I can’t recall how I found Den Kongelige Postveg (The ‘Royal Post Road’), in Naeroyfjord. The ‘Road’ is a small remnant of the postal route established around 1660 to deliver mail to farms and villages in Norway’s Western Fjords.

At the time, I was rattling around in Google wanting to plan a nice walk somewhere along a quiet fjord for the end of our trip. What a find the Royal Post Road turned out to be!

For several centuries, Norwegian posties delivered the mail to isolated villages and farms using the Royal Post Road. Those posties sure were tough! The Road encompassed walking and climbing trails, boats, and ice sledges (when the fjords were frozen), depending on what was possible in this demanding terrain.

UNESCO World Heritage-listed Naeroyfjord is a particularly narrow, high and steep-sided fjord off Aurlandsfjord, just less than 2 hours by ferry from Flam. People have lived at Styvi in Naeroyfjord since the Bronze Age (1800 – 500BC) and, more recently, for about 300 years the farm at Styvi served as a post office for the Royal Post Road.

The farming family no longer lives at Styvi, however, they still graze sheep there in summertime and the remnant Royal Post Road from Styvi to Bleiklindi remains open to its rare visitors.

But how to get there? The ferry from Flam to Gudvangen stops on request at the farm at Styvi. Well, it doesn’t actually stop. It pushes briefly against the jetty and you jump. Then, when you want the ferry to pick you up, you signal from the jetty as the ferry approaches on its way down the fjord, and it pushes against the jetty again for you to jump back on.

Easy, right? Alone on a deserted farm in a fjord, walking a centuries-old trail. Totally by ourselves. The equivalent of a couple of Norwegian visitors making a sketchily informed decision to walk a rarely visited trail somewhere in rural or outback Australia. The idea was terrifying, but so tempting I couldn’t ignore it.

So, cut to the chase. We did the walk, or at least part of it – the ferry schedule didn’t allow us to stay long. And it was magical, quietly calm and peaceful. I was concerned that the steep, narrow darkness of the fjord might be intimidating, but it wasn’t. The rain held off, and there were splashes of sunlight. And the only sound was from the ever-present waterfalls and the lapping fjord …. and the occasional RIB boat roaring past ☹

I should let the pictures do the talking. There are way too many of them, but I don’t care. It was a special experience at the end of a wonderful trip.