It looked like it was going to rain all day, in fact it looked like it was always raining here. Waterfalls cascaded down the rocks next to the road. I drove through tunnels and over peaks, plunging down into silent valleys. Despite the winding road I overtook everyone I came across though after having to wait impatiently for a straight bit of road. The villages were perched on the edge of steep slopes. They looked hard working but well kept. As I travelled West towards the sea the mountains became less sharp and lower. I feared that I had taken the wrong road as the one I was on was very narrow and deserted. It could hardly be the main road to Stavanger

By driving fast I reached the end of the fjord minutes before the the ferry was due to leave. There was one articulated lorry waiting. The driver told me that the approaching ferry was not the one we wanted, that our ferry must be running late. He stayed in his cabin while I filmed raindrops in puddles near the slip way. This delay was using up precious time and I realised I was going to have to push pretty hard if I was to make my early evening flight from Stavanger back to London. It was stupid of me not to have got up earlier and caught the previous ferry

Breakfast was served by the very elegant, elderly owner of the hotel. She was dressed from the last century with greying blond hair pinned high on her head. She was polite but very quiet. The whole hotel and village were quiet. I saw no-one else but the blond woman and her equally Nordic husband. He was smaller and bearded like a sea captain. He clearly knew all about the region and it seemed their family had run the hotel for generations. He sketched out a route for me on the map pointing out where I would need to take ferries. The first ferry was an hours drive away and I would have to hurry to catch it. He thought the journey to Stavanger would take eight hours but I reckoned I could shave some time off this by driving fast

It was good to get out of the car and stand for a while. I filmed the water and photographed the view, feeling like a tourist. If I was a tourist I seemed to be the only one on the ferry. The other vehicles were trucks or driven by people who looked like they were on business. I thought of romantic American films set on the lonely North East coast but somehow this seemed bigger and quieter. We turned to meet the far side of the Fjord and seemed to head for a sheer cliff. As we approached I saw there was a jetty and an entrance to a tunnel. We drove off the ferry and straight into a tunnel that read ten kilometers to go

I was directed to the front of the deck. I put the car in reverse gear, applied the hand break and got out to take a look around. I was a little concerned about which route the ferry was going to take. I asked the driver behind me if she spoke English and she reassured me that we made no other stops than the town I wanted. She said she made this trip down the fjord every week to visit her parents. It wasn't so cold now and I climbed the painted steel stairs to the passenger gangway that ran the length of the ferry. We reached the centre of the fjord and then turned East along one of the forks. The water seemed thick and endlessly deep, the ferry tiny against the empty mountainsides

As I headed down it became less bitterly cold. Small, fast streams followed the road and ran down the black rock faces making them glisten in the low sun. After ten minutes of hair-pin bends the road swept straight down into a valley. It was a relief to see the intense greens after the desolation of the high mountains

The tunnels become longer and when the road emerged, it would cling to the mountainside almost vertically above the water. Each tunnel had a series of signs which told you increasingly how many kilometres you had come and decreasingly how many were left to go. I suppose this would help you to decide which way to walk out if you broke down, it was also encouraging. I entered a tunnel that counted down from seven kilometres. The usual , slightly grim, excitement of being in a long tunnel turned to impatience but on leaving it I found myself on a narrow ledge in a queue of cars waiting to board a serious looking ferry. The road stopped dead so there was no choice but to pay the tough looking man who sold the tickets and board the ferry

I had been driving along the top of the mountains for more than half an hour. Despite being so high there was a claustrophobic airless feel to the place. It was freezing and silent and the light seemed filtered and weak. I turned the heating on, opened the windows and put the Dido CD on full blast. My worries began to lift as the road dipped downwards. and the landscape opened up below me

After a few frustrating dead ends I found a road that wasn't on the map but seemed to lead up, out of the valley and into the mountains. There were no more farms up here. they were replaced by the occasional ski chalet or hunting lodge. The trees thinned out and those that remained were short and unhealthy looking. There were patches of dirty snow by the roadside as I climbed higher. I came to a wooden barrier. It was raised but didn't seem inviting. A large sign in Norwegian probably stated that this was a private road but I chose to ignore it

No other cars were around as the road levelled out on the top of the mountain range. It looked as if the road was hardly ever used, posts were pushed into the ground on either side of the single track and the many small lakes I passed were all frozen over. It was desolate and charmless. There was no sign that the road was leading anywhere other than the occasional locked up hunting shack. Who would want to spend time up here I wondered, and what would they shoot? I had wanted to leave the valley but up here there was little to see, just dirty snow, broken trees and a lowering cloudy sky