Eleven hairpins stacked on a near-vertical wall of rock, with a waterfall thundering down beside them: that is Trollstigen, the Troll's Ladder, one of the most famous roads in the world. Opened in 1936 after eight years of construction, it climbs from the Isterdalen valley to a plateau at 858 metres, with steep gradients and bends so tight that buses and campervans must take them in several attempts. The Stigfossen waterfall plunges down beside the road, and on a misty day the whole scene looks like a set from a fairy tale.
At the top, a visitor centre designed by Norwegian architects, all glass, steel and concrete, has viewing platforms that hang over the edge of the cliff, with a view straight down the hairpins and the valley. The plateau is a stark world of rock, snowfields and meltwater lakes, even in summer.
Åndalsnes, at the foot of the road, sits at the head of the Romsdalsfjord, overlooked by Trollveggen, the Troll Wall, the tallest vertical rock face in Europe, a sheer cliff of more than a thousand metres. Climbers and BASE jumpers have made it famous.
South of Trollstigen, the road drops through the valley of Valldal, famous for its strawberries, to the Norddalsfjord, where a ferry crosses to the road for Geiranger, with its own set of hairpins, the Eagle Road, above one of the most beautiful fjords in Norway.
Trollstigen usually opens in late May and closes in October, snow permitting, and on summer days the queues of coaches and campervans on the hairpins can be long. Ride it early in the morning or in the long northern evening, when the light lingers until close to midnight in June. Fill the tank in Åndalsnes or Valldal; there is nothing on the mountain, and Norwegian prices reward planning.