Ålesund; Monday, 26 May, 2025

As the crossing was long enough I, along with the majority of the passengers, hopped off the bus to make use of the facilities on the ferry, including the café bar to grab a quick lunch – though I was disappointed to find that they were out of waffles, surely that must count as a criminal act in Norway?

Back on the bus for the final 90 minutes in towards Ålesund, with the bus on time almost the whole way until about 10 minutes out from the city centre when a driver changeover happened and we ended up being 5 minutes late arriving, not that really made much difference. Bag collected I walked the short distance to my hotel and was able to checkin straight away, get to my room and drop my stuff off, just before a heavy shower passed through.

I let the worst of the rain pass before heading back out again, wandering down to pick up the local bus out to the end of the line at Sævollen from where there’s a costal path that takes you around the gigantic rock that is Sukkertoppen on the western edge of this, the western most of the islands that make up the city.

As the path skirts round the edge of the mountain, with it’s almost sheer cliff sides, you get some excellent views across to the other smaller islands, islets and skerries that form the final barrier between the city and the Atlantic ocean, which at the moment was bathed in warm sunlight and barely a cloud in the sky, but this is Norway so that wasn’t going to last.

Naturally, as it protects access to both the city and the network of calmer waters up the coast protected by the outer islands, this part of the coastline was heavily defended by the Nazi’s after their invasion of Norway as part of their Atlantic Wall and this headland has a lot of the scars of those defences with numerous gun emplacements and bunkers all the way along the line of the path, but perhaps the most impressive is the full fortress at Tueneset at the northern end of the walk.

Here a large number of buildings, bunkers and emplacements dot the headland clearly showing how important a location for defence this was, and you can wander around the site without any real restrictions (though some of the buildings, that are clearly in the worst state of repair, are closed off).

It was whilst I was wandering around the site that a quick look out to sea revealed I was about to get pretty wet. The light fluffy clouds and blue skies of 45 minutes earlier had now been replaced by very dark skies, and most of the outer islands were now hidden, cloaked in the rain clouds that were heading my way, so it was out with the rain jacket ready for a wet walk back to the bus stop.

Naturally, the shower stopped almost as soon as I made it to the bus stop for the bus back into the city, though given it was a 20 minute walk and I only had 5 minutes before the bus, and a 30 minute wait if I’d missed it, it was for the best that I’d headed back through the shower, and the wet weather gear meant that I was still dry underneath. I hopped on the bus when it arrived and caught it back into the city centre, walked over to the hotel and had dinner in the small onsite restaurant before heading back to my room from where I watched the skies clear and about 10pm it was back to clear blue skies and the sun beaming directly into my room as it started, very slowly, to set. In fact in Ålesund in late May, despite it not being above the arctic circle, it still doesn’t really get dark with the light remaining in the sky for more than an hour after the sun has dipped below the horizon and twilight continuing throughout the night.