The Lysevegen, the road up from Lysebotn, is one of the engineering curiosities of Norway. It climbs about nine hundred metres from the head of the fjord to the plateau above in twenty-seven hairpin bends, which are numbered on small signs as you ride. The road was opened in the 1980s after a long struggle to link this remote village to the rest of the country, and it includes a tunnel in which the road itself makes a hairpin inside the rock. It is a showpiece of mountain road building, and it draws riders from across Europe.
At the bottom is Lysebotn, a tiny settlement at the end of the Lysefjord, with a ferry quay and a few houses beneath the walls. Above it stands the Kjerag massif, where the famous Kjeragbolten, a boulder wedged between two cliffs, sits suspended over a drop of nearly a kilometre. BASE jumpers come here to leap from the edge, and walkers climb the steep trail to reach the stone. The scale of the place is hard to grasp until you stand in it, and the rock walls rise so close on either side that the sun disappears early in the afternoon.
The riding is demanding but joyful. The bends are tight and close together, and on each one the road turns almost back on itself, so you spend the climb leaning one way and then the other. The surface is generally good, with barriers on the outer edge, but there are sections of rough asphalt and wet patches, and water often runs down the rock face. Traffic includes buses and campervans, so be ready to wait at tight corners. Fog and low cloud can fill the bends, so visibility drops quickly, and snow closes the road for much of the winter, usually from late autumn to late spring.
A small kiosk or café operates at the fjord head in the season, but check before you rely on it. Water is available in the village, and in summer the streams run clear and cold.
At the top, the plateau opens into a vast, bare landscape of rock and lakes, and the wind can be strong. A warm layer is wise even in summer, and the first view back down the hairpins is worth stopping for.