Hurtigruten; Thursday, 07 February, 2013

After a very disturbed night’s sleep, with several really choppy bits of crossing overnight, I had to get up early as I was booked to go on the walking tour of Trondheim, which was due to leave at 7:30, so it was a very quick breakfast, and then down onto the quayside.

The walk was very interesting, with a lot more of the city centre seen than on the coach tour the previous week, though the slippery conditions made it quite hard going, and meant that we had to hurry the last part of the tour to make sure we made it back to the ship in time for its departure.

We then had another long sail up the Trondheimfjord, the same stretch of water that we had covered just over a week ago, before the ship reached the end of the fjord and turned south heading towards Kristiansund. As this was going to be quite repetitive the crew livened things up for us by flooding our cabins.

Overnight they had identified a series of piped which had frozen whilst we had been travelling and with first light had set about defrosting them, unfortunately a combination of a 50 year old ship and over-enthusiasm ensured that the piped unfroze in the predictable manner by bursting. The ensuring spurting water seeped into a couple of cabins, mine included.

To be fair to them, the second they realised what was happening they stopped and then set about making sure the cabins were sorted. It meant that for the last night on the ship I had a beautifully shampooed and steam dried carpet.

I had a quick wander around Kristiansund when we moored up and decided, in the daylight, that it was a much nicer town than I had thought in the dark. Then it was back on the boat for a pretty rough open sea crossing, during which time most people were making a start on packing their bags, and were consequently regularly out on deck trying to stop themselves feeling seasick!

Dinner started just as we cleared the open sea so was a calmer affair, if significantly depleted. As far as Kirkeness the whole restaurant had been full each night. It had thinned out a bit after Kirkeness, but not at much as had happened after Trondheim, almost half the spaces were free!

The late evening stop was in Molde for 45 minutes so I had a wander around town for a while, then came back to the ship to finish packing whilst the boat was static and then headed to bed.