According to my GPS our hotel was at an elevation of 300 feet. The top cable car station of Hanguren, the hill behind our hotel, was at 2,150 feet. A climb of 1,850 feet? I’m not sure that was right – the cable car station didn’t look anywhere near that high to me. Still, even if it was, that was ok by me! But we didn’t account for the heat wave. It was 30 degrees plus. Deb and Catherine accounted for it – they decided to take the cable car up. Ben and I decided to walk.
At first the going was quite gentle. As we gained height we were rewarded with some great views over Vangsvatnet.
On the south side of the lake we could see a cutting between two hills. This was Bordalsgjelet, a gorge. We’d be there in two days time.
Just before we entered the tree line we walked by some sort of bunker outside the Voss Folkemuseum.
It looked a bit like a hobbit hole. Curiosity got the better of us and we headed inside for a look. The bunker had largely been hewn out of the rock, but when we touched the walls our hands came away blackened. Was this some kind of coal-like substance? We couldn’t really tell – it was pitch black.
My phone had a torch on it and we managed to shine a bit of light on the subject. Ah! That’s better!
The bunker had two arms to it. The first led to a sort of small rounded cavern, not too far away from the entrance.
The other arm had walls and ceiling clad in concrete, ending in a slit looking out towards Vangsvatnet. This had more of a World War Two feel to it. Was that what this was? After the German invasion of Norway in 1940, Voss had acted as a major mobilisation point for the Norwegian army. The Germans bombed the town, destroying its centre, and then moved in to occupy it until 1945. Was this some form of defensive bunker or air raid shelter? I looked it up on Google when we got back home but to this day I still don’t know what this place is…
We lingered for a while, glad to be out of the heat. We couldn’t hang around for too long though; we had to meet the others at the top and we were only a third of the way up. Good grief it was hot! Oh well, time to plod on…
Points on this part of the walk (copy and paste the co-ordinates into Google Earth):
- Our Hotel: N 60° 37.725 E 006° 24.530
- Bunker: N 60° 37.995 E 006° 24.715
Walk Statistics:
- Date of Walk: 21 July 2014
- Walk total distance covered: Approx 7 miles
- CLICK HERE FOR LINK TO INTERACTIVE MAP!!! (but this link doesn’t include this part of the walk as I forgot to turn my GPS on…)
The Coastal Path 
When you said a heatwave of 30 degrees, I thought you were trying to be funny –
but then I realized that you were talking about 30 degree Celsius lol! (We’ve been
in the single digits – Fahrenheit – over here lately…)