Saturday 9th July 2011
We left Grip and had our breakfast on the move heading back around Hustadvika, one of the feared headlands that have to be rounded on this coast that have no shelter. As we were already 12 miles out to sea at Grip we took the outer route keeping a good distance off the shoals that lie off Hustadvika. There are inland routes going along past the famous ‘Atlantic Road’ which had we been leaving from Kristiansund we might have tried as it was a calm day, not enough wind to sail and eventually it backed to being a gentle breeze on the nose.
On rounding Hustadvika we made a stop at Bud for 3.5 hours, to have a walk and find the tourist board for information on visiting Geiranger. The tourist office was found on top of the hill as part of the Ergan Coastal Fort exhibition of events from World War II; we did not pay to go round, but were able to walk on the hillside by the nearby fortifications for good views of the area.
On leaving Bud we headed east in the direction of Molde, stopping to anchor at Svinoya, a bay between some small islands off Elnesvagen, which is dominated by a huge rock crushing plant, luckily it was not in our view which was of islands and the fjord. It was a pleasant quiet anchorage.
Distance motored: 44 nm
Sunday 10th July 2011
We decided to have a day of rest and not move from the anchorage, it was a day of sunshine and showers, so we were in and out of the cockpit like jack-in-the-boxes, when it was sunny if was beautifully warm.
Just after James went to bed a fisherman stopped by and offered us some live crabs he did not want, which I gratefully accepted. As I have never cooked a crab before he gave me some instructions which were to boil them in salt water for 25 minutes. James said it was kinder to cook them from cold. A few text messages to my friend Lynn Compson, who I discovered was on holiday in Corfu, elicited surprise at the length of cooking time ……
Monday 11th July 2011-07-11
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| Statue of the Rose Girl |
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| View from the top of the Town Hall rose garden |
We made a fairly early start from the anchorage to motor the 16 miles around to Molde, know as the ‘City of Roses’ and famous for a Jazz Festival which starts next week. There were quite a lot of roses to be seen, but the rose garden on top of the Town Hall roof were still mainly buds, the tourist office girl explained that the cold winter had delayed the flowering season this year.
We managed the walk through the town centre and did some shopping before the rain began. Back on the boat at the Reknes visitors harbour, right next to their posh ‘Aker’ football stadium, I thought we would have a lunch of crab, unfortunately, I think Lynn was right the crabs had been boiled to death – there was nothing left inside the shells and we just managed to scraped a couple of small spoonfuls of meat out of the claws to go with our salad! Had it been a beautiful clear day we might have contemplated the hour long walk to the Varden viewpoint to see the panorama of Molde with its ‘222 partially snow clad peaks’.
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| Reknes visitors harbour plus our travelling Pingu |
[Molde Reknes Visitor Harbour charges: NOK 100 for boats under 10m, 150 up to 12m and 200 for over 12 m plus 40 for electricity. There was water available with good strong pressure – we made use of that!]
As it was raining we decided to move on and make our way towards Andalsnes which offers a free guest harbour. It is also the town where we can get a bus across the Trollstigen mountain range to Geiranger which is supposed to be very beautiful, we shall have to hope for better weather as the mountains are completely shroud in mist and cloud today.
Distance motored: 37 nm
P.S. to the crab saga, I looked on line for advice in case anyone else offers us a crab and the advice was to kill the crab first (info on how to do this can be found on the internet) and then put into boiling water for 20 minutes.
Tuesday 12th July 2011 – train ride to Dombas
Having rained all night it continued to rain all morning. However, it did stop in the mid-afternoon, in time for us to catch the last train of the day to Dombas leaving at 16.16. The trip is on the Rauma Railway and was written up as one of Norway’s most spectacular train rides, and there are many of those in this country of mountains. Certainly the first hour to Bjorli (a popular winter ski resort) is pretty amazing; the train runs up the beautiful Romsdalen valley alongside the river Rauma with the Trollveggen wall (Europe’s highest perpendicular mountain wall) towering 1,800 metres above. The train track has had to be laid in a series of hairpin bends, using both sides of the valley, so the train crosses the river several times, there are 32 bridges on the trip, including the impressive Kylling Bridge and a 1,340 metre tunnel in which the train almost competes a circle inside the mountain before emerging from the tunnel travelling in the opposite direction, 19 metres above the place it entered the tunnel.
After Bjorli the track runs through a fertile farming valley, although the majority of farming seems to be grass based, lots of silage being made, but little sign of cattle but we have since been told that is because they are kept inside even during the summer. We had a 30 minute stop in Dombas, just time to walk down into the town and buy some supper to eat on the return train journey. Dombas is the highest point on the railway at 660 metres above sea level; my ears were popping on the journey.
Wednesday 13 July 2011 – The Golden Route to Geiranger
The day dawn sunny and warm, so it was no hardship to be waiting for 08.20 bus to Geiranger, alongside an American family of about 10 – 3 generations of them travelling back to their roots.
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| Trollstigen Road |
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| Gudbrandsjuvet canyon |
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| View up the Geirangerfjord from Ornesvingen on the Eagle Road |
Then on past the strawberry growing village of Valldal, where on the morning journey, pickers were hard at work in the fields. The coach then had a short ferry crossing from Linge to Eidsdal before continuing on to Geiranger where we had to descend another 11 hairpin bends down the Eagle Road, 620 metres, with a stop at Ornesvingen for a good view over Geiranger and the Geirangerfjord. Once in Geiranger we had the choice of staying just 55 minutes before the bus returned to Andalsnes or finding something to do for over 6.5 hours until the next bus and the last for the day left, we chose the later.
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| View down the Geirangerfjord |
Geiranger had two large cruise ships in the bay on our arrival, although one left at lunch time, but it really is just a tourist trap. We considered a bus trip to Dalsnibba a mountain peak 1,500 m above the fjord, but it was expensive and to be honest James does not enjoy heights or the hairpin bends much and we had had a very good view over the fjord from the Eagle Road, we did not really consider a fjord boat trip – rather coals to Newcastle in our minds – we’ve seen lots of waterfalls on our sailing trip and on the bus trip. So I walked us up the hill to the Geiranger Fjord Centre where I went round the exhibition and James opted to sit in the sunshine and then the shade for the 2 or so hours that I enjoyed in the exhibition including two sittings of a rather good slide show on 3 big screens. We then meandered our way back to the Village via various tracks and watched the world go by in the glorious sunshine! James did say that had he realized in time that he could have hired a canoe, he would have done so.
The return bus journey was a little confusing to start with, as no bus appeared with Andalsnes on it, but luckily we asked one with Alesund shown as the destination, which was waiting at the correct time and were told that we should take that bus to the ferry and we would be met by another bus on the other side and low and behold there was our driver of the morning who returned us to Andalsnes.
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| Guest Harbour at Andalsnes |
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| Views around Andalsnes |
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| House / boat work still needs doing! |
Thursday 14th July 2011 – The Train Chapel
We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast from the baker opposite the Guest Harbour, before wandering over to see if the ‘Train Chapel’ that we had noticed on Tuesday evening was open, which it was. We spent a delightful half an hour or so sitting in it, listening to instrumental church music and enjoying the peace and the stain glass window, this we followed with a gentle stroll, in the sunshine, to the end of the harbour and train depot, collecting wild flowers for my vase, which was in need of fresh flowers. All in all, very good for the soul!
We have enjoyed our sojourn at Andalsnes, somewhere, that had not been on our radar before, made all the more enjoyable by free berthing, electricity, water and free internet access, albeit rather weak, from the book shop opposite. Also this small town has been carefully planned with pretty flower beds and seating areas and when seen in the sunshine, it is a delight with lots of interesting mountain scenery and of course the charming Train Chapel. The fact that we could take two memorable trips from the town to areas we would not have seen from the boat made it even more special. |
| Reflection of the countryside in the Train Chapel Stainglass window. |
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| Arrangement of local wildflowers |
We left at high tide to take the weak flow back down the Romsdalsfjord, with of course the wind on the nose! We motored to within 6 miles of Alesund, where we found a small bay to anchor in for the night. I watched the first deer of the summer come down in the twilight to drink.
Distance motored: 48 nm
Friday 15th July 2011 – Alesund
We motored into Alesund, which had a boat festival going on, so there was no space on the town harbour pontoons, but we went alongside a large Norge Yacht against a wall but before that we fuelled up, the boat was very thirsty, at least it was one of the cheapest fuel price we have come across so far.
Alesund is famous for its distinctive art nouveau architecture – a multitude of towers, spires and ornamental features catch the eye. The reason behind the very different look of this town is because in 1904 they had a bad fire which destroyed 850 buildings and because it was a time of economic depression and extensive unemployment in Norway, craftsmen and architects streamed into the town in hope of finding work. The architects were inspired both by National Romantic impulses, their Norse heritage and by Art Nouveau – the modern building style in Europe at that time.We made our way through the boat festival and continental market (which included an British section, with a cheese farm – Ivy Bridge from the Dorset Somerset border selling their wares which of course had cheese but also a lot of preserves) to the Tourist Information office for a map and directions for the walk up the town mountain ‘Aksla’ to a viewing point of Fjellstua. We found our way to the park and then climbed the 418 steps to the top where we certainly had a superb view of the town and surrounding islands.
We left Alesund after lunch in the cockpit and motored and sailed until the wind died, when we were sailing slowly I put out my fishing line but again I have no takers much to James’ delight as he can’t bear the thought of fish flapping around in his cockpit!
We eventually anchored at 20.30 in the harbour of Bringsinghaug on Kvamsoya, a good jumping off point for the trip around the Stat headland.
Motored / sailed: 44 nm
Saturday 16th July 2011 – Back around Statt and Floro
I was surprised to be woken at 05.30, having got out of the habit of early starts, to leave for the trip round the notorious Statt headland, as it was we had little wind on the journey around and there was just a slight swell, it fact it was so easy I went back to bed at 7.30
for a couple of hours. When I awoke we were back into the shelter of the islands.
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| Mountains in the mist, seen during the day |
Over the last twenty plus years James has been keeping articles on sailing in Norway that have been published in the yachting magazines and was I given them to read to make notes on places to visit. One such place for a short stop was Vingen, mentioned in 2000 article by Kevin Seymour as a site of more than 1500 pre-historic rock carvings in an amazing state of preservation and an excellent visitors jetty which when he was there was empty. So as we were passing the bay I had suggested a brief stop, however, I also noted in the latest edition of Judy Lomax’s Norway pilot guide that one should ring the Floro Tourist Office in advance to view, so I rang them to find that now one has to go on an organised tour, which only happens on Fridays! Anyway, we wheeled into the bay but there was no sign of jetty. I then checked the Norwegian Cruising Guide, who just said “Vingen no longer welcomes boats and the jetty is full of trespassers will be prosecuted signs”!
We carried on to Floro where I found the tourist office and the lady said that they are working on preserving the rock carvings at Vingen, but hoped by next year to be able to re-open the jetty. However, there were some other rock carvings on a farm at Ausevik, not far from Floro where she thought we could moor the boat for a short time, she even tried to ring the owner to check if we could come, but got no answer. Whilst at Floro we had a quick walk up the hill behind the church for a view over some of the myriad of islands off Floro. We left Floro after 2.5 hours thinking we would find an anchorage for the night, the one shown nearby proved to be at the back on the town amongst the local industrial area and was distinctly smelly, so we headed out again, I found a route to Ausevik but on looking at the depths the coast we could see no suitable shallow anchorages so instead we have headed further south and found a berth at Svanoyvika on Svanoy, so not a free night but with a nice view, slightly spoilt by sprogs racing around in dinghies, we of course use to ban our kids from using engines after drinks time, rowing is also a much more healthy exercise!
Distance motored: 74 nm. Cost of a berth here is NOK 100 plus 40 for electric!
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