Haugesund; Friday, 30 May, 2025

If anything even more people were holding off having breakfast until after 08:30 this morning and it took me a good couple of minutes to find a spare table and then multiple queues for tea (the coffee had run out), juice (the orange juice had run out) and food (the cheese had just been replenished but in the meantime the salami ran out!) So pretty much a chaotic start to the day.

My bus onto Stavanger wasn’t until just after midday, so I didn’t need to check out of the hotel until just before the regular checkout time so, after breakfast, and with the weather at least dry, I headed back out into town to see if I could visit at least the church before my time in Haugesund came to an end.

On this occasion I was successful, making it about the third attempt to visit the church. I had a look around the inside of the church which was built in 1901 but inside looks a lot like a much older Norwegian church, complete with sweeping wooden buttresses across the centre of the ceiling.

I had a bit more of a wander around the city centre before heading back to the hotel to finish off packing and then make my way over to the bus station for the next leg of the journey, back on Nor-Way, to continue onto Stavanger.

I’d booked a comfort seat, similar to the one I’d had on the Vy bus from Ålesund to Bergen, on the top deck, just not at the front, on the Nor-Way service from Haugesund to Stavanger, so imagine my surprise and disappointment when a regular coach turned up and I was promptly assigned an aisle seat next to someone sat in the window seat.

It turned out the guy I was sat next to was getting off a couple of stops outside Haugesund, so I did end up with both seat to myself, but not the upgrade to the journey that I’d paid the equivalent of the ticket price again for.

After heading out of Haugesund the route takes a meander around some of the neighbouring towns before heading into an impressive string of tunnels and bridges that link multiple islands together before finally reaching the port at Arsvågen for the final ferry crossing of this trip as we boarded a ferry for the 25 minute crossing over to Mortavika (though from the signs and works on the approach road, a ferry service that will be ending in about 8 years time as construction is already well underway on a tunnel to cover the 9Km crossing.

The ferry also marked the approach into Stavanger.