When I last left you we began our day in lovely Aurlandsvagen and next made our way to Undredal. We weren’t sure about making a detour to this small town as we had heard mix things. I guess if you are doing a river cruise you will see a nice view of the town. However, since we didn’t do a cruise we thought we may as well visit Undredal since it was only 20 mins from Otternes Bygdetun in Aurland.

Undredal is a tiny village within the municipality of Aurland and is situated on the Aurlandsfjorden. It previously was only able to be accessed by boat, but today it can be reached by the highway network. It has very small population of about 100 people and 500 goats. Why so many goats? Well Undredal is famous for it’s a brown goats cheese and goat sausage. It is still made in the traditional way and important for the towns economy.

We arrived to Undredal still quite early in the morning, so nothing was open except for a small store. Some points of interest that were closed were the tourist centre, the Undredal stavkyrkje (smallest Stave church in Northern Europe) and Undredal Tredreieri (Wood turners).

Unfortunately for us there wasn’t much to do, except enjoy the beautiful view of the fjord. It was still worth stopping just for that. I recommend stopping by this town later in the day if I want to visit some of the points of interest or get a bite to eat. From what we saw there are no coffee or pastry shops, so I’m not sure where people have breakfast, who are staying in the accommodations. The only cafe/restaurant we found was Eldhuset, it opens daily, but not until 11am.

You can visit the local farms producing the goats cheese, but it was the wrong time of year for our visit. You can actually pre-organise with the farmers to visit them and at the very least spend time with their goats. I discovered this the evening before so it was a bit late book in and we still had quite a big day ahead of us.

 

Undredal town centre

 

Brown Undredal cheese

So I did get a chance to try the famous brown goats cheese in the small corner store. It was more of a grocery store, with some speciality foods and souvenirs. I was able to try the cheese and I loved it. I realised that I had actually eaten this cheese or a similar type already. If you remember I visited Baker Brun in Oslo and had the vaffel med brunost (waffles with brown cheese). Marco also tried it the cheese and he really didn’t like it. It has a sweet caramel taste and its not for everyone, but with waffles its just fantastic. Unfortunately I couldn’t buy any cheese since we didn’t have a cooler in the car. We could have wait another 30 minutes until it was 11am to have the waffles at the cafe Eldhuset, but we decided to get going.

 

 

Fjord views

Like I said the views of the fjord are just beautiful. By this time the sky was quite clear and the sun was out so we got to see the fjord in all its glory.

 

Rest stop

After visiting Undredal we got back on the road for our next stop in Vikøyri. About an hour into our trip we where had crossed back into Hordaland and we came across the Sendefossen (waterfall) and Myrkdalsvegen Serpentinveg (rest stop). The rest stop gives a great view of this waterfall and some interest resident goats and cows. The goats were a little bit too friendly and were following me and talking to me. The road up zigzags all the way up to the waterfall, which also has impressive views of the rest stop.

 

I hope you enjoyed a snap shot of Undredal. Our next stop is Vikøyri, where we will get to try the another interesting delicacy, (Gamalost) Viking cheese.