Kristiansund; Monday, 26 May, 2025

When I’d been out at the Kystbatteri the previous evening it was close enough to the city’s football stadium to hear the chants and shouts, and the pretty obvious point when one team scored a goal from the sudden eruption of cheering. A check on Google later in the evening revealed that had been the only goal in a 0-1 win for Viking FK, which was surprising given how quiet the team were at breakfast this morning – I would have expected more animation from a team that had just won, securing themselves a place in the UEFA conference league (it’s amazing how quickly football fans update Wikipedia!)

Thankfully the hotel was generally quieter, so I was able to get a table straight away and have a decent breakfast before heading back up to my room to pack ready to move onto the next part of my journey and the near 4 hour bus ride down the coast through Molde and onto Ålesund.

I checked out of the hotel and walked the 10 minutes or so over to the bus station assuming I’d have about a 10 minute wait for the bus, but it was already on stand and the drive was happy to scan my ticket and let me on board so I was able to grab a seat with a nice big window on the left hand side, which looking at the map appeared to have the majority of the good views (bridges, fjords and lakes).

The skies had cleared so most of the journey towards Molde was in glorious sunshine with the waters of the fjords looking particularly beautiful sparkling in the sunlight.

About a hour and three quarters after leaving Kristiansund we pulled up at the ferry terminal on the edge of Molde ready to cross over from the rolling hills of this part of the county to the looming hills on the horizon as the bus drove onto the ferry for the 35 minute crossing to Vestnes and the next stage of my journey.