Norway - a beautiful land

For our family holiday this year (probably the last holiday the four of us will have together, as the boys get older and more independent) we sampled our first taste of cruising. We sailed from Southampton to Norway, visiting places like Stavanger and Bergen and cruising around some of the magnificent scenery of the Norwegian fjords.

We spent a day sailing along the beautiful Geiranger Fjord, with its towering mountains, magnificent forests and impossible buildings perched on the hill sides with little if any means of access.

Hand-carved over millennia:

each drop of rain;

each flake of snow;

each breath of wind;

each grain of rock;

etching, forming, shaping

the rugged beauty.

Each seed, embedding itself

into solid rock,

greedily thirsting for life-giving water;

silently growing

to shroud the hills in green -

towering pines standing evergreen sentry,

singing praise to their Creator.

How do trees hold on
To lofty mountain crag-side
But by God's firm hand?

These are just some verses that I wrote at the time, though I was, and still am, aware of the inadequacy of words in the face of such grandeur.