Kristiansund - Kvernes Stave Church - Atlantic Road - Bud - Molde

Saturday 3.9.16

The sun is shining when I get up at 8:00 am. The breakfast room is empty, but the buffet is set up as if a bus is still expected... Fish, eggs, breads, various jams, very rich for this kind of vacation home. I am thrilled. The coffee is also good, so I sit here with my travel guide and map and plan my way to Molde. The reception is still closed when I leave at 10. First, I look for the Varden House Mountain as a viewpoint but can't find it. There are supposed to be beautiful old houses on the island of Innlandet belonging to Kristiansund. So I drive over the bridge to this part of town and drive around slowly annoyed. Has the lady who wrote my travel guide ever been here? I see few old wooden houses and think that there were more of them in Trondheim. Back to the harbor. Take another picture of the sculpture of the klippfish woman in the sun.

Opposite is a tempting souvenir shop and I buy a woolen headband with a Norwegian pattern (which I need multiple times during the trip but never have with me..!).

So bye bye Kristiansund and now it's time to drive towards the Atlantic Road. Costs 122 Kroner (about 15 EUR) toll or something. Averøya is the first island and quite a big one. It all looks very much like the ice age and former glacial region.

Low vegetation, small ponds, constant wind sweeping over the low hills. Then there are smaller bridges to small islands, often with only 1-2 houses or even without any houses.

The weather is really nice now but clouds move back and forth. I turn off the National Road 64 towards Kvernes, where I see a very beautiful, typical Norwegian red-painted stave church from the 14th century, which unfortunately is closed.

Next to it is the newer church, which is also already 150 years old. Also closed. But the location is beautiful. Right above the Kvernesfjord. Nearby there are also findings from the Iron Age, but I want to continue and drive along the south side of Averøy on the country road. Hardly any traffic and on my left behind the Kvernesfjord I have a fantastic view of a mountain ridge. Beautiful landscape and wind, sun, clouds accompany me. It's 16 degrees and feels cooler due to the wind.

I reach the famous bridge as part of the Atlantic Road and take a coffee break, treating myself to a waffle with blueberry sauce, walk around a bit, nothing is possible without a fleece jacket. Beautiful photo motifs of the bridge, the landscape and the fauna. A wedding couple is also taking pictures here.

I follow the small and larger bridges and end up in Vevang again on the mainland and follow the road to Bud, which my travel guide describes as a nice town with beautiful old wooden houses.

On the way, a sign shows me something interesting and I quickly walk to the old houses of Maleremmen, which is located near Male.

You can see the remains of a around 200-year-old farm here. Low houses with a lot of growth on the roof.

One could catch fish from the fjord here on the one hand and use it as a trading route, and on the other hand create further livelihoods with livestock and cereal. The small complex is now part of a museum, but is open to the public and there was no entrance or any of the buildings open.

But at my visit, Bud (pronounced: Büd) is surrounded by clouds, wind and then decides to start a downpour just as I have locked the car to walk around the small harbor after briefly getting a look at Bud from a hill.

It's Saturday afternoon, everything is closed, and the harbor is nothing more than a collection of some red wooden houses. So my stay in Bud takes only a few minutes and I make my way to Molde.

I drive the 50 km to Molde in pouring rain. My Fjordstuer Hotel is located on a street that is endlessly long and also offers several side streets with the same name. Navigation fails and I switch to the second app. One app has no voice since today, but the other (free) one cannot find the hotel either. I end up in dirt roads, a side street that ends as a dead end next to the main road and only find the hotel around 5pm.

Contrary to the description, there are free parking spaces in front of the house, which is convenient considering the rain. Nice, spacious room, bathroom with underfloor heating, sideways view of the water. Unfortunately, the view of the mountain range on the other side of the fjord is not visible at all. Only low-hanging clouds and it's so gloomy that you could think it's already 8pm.

I start walking to see Molde - the City of Roses, but after 10 minutes I am in a small empty shopping arcade because it is so wet and uncomfortable outside and all the shops outside the mall are closed.

But there is nothing interesting in the center either, and now it's drizzling, so I go back to the hotel, grab the car and drive to Varden, the house mountain and viewpoint, hoping that it will be better up there or that the rain will stop by the time I get up there.

But it soon starts to rain and it doesn't get any better up there. The weather forecast was completely wrong. I wait up there for 30 minutes for it to get better and then drive back down past the tireless hikers (who are still hiking up!) and fill up the car next to the hotel for 14.14 Kroner per liter, which is very cheap, and make myself comfortable in the room. Candle on, bread, sausage, cheese that I brought, a small bottle of red wine that was also in my suitcase, and 1.5 episodes of Homeland - and I fall asleep at 10pm.

120 km Kristiansund-Kvernes Stave Church-Atlantic Road-Bud-Molde