DAY 39 - DENMARK ADVENTURE - VILLAKSSENTER SALMON CENTRE - Wednesday 1st June 2022.
More details to come....
Day 39 saw us visit the Villakssenter Salmon Centre at Kvåsfossen. The drive there was stunning. Our GPS took us along a dirt road which we probably never would have found on our own. We drove through dense forest and then onto open fields covered in wildflowers.
Logging in Norway looks messy, nowhere near as nice as in Denmark, where they just seem to thin the forest rather than completely remove the trees as they do in Norway. We arrived at te Villakssenter Salmon Centre mid-morning.
The staircase is a man-made devise for enabling fish to pass an obstruction. It is important for the fish to get past the waterfall and up to Haegeboted so that they can spawn in the Lygna River, which is one of Norway’s best salmon rivers. The solution to the problem faced by the fish was to blast a 220-metre-long tunnel curving around the waterfall. 46 ledges were cast, each containing a pool of water. These are the 'stairs' that allow the fish to swim or jump up the 20-metre climb. To reach the staircase you walk through a 60-metre tunnel down to the four enormous thick glass wall which gives you a fantastic view of life in the river, and you are able to observe every stage of the salmon’s development. We found it very interesting, although we were too early in the season to actually see the salmon come up the staircase. We had lunch there, before Steve, Pete and Maria did a walk to the summits of Morsfjell and Ørneknipen where the views of the valleys and river below were amazing. We took a different route home and again the views were amazing as we wound down the mountain ranges into the valley below. We stopped off at Gislefossen, a waterfall that was close to home and explored it as well. As we arrived home we saw a snake crawling across the road. A big surprise for us as we didn't realize that they had snakes in Norway. Overall, it was a great day.
