 Hello, thank you for joining me. I'm at the Norwegian town of Holden, about 100 kilometers from Oslo. I've just come by train on this rather modern EMU, which I think is about to depart. It was a very scenic journey. Didn't see too many snow here. Once we got, you know, about half an hour into the journey, there just appeared to be no snow at all. So we've come fairly far south, about 100 kilometers south seems to make a difference. So we've come to this town, we're going to have a bit of a look around. There is a fortress here, which I'll be able to point down in a moment up on the hill. That's the old station building, or plus it is the station building, which is really quite an attractive building. And it looks like that's possibly a good shed there. They make cables in this town, so that's, we went past the cable factory, that was quite exciting. There's a grand hotel here and you can just see the fortresses up there. We're not too far from the Swedish border, but we're not going to cross the border today. So as we come to down here, this is the end of the station. So the train I was on, it was going to Gothenburg in Sweden, but that's a video for another day. So, and I thought this is a bit of a harbour, but that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to wander into town and hopefully find my way up to the fortress. Well, here we are, we are sort of up at the fortress. My day's taken a slightly unexpected turn. I asked a local lady, which was the best way to walk to the fortress, and she very kindly said, well, I'll live up there, I'll give you a lift. So I've just been given a lift, she dropped me off here. She explained to me, there's actually three fortresses. There's one over there, which I'm not sure what there is to see so much. There's this one and then the main one is over there. So my plan is, let's go and have a look at this one and we'll go and see the other one. So I'm going to kind of discover all of this as I go. I was going to do the long walk up and show a bit of the town. My plan is now going to show the town as we go down. So I'll finish the video back down in the town centre. So get a really nice view here, or a view of the surrounding area. There's a bit of a lake down there. Unfortunately it's a bit misty, but the town is down there. We should see better view. As I mentioned earlier, we're not too far from the border with Sweden. I understand that the gist I've got with these fortresses that they were built, basically for any, for past wars between. Have a look at this though. This looks exciting. I wonder if that gate we can go in. Looks like we might be able to. Obviously, I can't see a padlock or anything. Let's see if this gate will open. Oh wow, here it does. It's exciting. I don't think we can go in there. Let's have a look. It does tell you some information. I'll let you read this, save me trying to explain it. So, now we know a bit more about the fort. That doesn't appear to go anywhere. Let's go in here and see what there is. These big old wooden doors. And here we are. We're inside. So go up there, but looks a bit. Let's go in here. It's in here. Well, it's just a small little room. It is a wine cellar, maybe. Or not cellars as such, but where they stored wine. Possibly beer. Let's have a look in this next one. We'll go into here. Okay. It's a bit like doing another exploration. Not really entirely sure if I'm supposed to be in here, but obviously I am. And then we shall go in this one and then we'll make our way up there and see what we can see up there. Okay, here looks like here. They used to store various, they used to store beer or food. It's quite cold in here. Very big, thick structures. So, I'm found in this. Let's go up here. These steps. It looks exciting. Always enjoy it when you can go up here. So, maybe I'll see what they've used like. You can get a few of where we've just been inside. And what I'll do when I'm finished up here, we'll go and have a look at the rest of the fort. So, yeah, that's the roof of that building. That's where we were just down there. It's a shame it's so misty today. Is that golf course? There's a, that looks like a golf course over there. So, we've got a golf course. And then we've got, oh, we can see down there, a bit better. You can see that lake right up the part of the moat. Got ice on it. So, as you see, there's no, not really any snow at all like there was over in Oslo. All the snow here's melted. But it's quite strange. It's like mysterious. It's hardly anyone about. It's just me. Like, so I'm not entirely sure if I'm meant to be here, but I like it. It's like another fortress over there. So there's all these little hills as fortress is on. It's a strange place. All right, I think I need to get down, we'll go down to that lake now and then head up to the big fortress over there. So a moment ago, we were up there, the fortress comes down to that lake as I said I would. You can clearly see it's got ice on it. So it's still, it's quite mild today, but obviously has been very cold. I'm certainly not going to attempt to walk across the ice. This side of the lake doesn't have any ice at all. I do like this area, it's a bit just a little different to anywhere I've been with the rocks and everything. It's not like, I can't really describe it. When I was down in the town centre just having a look, I thought, and we'll have a look when we get down it, reminded me a bit of open in Scotland. But up here, this is just different to where I've been. I can see there's various buildings around. So in a strange kind of area, we're up high, but between two hills, I'm going to head up there now to the main fortress and just see what you find. Oh, here we are. We're now on the edge of the fort. It's very, very foggy up here. And I was just talking to a local man. He just told me a bit more information about it. He said, a gentleman just there was talking to, he told me that they have a big concert here. And down there, it's famous because that's where Karl told us that the Swedish king was shot. So I'll give you an idea of where we actually are because I've just seen this picture of it in better weather. We're up here. You can see the concerts. We're going to go down into there. We're going to make our way up to this white bell tower. And now if we move our way down here and walk back down to the town centre. Yeah, because that's a friendly gentleman. So I'm glad he told me quite a bit. So he said, yeah, it's all 16th century fortress. It seems to be the main entrance to it. So there are museums and everything in here, which you can pay to go and see. Being as it's winter, they're not open, I don't think. So we won't go to the actual museums. We can see quite a lot. So if you have a look here, there are no fences provided. So basically visitors are responsible for their own actions. So I don't think I'll be walking too close to the edge, but here we are. See how thick the walls of this fortress are. They're pretty big. And I'm going to take you up. Now I would take you up and see the views, but obviously the fog isn't exactly helping with that. You can see, let's say there's a museum down there. It's strange. It's just so sort of dead up here. Apart from that man, which I spoke to, there's just no one around. There's sort of the odd carpark somewhere. There's a load of steps there. I think they're just going to take me up there. On I got to that white bell tower, which I think. So yeah, if I continue down here, it'll take me back out to the city. But if I go through here, we're still inside the castle. It's got quite a few of these, sort of different courtyards and areas. So we're here now. You can get, that looks more promising. A load of steps going up. So this is the upper magazine that signed just there. It tells me. So odd how dead it is and how there's no one around. Yeah, that'll go down to the health centre. It's got up here though. This looks better. Interesting to explore. It's strange, strange place. Sometimes I go to places and they're so busy, it's almost impossible to make a video. Well, here's the complete opposite. There's literally no one around anywhere. I do like how they just put a sign saying, warning, be careful, don't go near the edge in England. You just probably wouldn't be able to come up here or there'd be fences. So it makes it, you know, because people be responsible for themselves, which is what tends to happen more on mainland Europe. Anyway, we're gaining height now above the roofs now, those buildings we were. They seem to be disappearing quickly into the fog. It's strange because when I arrived here, I looked up at the fortress and there was no fog at all. And then the fog just descended out of nowhere. It's a little bit windy. I can see up ahead up there is that belter. Just about to make that out. Get to here and, oh, got buildings like this. See here. Not a lot, just more empty rooms. It's just up, up here. Go up here. We've got the other side. I'm going to go back down into the town centre and get a cup of tea, I think. It seems in Norway you can get a decent cup of tea. Can't always get anywhere. This is looking very military. I wonder if there was the upper dragon bastion. So I'll just let you have a read of that. And then you go on to the top. So I think there would have been guns inside there. Oh yeah, look, you can see here where they would have had guns. And I think a moment ago, okay, yeah, so I'm in about not going near the edge. Not a lot. We were just down there. It doesn't look like much. And now I'm on the roof of that building I went in. I won't go any further there, because I can't get off the roof of that end. We get to that belter and see what we can see there. It's so strange having the whole castle to myself being here. Very exciting. That's the belter. Just to frankly make it out. It's a bit windy, so I hope you can hear me all right. At least I can raise my voice a bit without everyone looking at me, because sometimes you have to raise your voice, because it's windy and everyone looks at you, because they wonder what you're doing. Run down the hill. Oh, I could have stayed on the roof and come down those steps. So this is the southern curtain wall. It says southern curtain wall. See some cannons over there. And up there is the belter. I assume at least that's the belter. Find out, man. Another bench with not much useful yet. That is the belter. And on top there's a weather vane. This is 1883. It's not too short of significance, 1883. Wow. It's very, very foggy. A few cannons waiting to fire off into seemingly nothingness. I'm kind of, yeah, up here in the clouds. And there's no one else about. There's that belter. And there's the cannon. I would. I was hoping to stand up here and point out the whole view, but there's no point in doing that, so I can't say anything. I think what I need to do is find my way back down to the town centre. Well, a moment ago, we were up there. I found a winding path zigzagging its way down. And this is the best I can do for showing you the town. Not a lot. You might just make out a few buildings down there. I'm going to make my way out of that gateway there and follow the zigzag path, which you probably can just about see, into the town. There's a field there for a thing down there. We can see that when we get down there. We might be able to look back up at the clouds. Here we are. We're just up in the clouds. Above this town in Norway called Holden. It's nice. I like it here, but it's just a shame. It's sort of mysterious in one way and annoying in the other way that I can't show you the views. But anyway, my plan is to, as I said, make my way back down to the town. We're up there a moment ago. As I said, I was to come out that gateway and we're just about to pass through another gateway on the steep path down. 1760, this one was built. I've seen various states of building, some of them 16th century, some of them 17th century. Anyway, we come out here and the town is trying to reveal itself. What we got here, there's a few bits of interpretation. Oh, look, this is funny. And it's quite often get in Norwegian and understandably in English. But here, they've got it in Hungarian. So why is that? Ferencine, he's got a Hungarian name. Oh, he was a prince of Transylvania, historic part of the kingdom of Hungary. Most of Transylvania is in now Romania. And he wanted support and so, yeah, he wanted support because let's get this right. When he rides back to Sweden from exile in the Ottoman Empire, he passed in Cognito through Hungary. In cities along his way, Nogvarod. Now, Nogvarod isn't in Hungary anymore. It's in Romania and it's known as Oradea and I've been there. Have a look at it on screen now. I'll show you around that city. Debrecen, been there as well, on the same trip I went to Oradea. Pest, that's the other half of Budapest. And the Hungarians remember the legendary Swedish king and his extremely long ride. So that's quite cool. I like that there's been a Hungarian connection. I do speak a bit of Hungarian. I'm not going to read out that in Hungarian. If I did, I'd be, when I started this video, I'd have to say something like I don't know what to give out. I don't know what to give out. I don't know what to give out. Holden, Norway, they don't call it Norway. So I forgot what the Hungarians call Norway. But anyway, we're not in Hungary. But there's a nice little Hungarian connection there and we can see a bit better. So this is the zigzag path. And you might just be able to see, that is the harbour. I know it's kind of clear. It's really, really town centre. It's a super quiet church as well. Go down there and have a proper look. Well, here we are. I'm back down in the town centre. The fortress is up there in the clouds. This is St Emmanuel's church. This appears to be the local parish church. I did hope to go and have a look inside, but unfortunately it wasn't open. And then we get to here. I found the railway line again. I'm not going to wait for a train. There's also the river. I think it's a bit of a titsa. So I'm going to go over there. There's this more modern bridge, but there's an older bridge behind us. We'll go over there and have a look at the river. I'm still in the shadow of the cloudy fortress. We come to the river. There's a really cool bridge. I've not seen a bridge quite like this one before and I really like it. It's not that one. That's the modern bridge. And again, there's the railway line. There's a river. Look at that for a bridge. That is so cool. I like it. I've never seen quite anything about design. I like the fact that it's like a steel viaduct with a bridge sort of hovering above it. It's just, it's different and I like different things. Nice of a train came along. As I said, I'm not sure when there's one next to you. Let's go and walk over the bridge and then we'll just see what we can see. So it seems the town is effectively split on each side of the river. So you've got the town centre down there and just see the harbour, which is on one of the fields. And then if we have a look on this side, the railway line, which was single track, is just starting to go into double track. So that must be the beginning of the station complex. So you might be able to see into the station there's a train coming. I doubt there is. Oh, look, that's cool. There's a spoiled staircase down there. So whatever, I've got to go down there. Well, I can see into the station. There isn't a great deal going on. And then on this side, we've got the railway line, church and the fortress. And then that's looking upstream. This is reminding me, this bit reminds me of Windsor. It's like Eaton and Windsor, but it's, yeah, not. Although funny enough, it's about the same size as Windsor, this town, about 30,000 dollars. And then there's the river. Right, I'm going to go and get a coffee. I think I'm getting a bit cold. I am under the bridge. I've just walked over. It's funny, people are very friendly in this town. And as I was on the bridge, someone had noticed me filming. Now they very quietly just waited for me to stop filming. And they said to me, see what you're doing, you're making a video. By the way, that's the older bridge. This is the new bridge. So I said, oh, thank you very much. So I just thought I'll put that in there. So yeah, that's clearly a 60s bridge. I just thought we're dying and everything. It kind of had a old feeling, but looking at it now, I can see they're absolutely right. It's the modern bridge. So yeah, it's usually how I make these kind of mistakes. And I don't know till it comes out in the comments. So it's quite nice that people here are looking out for me. I think it is quite unusual to have an English person visit this town, which is, I'm really enjoying it here. And I've been very welcomed here by the locals. So, you know, I'd like to give you a lift up to the fortress. There was a man at the fortress everything. So I pointed out about the bridge. We see where we are. So that's the railway line. You can see the station. That's the station building where we started. So I'll just come back over the bridge, add a coffee in a little shopping centre on the other side of the river and the railway, coming back towards the station. My plan is to finish the video down by the harbour, as already mentioned, but sounds something exciting for me. Found a big electric locomotive here with a train lock. So I'm keeping an eye. There's a signal over there. It's red. I'm assuming there's a passenger train coming. So I'm either going to wait and watch it go, or if it's going to be a long time, I'm not going to wait. So it looks like, well, it carries a number one, then 101. And then on the side, I can see number 746161101. So I'll have to have a look up that, look it up in my book and tick it off. But I'm really pleased to see a proper, local, good train. So a passenger train arrived from that direction, the direction of Sweden. I went further up, expecting the good train to go, but I stood in position where I could see the red light. The red light didn't change. It stayed red, but the points changed in its favour. And I thought maybe there's a little ground signal I couldn't see. And then the locomotive starts powering up, and then of course it reversed. It shunted its wagons back there. So that didn't work. Anyway, back at the railway station again. As I said, my plan is to finish the video down by the harbour. But I thought while we're here, and we kind of got onto the subject of railways, to make up for not seeing that go, I'm going to show you a couple of things here. There's the old railway good shit here. And it appears it's got some sort of local use now, whether it's a community centre or something. And clearly see, that's an old buffer stop. Oh, that's interesting. So, I'll just show you that. So yeah, it's clearly local community or something. There's a, we mainly see the reflection, but there's not a stage to see up in there. We're in the old good shit. Oh, that locomotive is coming back. I'm not sure what he's doing, but he's shunting wagons around. He's just mugging me off, I think. What I was going to show you was in the middle of the good shit, good yard, I found this, an old good wagon. But I'm not going to show you that. I'm going to run over to the station and we're going to watch this freight train go through, because I think that's what he's doing. Let's have a look and see this freight train. There you go. It's exciting. And there was a diesel on the back. It's funny when people complain about seeing a steam train with diesel on the back, but there was an electric train diesel on the back. Anyway, I was going to show you a wagon that appears to be plentiful here to make up for not seeing that go. And then it went. So you've got the best, it doesn't seem so exciting that I see it in the good wagon. But anyway, back to what we were looking at, the old good shit, as I was saying. You can see the good shit here. See the fortress up there. And there appears to be this old wagon, very old railway wagon, just parked here. And, yeah, interesting to see. It appears to be a steam engine, but I've only seen one steam engine on my trip to Norway. And that was at the Technical Museum. Actually, anyone seen if you want to see that video, look at the link on the screen now. There's a bicycle wheel. Yeah, that's a perfectly good bicycle wheel. It's perfectly good. It's tight as a pumped up. It seems a shame. It's left here. Why someone left the bicycle wheel here? It's not something you can exactly just lose. Anyway, so there's a randomly plinth wagon and a bicycle wheel. I'm going to head over there now. Behind those flats are some silos. That's where the harbour is. That's where I'm going to go and finish the video. I've made my way through the flats and I've come to the harbour. And this is where I'm going to finish today's video. I've had a great time here in Holden. It's a really nice town. It's a shame it was so foggy. It's not looking too bad up there now. See the fortress up there. So we've been all the way up there. And it's been a good day. We've explored a fortress. It's nice to see some freight trains. Locals have been so helpful. It's quite funny how they've really helped me with this video. So it's been great. And as I mentioned earlier, it does remind me of Oben a little bit in Scotland. So it's just sort of the way the harbour's here. And then you've got, well, it's not a grain sight though in Oben, but you haven't got quite the big ships which just has that similar feel. It's a similar sized town. Oben's a bit bigger. This is actually a fjord. So this is technically the sea, but it's a fjord. So we're inland. I mean, you can say the same Fort William in Scotland. That's on the seas at the end of Loch Liddy. That's basically a fjord. Scotland has fjords just on a much smaller scale than the Norwegian fjords. I'd like to go and explore them in a future visit to Norway, but not this time. Anyway, I've had a great time here. Thank you very much for watching. Please do feel free to like, subscribe and comment. I'm going to head back to the station and catch my train back to Oslo. Goodbye.