Ålesund; Tuesday, 27 May, 2025

You’d have thought in a nation that has 24-hour sunlight for months at it’s northern most extremities, and even down in Ålesund 24-hour twilight for most of May to July, that hotel here would fit thick blackout curtains, but as I always only remember when I get here, they don’t. Instead most hotels appear to be fitted with something designed to filter some of the light out, but given they don’t actually fit all the way around the window frame it doesn’t really matter because the large gap that allows the room to be floodlit all night removes most of their function! Despite that, and a Havila (the competitor to Hurtigruten) ferry docking just after midnight, I got a reasonable nights sleep and was up just after 8 ready for breakfast and to head out onto the longest part of the trip, the mammoth 9 hour 45 minute, 420Km bus ride all the way south to Bergen. Thankfully the trip does involve three ferry crossings, so it is broken up a little bit (and with a couple of opportunities to get sustenance along the way)

When I’d originally booked everything I wasn’t 100% sure which hotel I’d be staying at in Ålesund as the prices were fluctuating wildly for a while and in the end my bus ticket was from the most central bus stop, but not the one closest to the hotel, which was also the starting point of the route, so I headed out a little early to go and see if I could board one stop early. Unfortunately, whilst the bus was there the driver was nowhere to be seen, and rather than risking it I decided to wander on down to the correct bus stop and waited the 10 minutes or so until my coach – or rather luxury Double Deck coach arrived. I’d booked seat 1D which was a big solo seat at the front on the top deck, because if you’re going to have to be sat here for nearly 10 hours you might as well make it comfortable and the views good.

There were a handful of passengers who, like me, were making the journey the whole way to Bergen as this is the only bus of the day doing the route, but most other passengers were only going short sections. Even then, the bus was never more than half full at it’s busiest.

After leaving Ålesund we headed out of town back along the islands that form the city to Moa where we turned south and headed to the southern edge of Sula island and the ferry terminal at Solavågen where we drove onto the first of three ferry crossings on the trip. This one was 20 minutes long and at barely an hour after we started it felt a bit of a cheat getting off, stretching the legs, visiting the facilities and grabbing a coffee so early – but it was going to be a long day so it was best to take advantage at every stop.

The journey was dramatic with innumerable tunnels and bridges along the way, along with dramatically changing weather from sunny skies to pounding rain in a matter of minutes as the coach wound it’s way up and down mountains and sailed across fjords.

We stopped for about 15 minutes in the town of Nordfjordeid for a comfort stop and to pass the bus going in the opposite direction, much further into it’s route as it had left Bergen at 08:00, three hours ahead of us. It was good to see that it was still on time this far into the route.

From Nordfjordeid it was a short hop down to the next ferry at Lote for the quick 10 minute crossing. I’d used the facilities at the bus station in Nordfjordeid, but there hadn’t been a café or kiosk so I quickly popped into the café on the ferry to grab something for lunch before heading back onto the bus.

The next long stop was a couple of hours later at Førde, the largest town between Bergen and Ålesund, where we stopped for 40 minutes, I’m assuming as part of the drives mandatory rest period. We’d swapped drivers two hours in, but by now, with only two short stops at Nordfjordeid and on the ferry, he’d been going for over 3½ hours, so a 40-minute break would make him legal for the final run into Bergen.

From Førde it was about an hours drive down to the final ferry across the Sognefjord from Lavik to Oppedal which took 20 minutes and I therefore took the opportunity to grab an early and quick ships café based dinner on board before we landed and started the final two hour drive down to Bergen, which was perhaps the most dramatic part of the trip with several fjord to mountain pass to fjord stages, with lots of very impressive tunnels cutting vast distances off having to go around the edge.

The final approach into Bergan was across the impressive Nordhordlandsbrua and then through a series of tunnels under the mountains before popping out just above the combined bus and railway station, arriving a good 10 minutes ahead of schedule. From the station I walked the half mile or so over to the hotel, checked in and, after downloading all the photos and video to my laptop and the cloud, went straight to a welcoming bed – who’d have thought sitting in a comfy chair for 10 hours could be so exhausting!