Kristiansund

Day 19

Dinner once again in Alexandria with The Gang. Another good evening.

Afterwards no one was quite sure what to do. The two operatic brothers, Richard and Adam, were on again and we had all liked their previous show. But on the other hand we had an early start in the morning as well as the fact that we were going to be cruising through the fjords overnight and we all thought we would like to see that. In the end we all went our separate ways and Steve and I headed for bed. We did wake up during the night but couldn’t see anything so didn’t bother staying up.

Breakfast again in the Horizon ready for the early, 8.30, start of our excursion along the Atlantic Ocean Road and visit to the Bergatt marble mine.

We have been so spoilt so far this holiday with all of our excursions, either with P&O or on our own, and this one also lived up to expectations.

It was the one and only excursion we were doing during the cruise with all of The Gang. So we wanted to make sure we were all on the same coach. Steve and I arrived just as the first coach was filling up. Steve checked and couldn’t see anyone from our group on that one so we decided to wait for the others and get on the next. Janet and Di arrived just before the second coach so we all got on and saved a seat for Donna and John.

I have always wanted to see the Norwegian fjords and we have seen plenty so far, but not to the same degree as today. You could actually have called the excursion a journey through the fjords. Absolutely beautiful!

The Atlantic Ocean Road is amazing.  It is 8.3km in length and was completed in 1989. It runs through an archipelago of 8 islands connected by 8 bridges.

We stopped just before the highest bridge. Besides taking photos there is a lovely walk around the small promontory next to the bridge which we followed. It’s only 500-600m long but it’s very pretty.

We headed from there to the marble mine, once again passing fabulous scenery. In parts the landscape was reminiscent of much of the British Isles, Scotland in particular, but there are far bigger mountains and many more lakes or fjords. However just as you are thinking that, a building appears which bears no resemblance to any British buildings. To me, although I’ve never been there, they made me think of the Boston or Maine.

There was a very steep, very narrow and very windy road up to the mine. We then drove into a deep cave to park. We disembarked the coach and went into a huge cave to listen to a brief film about the mine. The cave, or room, was beautiful and holds up to 300 people. It stages several concerts each year which sell out immediately. Sounds lovely, I’m just not sure I would fancy driving up the road to get there.

After the film we had a local style of pancake and a coffee. Then we picked up our life jackets and hard hats for our boat journey through the caves. We really needed the hard hats this time as the roof was pretty low.

The boat journey was absolutely magical - imagine going down to the vaults in Gringotts crossed with going over the lake that Harry and Dumbledore had to travel over to retrieve the horcrux, or indeed any other mythical underground river or lake. It was so totally unexpected and remarkable that it really is impossible to describe.

We then returned to the coach for our journey back to Kristiansund.

The queue to get back on the boat was rather long (for which by chance the Captain is just apologising in his daily announcement) so Steve and I decided to go for a walk instead. First we went into a shopping centre that was immediately opposite the ship. From there we walked along the quayside towards the shipbuilding museaum, Mellem Vaerftet. Along the way we saw that the harbour ferry, Sundbaten, was just docking and the queue wasn’t too long so we decided to hop on that. However the master of the ferry was just stopping for his lunch. So we didn’t wait but headed on to the museum. It was a lovely walk further along the quay. The museum is small and in the open so we had a quick wander there and then turned back to town. When we got to the ferry we could see it would arrive shortly so once again decided to hop on.

The ferry is free for everyone and crisscrosses the harbour. Each section takes about 15-30 minutes and the whole trip only lasts about 50. Priority is given to locals for obvious reasons and there is a limit to the number of people they can take. So we were unable to get on the ferry when it first arrived but on its second stop we were able to get on. We went upstairs and stood outside whilst we had a very gentle cruise around the harbour.

By then it was about 3.30 and hadn’t eaten anything other than the pancakes since breakfast so decided to come back on board and have a bite to eat.

We are now in our cabin and very sleepy. We leave Kristiansund in about 20 mins at 5.30. But once again, we have had a truly wonderful day.

Kristiansund Image gallery