We remembered from our last P&O Norwegian Fjords cruise that the final port of the trip – Haugesund – wasn’t a particularly special one and was more of an industrial town in contrast with the natural beauty of some of the previous stops.
So looking around for Haugesund excursion options that might give us one last taste of the beauty of the fjords, we decided to do an excursion to Langfoss waterfall, which apparently is known as being rated one of the top ten most beautiful waterfalls in the entire world.
I’m not sure if that’s strictly true, but there’s no doubt it is a stunning place and it gave us just what we wanted on the final port stop – a chance to get away from what is, in our opinion at least, the underwhelming town of Haugesund, in exchange for more superb Norwegian scenery.
However, Langfoss waterfall is a fair distance away from Haugesund – about an hour and a half drive.
There are a couple of options on how to get to Langfoss Waterfall from Haugesund…
One is to book an excursion direct with the cruise company, which takes you all the way there by coach.
The P&O excursion to Langfoss waterfall looks superb – as it includes (during the cruise we were on anyway) a boat trip on the beautiful Akrafjord right up to the base of the Langfoss waterfall, as well as the option to hike up beside the waterfall.
However we found the excursion fully booked. Although there were private tour operators in Haugesund also offering excursions to Langfoss waterfall, we decided to repeat what we did on our previous excursion to Pulpit Rock, which was use the ‘GetAround’ app to hire a car and do the drive there ourselves.
GetAround is basically a version of Airbnb for car rental and sharing in Norway, where you can hire a private individual’s car for the day at a very reasonable price.
I had registered on the app before the holiday, creating an account and going through the driving license verification process at home, ready to simply use it during the cruise.
The availability of cars on the app changes from one day to the next, but on the day we were in Haugesund, I found a car available about 15-minutes’ walk from the cruise port, which I rented for the day for £86.
As soon as Iona’s gangways were lowered at 9am, I was off the ship and walking into the town to find the vehicle.
The owner had actually offered to bring the car to the cruise port for an additional fee, but I was happy to do the walk to his house, where I picked up the car, drove a couple of minutes back to the ship to pick up my wife and children, then headed off towards Langfoss.
The drive was very straightforward – pretty much just one road all the way there, which wound its way through increasingly beautiful scenery, as we left the heavy industry of Haugesund town behind and headed into the mountainous regions of the fjords once more.
We arrived in exactly 1.5-hours, pulling up into the roadside carpark at the foot of the massive waterfall, which runs 600-metres down into the Akrafjord valley.
It was definitely an impressive sight – and we were lucky to have a stunningly clear and sunny day, which you don’t get too many of in Norway.
However at this time in the morning (in April) the waterfall was in full shade as the sun hadn’t yet risen above the mountainside and it looked like the better view of the falls were from slightly further around the fjord.
So we got back in the car and drove about 2-minutes to Eljervik Gard, a small settlement of a few buildings that have a perfect view of the massive waterfall.
As we arrived here, we were greeted by a coach, which was none other than the P&O excursion itself, depositing the passengers into a small local cafe / restaurant where they were getting food as part of their trip.
We spent a while here sat beside the fjord, enjoying the glorious sun and the superb views of the waterfall, before heading back around to the base of the falls again.
This time we got out and followed the hiking trail up beside the waterfall itself.
You can find the start of the trail easily from the small roadside car park, just across the other side of the road from the little shop that’s in the car park, you’ll see signs pointing up towards the trail that runs up the hillside next to the waterfall.
There’s an option to walk all the way to the very top (which we’re told takes about 4-hours for the full round trip) or you can hike to a halfway viewpoint, which was about 45-minutes.
We were limited on time due to the need to get back to the ship prior to its 4.30pm departure, so we hiked up to the halfway viewpoint.
Even this was a pretty demanding hike – it was extremely steep almost all of the way up. Rocky, lots of roots and slippery in places, but we made it up no problem and were very glad we’d put the effort in to do so as the experience of being so close to the massive, thundering waterfall was superb.
You have views of the surrounding mountains and the fjord down below – and are right up close to the most dramatic part of the waterfall.
After half an hour or so enjoying the views up here, we negotiated our way back down the steep track back to the car and headed back to the ship.
After returning the car to the owner and walking back to the ship, we were safely back on board at 3.30pm – an hour or so before the ship was due to depart.
As with our hike up to Pulpit Rock in Stavanger, we were paranoid about the chance of something going wrong, given the distance we’d travelled away from the ship, and the fairly small margin for error in the event of something like a car breakdown or bad traffic.
But we were comforted by the fact the official P&O excursion was running behind us – and in the end we had no problems, with plenty of time to drive all the way from Haugesund to Langfoss, hike up the waterfall then come all the way back to the ship in time for a late lunch in the buffet.
There are things to see and do around Haugesund itself – but none have the same beauty as the fjords themselves – and Langfoss waterfall and the Akrafjord itself is the nearest actual fjord to Haugesund.
Well worth travelling to if you want one final experience of Norwegian Fjord scenery before the trip home the next day.