Category: Malvik

After many great experiences with swimming in Iceland, we have suddenly begun to understand that we never ever sought such places around us in the same way. And we didn’t have to look far! Suddenly we saw a post from a friend on Facebook about Storfossen (The Big Waterfall) in Malvik municipality. We took the trip the next day.

It was late before we left home, after a rainy day in Malvik. That gave us the advantage of being alone in the forest , if you don’t count the sheep… We saw one car only in the car park when we arrived, but the owner came walking towards us early in the trip, and thereafter we didn’t see a single person. It was a special feeling to walk alone in a Norwegian ‘rainforest’, the entire forest floor was green and the trees very tall.

Storfossen is located in a narrow gorge caused by a fault in the earth’s crust a long, long time ago. It is very steep close to the river, but there is a path all the way from Hommelvik by the Trondheimsfjord and up to Storfossen (about 6 km to walk from Hommelvik to Storfossen). By parking at the Kringelmyra car park, you enter the path directly above Storfossen and then it is only 0.6 km to walk.

There is a small detour from the main path to a platform where you can see the waterfall in all its glory.

Then it’s just a matter of taking the stairs down to the river itself and rigging the camera.

Before jumping into the fresh water…

Fantastic, it was probably 15-16 degrees. It was a bit slippery to get in because of big rocks where we got out. But then there was a nice gravel bottom further out and more than deep enough to swim properly. If you wanted a training session, there is natural swimming against the current when you approach the waterfall.

The winter wonderland of january was supposed to be visited by the extreme weather named Gyda. Getting a nice winter bath before the storm was urgent. We packed our bags early in the morning, so we got time to visit Storsand (the Big Beach) in Malvik after work.

The Storsand farm main house is like a fairytale castle, squeezed in between the old E6 road and the railroad track heading east from Trondheim. The main house is unlike the typical regional “Trønderlåna” houses. New owners, from Trondheim city, wanted the farm to have more of a mansion feeling to it. Quite successful, we think.

Inspiration from Trondheim can also be seen in the railroad bridge on the farms grounds, a copy of “The Old City Bridge” in Trondheim, also called “The portal of happiness”. Nice touch!

Even though the moon was only 3/4, it looks full on the pictures. You need a better camera and a flash to get a nice moon and people in the same picture, it seems.

Storsand Camping is well arranged, with a playing ground, ball playing areas, a barbecue fireplace and most of what you need for a day at the beach with or without kids. The activity in january is rather low, though, we recommend going in season, which at Storsand starts in May.

There were no paying guests to be seen on the pier. No other guests at all, actually.

Thus the population density on the beach this day was something we could live with. Their loss, it was a really nice day! The water in January is clear as glass, the temperature slightly below 4 degrees Celsius and a wide, lovely beach to bathe from. The Big Beach deserves it’s name!

When you go out into the water, it is steep enough that you don’t have to walk miles to be able to swim. If just splashing around gets too boring, you can swim around the pier or out to the tiny island.

We didn’t swim to the island this time, though. Without a boat to follow us, it was too cold and too dark.

We didn’t even swim around or under the Pier. But Knut tested his newest thingy for the GoPro, a big dome, making it easier to get pictures under and over the water at the same time. Cool effect! GoPro in the dark wasn’t too impressive, however, the pictures got blurry while splashing around.

The standing pads were there, as planned. But in the lack of blackcurrant juice, the person in charge of hot drinks tried a 15 year old straight-in-the-cup tomato soup, dug out from the inner corners of our kitchen closets. Not very successful, from a culinary point of view.

Well at home, with the absence of our beloved friend “Eddie” (a liquor called “Gammel Dansk”), the Tindved liquor from the berry picking of our bath trip to Ørlandet was brought forward. It tasted very…eeeh…strong. Maybe just as well we didn’t spend hours picking more than the 50g we brought home.

The beginning of 2022 has been a real winter wonderland here in Trøndelag. Now it was time to go back to Malvik, to Næverdalen (“Never” in Norwegian means birch bark, could be the name origin) this time. We had received a tip that the river Nævra has a nice waterfall and we wanted to check it out. The lumberjack we met by the bridge (he was OK…sleeps all night and works all day?) could inform us that we shouldn’t talk about _the_ waterfall, but the waterfalls. There are ten in a row, with the rather prosaic names “One” to “Ten”.

At winter time it’s better to take only one waterfall in one trip, so we made the simple decision of starting with the closest, assuming it was “One”. Or maybe they start numbering from the origin of the river, so this was “Ten”? We hadn’t thought of asking, it seemed so obvious at the time.

There wasn’t really any pathway to the waterfall, so we had to wade in deep snow down through the forest to reach it. Not very crowded here this beautiful winter day, strangely enough, but in summer time this is said to be a popular bathing spot.

Time to take the plunge?

Oh, no, first some research! Knut wanted to see if it was possible to bathe in the waterfall itself, in nature’s own jacuzzi. And it really did look tempting:

But the supervisor of Health and Security pointed out the risk of getting falling ice blocks in the head and raised the veto flag.

So finally a “go” for a swim:

… with the photographer right behind. A great bath! Nice, smooth rocks on the waterbed and no climbing over bigger, unsteady rocks. Not quite even water depth, though.

Only seconds after the picture above, we realized there was a rather strong current drawing us towards the main stream. Not that it would have been directly dangerous, but if we were dragged in we would have had to make a big circle going 10-15 m downstream first before we could swim back to our little backwater pool. A couple of strong swim strokes avoided that detour and brought us back the same way we came in.

The changing zone was already prepared when we got up:

We felt like professionals when we took out the hot black current juice and really enjoyed the view.

No trouble this time? Well… except that when we checked the map afterwards, we realized that this was just another dip in the river Homla. The river Nævra runs into Homla slightly higher up than the bridge. Next time…

We assume this wasn’t neither the Nævra “One” or “Ten”, but maybe “Homlafossen”? Who knows?