Balestrand

The Sognefjord is the longest fjord in Norway and one of the longest in the world. It's more than 200km from it's innermost point to the ocean (though deciding where to draw that line is probably tricky). Balestrand must be about half way and is located along a central basin that is as much as 1000m deep.

AERIAL VIEW

The Sognefjord drains two of the highest and most glaciated of Norway's mountains, Jotunheimen and Jostedsalbreen, so it's no surprise that it was the path of a very large glacier during icier times. Flying over Greenland a couple of weeks later made it easier to imagine what this landscape must have once looked like. More than once, actually.

The bedrock yields limited sand and gravel from which to build beaches and the steep coastline limits the real estate on which beaches can form. The exceptions seem to be rare cases where geography and sediment conspire to form pocket beaches or adjacent to the mouths of some of the small tributaries, typically at the heads of bays. The Salish Sea has more beaches because the topography is less extreme and because the glaciers left behind a thick blanket of sand and gravel.

In Balestrand, there was a narrow cobble foreshore in places, but in this particular location, the construction of groins (jetties) and the addition of sand has resulted in a small artificial swimming beach.