Kristiansund; Saturday, 24 May, 2025

Considering I hadn’t got to bed until 01:30, I woke up about 6 hours later feeling refreshed and ready for the day, so I quickly had a shower, breakfast and then headed out to catch the shuttle back to the airport, dropped by bag off and headed through to the lounge to continue my journey north.

I had a smooth journey through the airport which is in contrast to the very bumpy journey up to Kristiansund which was conducted almost exclusively in cloud cover, with the clouds only finally giving way a few hundred feet above the runway on landing.

After collecting my luggage and making the bus, for the second time in the same day with only a minute to spare, I headed into town and checked into the hotel, dropping my luggage off before heading back out into town.

Kristiansund is laid out over a collection of islands with four main islands forming the heart of the city centre around a natural sound. Today modern bridges link all the different parts of the city together, but in the past that wasn’t so easy and since 1876 the Sundbåten has been shuttling backwards and forwards between the different islands linking them together.

In the past the service has been fair paying, but certainly for the last couple of years and definitely in 2025 it’s a free service, so you can hop on and go one stop, or take the full 35 minute tour around the sound, which is precisely what I did, even if at times it was difficult to see much through the squalling rain.

I arrived back at the main landing stage of the route, the Kirkelandet Sundbåtkai, just a short walk from my hotel, just as the latest squall finished passing through so I was able to go for a wander around the town centre, which is all on the Kirkelandet island, stopping off for a quick coffee near the Hurtigruten pier, before heading on down to the Mellemværftet. This is the historic shipyard and is a space that has been preserved as to how it would have looked over a century ago.

The site is open 24 hours a day as it’s on the main waterside path that runs around the edge of town, but during the height of summer (from late June to early September) it also operates as a living history museum.

I spent quite a bit of time wandering around the old town before the rain started to build up in intensity again which drove me back to the hotel to dry off and with the rain settling in for the evening a meal in the hotel restaurant before going to bed for the second time today.