First thing, of course, was to disembark the cruise ship and since Crown Princess was at anchor in Geirangerfjord this meant the use of tender boats was required. As luck would have it we were able to sit up top on this occasion which on days as gorgeous as this one was turning out to be offered not only the benefit that we’d be allowed off the boat first on land (for safety reasons) but that we’d have some uninterrupted views of the staggeringly beautiful landscape around Geiranger.

The tender boat ride to shore allowed us to see the other ships visiting Geiranger that day – Celebrity Eclipse and P&O Adonia – plus some lovely departing views of our home for the week cruising around Norway, Crown Princess.

Geiranger is a small village, highly reliant on tourism and at constant threat of disaster should there be a large landslide anywhere along the fjord leading to it. Part of the port guide provided by Princess stated that Queen Sonja of Norway camped in the mountains around Geiranger and wrote a book about her experiences. She and future husband Crown Prince Harald dated secretly for nine years on account of her being a commoner and it was only the threat to his father that he would never wed at all and end the royal family dynasty that allowed Harald to marry Sonja in 1968.

All safely ashore we boarded the bus waiting for us. From the description of the excursion:

Your tour begins with a scenic drive through Geiranger, passing the small, octagonal Geiranger Church and the largest hotel, the Union, some 300 feet up the hillside. A series of hairpin bends brings you to Hole camping site.

This duly happened and we gathered at Hole to await the start of our hike. In the map below you can see Crown Princess at anchor (marker A) and Hole where the bus dropped us off (marker B) as well as the two destinations we would be making for on the hike, the waterfall (marker C) and farm (marker D).

There was plenty of opportunity for us to take some photos back along the fjord to where we could see Crown Princess and all around us at the rolling and jagged hills and mountains.

It’s at this point that I need to make an apology for the state of these photos. So, here’s what happened: We’d booked this cruise at fairly late notice for us and knowing that there would be a lot of incredible landscapes and vistas to photograph I thought it would make sense to put some effort into it. Landscape photography isn’t really my thing but you hope that nature can do most of the work for you in these situations. However, I’d seen some people recommending a graduated, neutral density filter when taking landscape pictures in order to get more saturation into the land colours without blowing out the white levels in the sky. This sounded sensible so I ordered some filters and an adapter for my camera and right before our holiday they turned up which meant I didn’t really get much of a chance to test them out. I tested them out on this trip and… ah.

Graduated filters work well when there is a mostly distinct line between the land and the sky. Mountains, though, especially when you’re close to them, form large peaks and troughs and what you end up with is sky that doesn’t have blown highlights (good) but rock that’s essentially all in shadow (crap). Recovering detail is an expensive waste of time afterwards and introduces noise into the picture, halos will inevitably form between light and dark areas of the image, and when your filter is the cheapest of the cheap you can also discover that far from being neutral you’re going to introduce horrible amounts of magenta and purple into the blue levels of the image. In short: yuk.

So, yes, the photos will look a bit weird. There may be purplish hues, the blues will look all kinds of wrong and will leak into the shadows in the middle third of pictures, and I really, really need to go back to the Norwegian fjords so I can take some better photos. A plan exists to do this in 2021 but the world has a way of tossing spanners around so we’ll just have to wait and see on this.

Back to the excursion description:

Now your adventure begins as you hike for Hole to Storseterfossen Waterfall. […] The hike to the fall is at times somewhat steep and strenuous and takes approximately one hour. Dress appropriately, sturdy footwear, layered dress and windproof jacket are recommended. Bring a bottle of water.

Right. Let’s start with the word strenuous. The Crown Princess Norwegian Fjords cruise was the second cruise we’d ever been on. Cruises had been recommended to us originally by my in-laws and my wife’s uncle and aunt. Our first cruise had been the staggeringly awesome Diamond Princess cruise in Asia. Our experience on that cruise was that, yes, we weren’t fit, but we still climbed steps and took part in the moderately active excursion events while most of the ship’s passengers, like our cruise-suggesting relatives, were all far older than us, less mobile, and in many cases asleep by early evening. We made a bit of an assumption that when a cruise line therefore says “strenuous” they really mean “might take the old folk a little longer” and we’d be fine. A terrible assumption as it turned out. We had our first suspicion things were not going to be quite how we’d anticipated when we’d met up in the Princess Theatre ahead of the excursion and spotted nearly everyone else with backpacks, hiking sticks, rugged boots, and the determined look of seasoned fell-walkers. We glanced at each other. We grimaced. We shrugged.

Secondly, our day before this stop in Geiranger had seen us arrive in rain in Bergen. It hadn’t been warm. Norway is not known for being warm. We would be hiking into the mountains. Mountains are not known for being warm either. It had been recommended we wear windproof layers. On the day of our visit it was ridiculously warm; it was seven degrees warmer than Bergen had been and the hiking guides who met us at Hole remarked just how lucky we all were to be getting such lovely weather with blazing sunshine to accompany us all the way. Well, lovely weather unless you’re just about to exert yourself far more strenuously than you’d thought up a mountain.

We started the hike.

If you’ve read other travelogues on this site where we’ve gone off on a hike – we do it more often than we should – then you’ll probably already know that my wife has a long-standing set of injuries to her ankles and knees that make certain angles of walking painful. She perseveres because life is about experiences and just putting up with discomfort is part of the package. This did mean, though, that we very quickly started to lag behind the main group of hikers. I would frequently stop to take some photos of the Norwegian landscape and to check with my wife that she was okay (she wasn’t but showing concern infuriates her to the point of continuing anyway) and offering to turn around and head back on our own (and if looks could kill I’d have been blasted into atoms on a hill in Norway in 2013).

There were a couple of stops on the hike which mostly served to just let those who’d romped ahead have a break while we would clamber up a few minutes behind for a handful of seconds’ respite until the group all set off again.

We weren’t the only couple who were holding up the pace, though, and one couple had already realised the Geiranger hike was going to be too much for them and had notified the guides they’d head back to the ship. Since we had two guides and there was a core of hikers who could ascend with no difficulty at all one lot went on ahead with one guide while the rest of us took more time heading up behind them.

Almost exactly one hour after being dropped off at Hole (marker B on the map up the page) we caught our first sight of Storseterfossen Waterfall (marker C) across a narrow gorge. We could also see people above and walking behind it down a ledge to give it a sense of scale. We would soon be doing the same thing.

We had to walk a little farther up before crossing over the gorge and coming back down towards the waterfall. It was here that we caught up with the rest of our fellow hiking tourists from the cruise ship, sitting around on the grass and admiring the view. As numbers of people who could get behind the waterfall were limited and there were other hiking groups ahead of them it wasn’t us who’d held them up which was something of a relief. “Well, that was worth you all hurtling up the hillside at a breakneck pace then!” I thought, but didn’t say out loud because I don’t like talking to strangers – especially fit, active ones – and I was still a little bit out of breath.

My wife very much appreciated the chance to sit still and reduce the pain in her legs while I snapped photos from this high point of the hike, of the tree-covered hills, of the rocky peaks, of a mountain stream feeding the waterfall, and of the people we’d joined on this strenuous trek.

We finally got the signal from our guides and took the chance to head behind the waterfall. This involved a walk down a narrow and rocky ledge, not too tricky, not too steep, and with poles and a chain to prevent anyone from getting too close to the edge. Behind Storseterfossen there was a shallow cave, large enough to get a decent number of people in at once, and incredibly noisy as you can tell from the video below. It was also quite shocking just how fast and powerful the torrent of water cascading down the mountain at Geiranger was; when you see waterfalls at a distance they can mislead you as to how much force they hold.

From the hiking excursion description one last time:

After taking in the view, you’ll head downhill towards Westerås Farm, perched on a ledge above Geiranger. You’ll take a break at the farm for complimentary coffee or tea and waffles before your return hike to Hole where your bus awaits for your drive back to the pier.

We started on the downward return leg of the hike, covering part of the same route up. This was not considerably easier than it had been on the upward leg simply because my wife’s old injuries are actually more affected by downward angles when walking. In addition, the steps that we were able to use at points, which had been laid by Sherpas from Nepal (a task only completed the year after our visit to Norway), seemed to be at just that awkward height that makes every step down slightly jarring.

We eventually angled away on a different trail and it wasn’t too long before we came to Westerås Farm (marker D on the map). This was a small grouping of attractive, wooden buildings and plenty of sheep grazing on the hillside. One of the buildings housed a restaurant in which we could get the drink and snack we’d been promised, rest our feet for a bit, and take the obligatory handful of photos of the surroundings.

The “hike” back to Hole and our bus meeting point was, I’m happy to report, more aptly described as just a “walk” with the ground being mostly flat and only slightly downhill. Perfect for the end of a more-strenuous-than-anticipated excursion in our opinion.

I snapped a few photos on the walk back and a few more as we waited for the bus in our spectacular surroundings with its lovely views down onto Geiranger and along Geirangerfjord.

Reflecting on this excursion, we had a wonderful time and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it. Yes, it was harder than we’d thought and that’s certainly something you should consider if you’re thinking of booking this during a cruise to Geiranger yourself, but it was all worth it. If you’re fit and you like hikes and you don’t have any impediments then you’ll love the views, and if you’ve never stood behind a waterfall before then it’s a fabulous place to do it. It helps to have nice weather, naturally, and we’d have appreciated it a smidge more if it had been a few degrees cooler but that’s such a small thing to mention.

We hopped back on the tender boat – an inside trip back to Crown Princess this time – and after freshening up (and we really needed freshening up) we enjoyed the early evening sailaway from Geiranger from our balcony. Yes, we’d seen most of these views on the cruise through the fjord earlier in the day but they’re not views you could ever get tired of seeing. We had another chance to see the Seven Sisters Waterfall and the perfect amount of calm beauty to observe to totally smooth out any stress aches and pains from the day’s hike.

The evening on Crown Princess was one that followed the same sort of pattern we enjoy on most cruise ships: food, drink, quizzes, and dancing (or people-watching) in the disco until the early hours. The next day of this Norwegian fjords cruise would see us dock at Olden where we were looking forward to a boat ride on a lake and a visit to see a glacier for the first time.

Crown Princess had dropped anchor near the Norwegian village in order to let a small percentage of the passengers off who would be taking a hike of their own then catching up with the ship later in the day. Knowing the ship wasn’t stopping long we simply admired the view from our balcony which handily included a sight of Hellesylt nestled on the shore of the fjord and the tender boat operation in place to take fellow travellers from the cruise ship to land.

The cruise from Hellesylt to Geiranger took around one hour and twenty minutes and for this duration we spent almost all of it on the top deck both to give our room steward the opportunity to clean our room whenever it was most convenient for him and so that we didn’t miss a thing of the scenery on either side of the Geirangerfjord as we cruised along it to our destination.

We started off by watching the Norwegian scenery pass us by from towards the aft of the ship, as much as anything to give us as different a view as possible from our cabin which was very near to the front.

For obvious reasons – to keep waves to a minimum so that the impact on the land is negligible – cruise ships need to keep their speed low when in the fjords. You’ve got flat, calm water, and towering faces of tree and bush-covered rock either side; the hum and low white-noise of the engines; the conversations of passengers carrying but everything just a bit muffled; a hint of echo in the surroundings but also sound-dampening taking place. And with all that you’ve got rises and falls in landscape, great tears of rock on occasion, waterfall streams from higher mountain tops and melting glaciers cascading in places. It is a simply astonishing, serene, humbling experience to cruise along the fjords of Norway.

The rock formations along the fjords were just incredible to look at and we found places where the cruise ship seemed startlingly close to the cliff faces it passed. However, scale can be difficult to judge with the sizes and distances involved. We were a lot smaller than we thought against the thundering presence that nature was throwing up around us and it was only when we could spot a structure we were familiar with – a house on the fjord shoreline, for instance – that our perspective reset itself.

More people started appearing on deck as we neared one of the sights of special interest along the Geirangerfjord route. Crown Princess passengers filled up all the best viewing spots along the sides of the ship and attracted the attention of staff keen to see who wanted to start the morning off with some speciality coffee or get some water to take ashore ahead of the disembarkation process to follow. The serenity of the earlier part of the cruise was somewhat lost but it didn’t detract from the views from the top deck too much.

That special sight was the Seven Sisters Waterfall. One side of the fjord sees seven streams representing the sisters dancing playfully down the rocks while the opposite side has a single suitor who flirts with them. You get used to these sorts of myths when you visit Scandinavia.

With this cruise trip to Norway taking place in September the water levels were fairly low so the waterfalls weren’t as impressive as they can be at different times of the year but we were lucky to have exceptionally nice weather cruising along the fjord which allowed the sunshine to generate rainbows in the cascades as we passed.

With the waterfalls behind us we weren’t far from the village of Geiranger now. The place relies on tourism and despite its small appearance it boasts the third largest cruise ship port in Norway, able to cope with several cruise ships at once in numerous anchor positions and with the assistance of a floating and movable pier. It’s also a place at risk of destruction from a tsunami should a large enough rock fall occur along the Geirangerfjord.

Crown Princess wasn’t the only cruise ship visiting Geiranger on the day we visited in 2013. The first ship we passed was P&O Adonia. Formerly with Princess Cruises as Royal Princess she has since been sold and renamed as Azamara Pursuit. We also spotted Celebrity Eclipse.

Both of those ships were employing tender boats to ferry their passengers onto land but we still had quite a bit of a wait as we’d only just arrived. Not only that, because we had an excursion booked we had a specific time at which we needed to make our way to the theatre on the ship so that left us a period to enjoy the surprisingly warm (and getting warmer) day on the top deck.

The next part of our second day in Norway is covered in our Geiranger Hiking Excursion write-up.