Day 2.
Bergen to Aurland via Myrdal and Kardal.
Part of the purpose for the day was to agree our programme. Over lunch we heard from Jorun and Morten about the proposals to create a deep water harbour for a second cruise ship in the fiord. The value to the local community seemed slight, especially compared to the disadvantages of tourists – 3,500 per ship – being coached up the mountain and back, spending nothing in the fiord-side village and the detrimental affects on community life, natural systems and the fiords natural heritage. On our journey from Bergen we had encountered this when the whole train filled with tourists and we had to vacate the seats – we later met some of these tourists eating packed lunches in the railway station.
The need to use our visit to explore how we could help develop slow tourism became evident.
Our lunch stop was at Kardal, a farm co-op making and selling goats cheese, itself a traditional way of managing the landscape and especially the summer farms and meadows and whole culture of transhumance.
