853, Valberg served as a watchtower for the city and at the time was the highest point in it with the duties of those stationed there including warning the people of Stavanger if there was a fire. The slope leading up to the base of the tower was just angled awkwardly enough to slightly turn my wife’s already-dodgy ankle so we decided not to go inside in case it was possible to climb even higher, because we’d both inevitably have done it and most likely one of us – I’m not saying who – would get injured worse.

We finished our time ashore in Stavanger with a couple of drinks in Bar Bache. Norwegian ale is not the greatest (well, there are exceptions – Ægir in Flåm being an obvious one that we’d visited in 2015 and would be visiting again later during this cruise) but the point for us is not just to spend locally but to experience locally too if we can, even if you have to suffer slightly. The bar itself was small with an old-fashioned English pub feel to it which was nice as well.

In the next post in this 2023 Norwegian cruise aboard Britannia travelogue series I’ll cover the views from our balcony as we depart Stavanger and head off to the next port of call.

Directly opposite our balcony was the part of Stavanger in which we’d seen the street art and had a drink in the bar just prior to walking back to the ship.

There’s not a lot to be said about the cruise away from Stavanger. While it’s a port that’s often listed on cruises claiming that they’re visiting the Norwegian fjords, it isn’t down a long one with stunning landscapes and towering rock faces to take the breath away. It’s actually a very short journey to get out to the open sea and that mostly involves passing a few low-lying islands. The low-lying islands are very nice, of course, and if you’re at all interested in geology then that adds something else to just the aesthetics, but a sail away or into Stavanger is one of the less memorable, let’s say.

I’m always interested in seeing other ships when we’re cruising around the world, and not just because I’m a fan of being on the sea or because I was born and raised and still live on an island city with strong naval connections, although there might be something to that too. As a keen inhabitant of the Fediverse I like to take part in some of the regular themes of posts that crop up across the various communities, one of which is a German one that posts ships each weekends. It’s nice to find interesting-looking vessels or ones with history to share.

The platform supply vessel Coey Viking stood out for all the obvious reasons you can see in the photo below. Eye-achingly bright yellow. Shaped like a truck without a shipping container to transport. It’s actually a hybrid ship, making use of its battery when operating close to shore to reduce environmental impact, which all sounds grand until you realise that the platforms it supplies are oil and gas ones at sea. I suppose every little helps, and I can’t go into too much about environmental impacts when I like to cruise, after all.

Of course, I won’t engage in any argument from someone trying to talk to me about how damaging all this is while using an expensive device made with rare earth metals, transported at great cost from the other side of the world. We’re all hypocrites, but falling out with those above your own personal line of this much hypocrisy is okay but that much is bad is how religions and cults form, and I’m an atheist.

You’re dying to know what it was we had to eat in the main dining room on Britannia that evening after our sail away from Stavanger, and fortunately I was there to take photos. Cruise food can be very hit-and-miss but I made notes at the time that this was actually very nice which suggests it was actually very nice indeed.

Entertainment on cruise ships is something we often steer away from and that was the case here too as we bought a bottle of wine and retired to our room early to watch a movie in the quiet comfort of our cabin.

In the next post in this Britannia cruise travelogue series we’ll be arriving at a new port for us in the form of Nordfjordeid. Unfortunately, though, arriving is all we end up doing and the day is spent cruising along the Nordfjord instead.

We like to book excursions when we visit a new place for the first time but we’d booked this cruise fairly late on so a few of the excursion options were already off the table. Of the remainder, they would involve long bus journeys far from the town, and some of those were to places we’d visited before when stopping at other ports. That left us with looking to see what we might do in Nordfjordeid and, to be fair, there didn’t look to be much. But there was a museum and we expected that the scenery of the fjords would be nice enough that a simple walk around would more than satisfy us. We’re not too difficult to please, especially when spending time away from home and on a cruise ship.

We had our plan. The weather had other plans.

Britannia made her way as far as the town of Nordfjordeid in the morning as planned but we could already tell from being out on our balcony during the sail along the fjord that it was going to be very cold and windy ashore with the fjord acting as a wind tunnel whipping the air from distant glaciers along its length. Layers, we’d decided, would most definitely be needed.

That wind, though, turned out to be too much for the ship. Britannia would need more ropes to keep her moored safely than could be actually deployed in the port. An announcement from the captain informed us all that the port was therefore cancelled and we’d instead have a day of scenic sailing along the Nordfjord.

I’m sure a lot of passengers on Britannia were disappointed, and for those who’d possibly made their own plans with local tour companies this likely required some frantic emails or calls to cancel bookings, but for us this would prove to be a lovely day on the ship.

After breakfast and enough time for our steward to clean our room we made our way back to the cabin, spending the day sitting inside, reading, making some quite terrible tea (the only kind of tea you can make on a cruise ship is terrible – a requirement of the global tea cartel that mandates tea quality – but it’s warm, so there is that), and popping out onto the balcony frequently to take photos and videos of the stunning scenery.

It was incredibly cold stepping out onto the balcony of our cabin and long periods were accompanied by rain trying its hardest to become sleet. My wife mostly stayed inside, peering through the glass of the doors if I mentioned that something particularly interesting in terms of geology was out there. I was out enough, though, that I needed to keep my hoodie on and a coat over the top. It was bitter, but the views were so rewarding.

You cruise the Norwegian fjords to see scenery of huge rock faces, evergreen trees, waterfalls, mountains topped with ice and snow, and the Nordjord does not disappoint, no matter what the weather is like.

A beautiful, relaxing day on Britannia with hours of cruising along majestic fjords came to an end as the ship made its way back out into the open sea in order to track along Norway’s coast overnight and head to the next port of call, and one we were really looking forward to seeing again.

To finish this post off a quick look at some of the cocktails we treated ourselves to in the evening and the food we enjoyed in the main dining room. We opted for the same starters and main course; a rarity for us as we’ve got largely incompatible tastes when it comes to food, but it does happen when the meal options aren’t too inspiring or if the mood takes us. It was all very nice.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll be seeing whether Flåm turns out to be as wonderful as we remembered from when we’d last visited a decade earlier and found that actually, yes, Norway can produce good beer.

We’d checked to make sure that the brewery still operated in Flåm before embarking on this 2023 cruise on Britannia, so after our hike to the Brekkefossen waterfall it was to the Ægir BrewPub we headed. The wooden interior with its design reminiscent of stave churches or Viking halls was as we remembered it, only busier and a bit brighter thanks to the lack of heavy cloud and rain that had made up the weather conditions on our first visit. The beer was superb too with a range to suit all tastes, and with prices of everything in the UK having risen so much under an intervening decade of Tory corruption even the cost of the ales didn’t come as quite the shock to the wallet it had originally.

We had plenty of time to enjoy several drinks each in a place that got increasingly busier as more tour groups returned from their trips to see the Norwegian sights and some passengers similarly-minded to us headed for the pub. It’s always nice to see cruise ship passengers doing this sort of thing rather than heading straight for the ship, especially when, and especially so in the case of Flåm, the ship is so close. We had time for chats with people from the ship who we knew and had met before from elsewhere (the world of social media cruise blogging), and we got chatting with some Americans who were touring the country and had booked into the nearby hotel for a couple of days to use the village as a base. A very pleasant couple of hours.

As I’ve already mentioned, cruise ships dock very close to the village of Flåm, and in under five minutes from leaving the pub we were back in our cabin on Britannia. We grabbed a quick snack from the top deck then waited for the sail away on our balcony with a cup of tea – we can be sensible sometimes – taking in some final views of this most picturesque of Norwegian fjords locations.

After the mooring lines had been cast off we got to see the local port operators waving Norwegian flags joyfully to the passengers aboard, something we’ve noticed they do a lot in Norway. For all the talk there is of limiting the access of cruise ships to this part of the world, the locals, generally, seem to be happy enough to see visitors, and local businesses probably do very well from their visits.

For us then, and for you now, some photos taken from our balcony on Britannia as we cruised along the Aurlandsfjord. Aurlandsfjord is an arm of the longer Sognefjord, which is Norway’s longest fjord. If you like geology then you’d absolutely love cruising along this fjord and admiring the deep clefts, the sheer cliffs, the waterfalls appearing from between gaps in tree covers, the distant glacial peaks, and the colourful striations on the rocky faces as you pass. If you don’t like geology then you’d still absolutely love cruising along this fjord and enjoying the views of all those things because, seriously, how could you not!?

It’s entirely possible – indeed, very likely – that nobody in their right mind is visiting this website to see pictures of the food from the main dining room aboard Britannia in May 2023, but it’s also entirely possible – indeed, very likely – that people not in their right mind make up a hefty portion of this travel-related website’s visitors, so here’s what we ate that evening after leaving Flåm and cruising down the Aurlandsfjord.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll get to experience a new port for us in Norway when Britannia docks at Haugesund and we head off for a look at the Haraldshaugen national monument.

It was raining first thing in the morning so we waited a while for the worst of it to ease off before setting off for our day ashore. The views from the ship weren’t the best. Haugesund may feature in cruise itineraries marketed as visiting the Norwegian fjords but if you’re expecting stunning landscapes even under the best of weather conditions then you’re in for disappointment.

Haugesund’s rise to some prominence in this part of Norway is due to being located on a stretch of water between land masses that provided ships with a shortcut that avoided what could be troublesome waters in the open sea. Fishing and trade naturally grew up in the area and Norway’s first king lived near Haugesund and was reputedly buried near here too, but more on that in a bit.

Our cruise ship docked at one of two islands that group together with the mainland to form Haugesund. Getting to the town from Risøy involved a short walk past some lovely buildings to a bridge which was only completed in 1939. Prior to this point moving between Haugesund and Risøy required use of a ferry. You’ll see from the photos below that the water over which the bridge crosses isn’t too wide but you might notice that it’s quite a height. It’s a pretty steep bridge to ascend so consider that if you’re walking.

Haugesund might not have had the high rocky faces of the fjords surrounding it but it excelled in its architecture which was incredibly varied. Art nouveau façades, modernist concrete structure, and wooden buildings of indeterminate ages were around every corner as we threaded our way roughly along the coast northwards once we’d reached the mainland.

We passed by the bottom of a public area given over to some water features and a statue at the top. Unsurprisingly, the statue was of fishermen. If you travel to any port in Scandinavia you can more-or-less be assured that there will be a statue of fishermen. This particular statue was donated to Haugesund in 1920 and was sculpted by Sofus Madsen. When we’d made our very first trip to Norway back in 2013 we’d visited Bergen and one of the first things to have caught our eye in the city back then had been a statue of a crying boy which, it turns out, had also been made by Sofus Madsen. Always nice to find connections like that.

The most important figure in the history of Haugesund is Harald Fairhair, first king of Norway, and ruler from 872 to 930 CE. Allegedly. Details of the period are a little spotty and owe much to considerably later tales passed down through subsequent centuries. There’s doubt that he even existed. That’s just the way of things, and it’s not unique to Harald here. I’m sure you can think of plenty of people far more-widely-known for whom much has been written but who likely never existed at all. Rupert the Bear, for instance.

Harald’s name appears in several Norse sagas, and in the nineteenth century his name became more prominent in Norway during the country’s move towards independence from Sweden. Everyone needs a hero figure. It was around this time that the determination was made that Harald lived and died near Haugesund which was very handy for the town and future economic benefits from tourism.

Our walk was taking us towards the Haraldshaugen monument dedicated to the king but before we reached it we happened upon a statue to Harald Fairhair on the coastline that was surprisingly popular with visitors. We bided our time to grab a shot without anyone in the way. From this point we could also see our cruise ship docked nearby.

When you travel around Scandinavia a fair bit like we do then you recognise a Lutheran church when you see one. Skåre Church is a mid-nineteenth century place of worship built around an octagonal layout. Records dating back to the fourteenth century indicate older churches stood around this area but with Haugesund being fully established as a town in 1854 there was a need for a larger church for the community.

The nearby memorial statue to Haakon Storsteen is a little bit of a mystery. He appears to have been a local man, an engineer in the merchant navy, who died when the ship he was on sank in 1944. I would guess that his family or the nearby church raised funds for the sculpture since he doesn’t seem to be very noteworthy otherwise. You can’t just put up statues to everyone who dies, you know. The living wouldn’t be able to move.

More fabulously variable styles of architecture punctuated our walk as we continued towards the main memorial. I particularly liked the mid-century modern house.

We arrived at the open, grassy area that was Haraldshaugen but the first thing to catch our eye was a large, stone cross on a small hill, and because it was slightly closer and there were fewer visitors around it we took a look at it first.

This was Krosshaugen, one of the earliest symbols of Christianity in the whole of Norway, dating to around 1000 CE, and possibly erected when local farmers were flexible enough in their beliefs to switch deities to worship. It was good to be able to get up and close to a historical piece like this and the small hill provided for some nice views around the area.

The Haraldshaugen monument was erected and opened to the public in 1872, commemorating the thousand years since the formation of Norway as a single kingdom under Harald Fairhair. The site is considered to be the burial location of Harald but nobody’s really checked, and the monument consists of a seventeen metres-tall granite obelisk on a mound surrounded by twenty nine smaller stone monuments representing the historic counties of Norway. Fans of prime numbers will be pleased.

It was a cool, damp, blowy day when we visited Haugesund and walked to the national monument dedicated to the first king so we didn’t spend a lot of time there; just enough really to take some photos from a few angles, climb the steps to the obelisk, and take another look at the views across this part of Norway’s coastline. It was still possible to catch sight of our cruise ship from here.

We’d originally planned to walk further along the coast, and you can see some of that route in the photo above, but it had taken us a little longer to reach this point than we’d accounted for and we decided instead to head back to the main part of the town and see what we might be able to find of interest in it rather than simply admiring the views along the shoreline, lovely though that might have been. Had we had better weather then we might have chosen differently.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series I’ll cover our look around Haugesund before we’d need to return to the ship one last time and head for home.