It was a gloomy start today as we made progress towards Kristiansund which is another large cod fishing and processing town but, with ship repairs and service industries as well as servicing the North Sea oil fields, it is an important hub for workers and tourists.
A large amount of the world’s ‘klipfisk’, salted cod, is cured in the town.
The reason we stopped here was to experience a journey along the Atlanterhasvein (Atlantic Ocean Road) within the region of Kristiansund which consists of eight bridges and causeways across fjords. These replace numerous ferries on this section of the previously known Arctic Highway from Bergen to Honnisvag. This was a journey we planned to make in one of our early Minis but the cost then and the time it would have taken meant this was not feasible. Today we had good weather, but in winter storms can lash the causeways and bridges. We started the coastal section by using the Bremsnes Undersea Tunnel which is 5.7m long and at its middle is 250m below sea level. Blue lights mark the middle.
The most impressive and longest bridge, the Storseisund is a giant humpback bridge, which allows ships to go under it but with appropriate low-level filming can make the vehicles appear to fall off ‘the end of the Earth’ as in the latest Bond movie ‘No Time to Die’.
The bridge also features in numerous car advertisements and today we were lucky because we were prevented from crossing the bridge immediately as they made about six crossings of the bridge to film a new Ferrari advert for the Ferrari Purosangue. It must have been doing all of 10 m.p.h. and led by a camera truck but with CGI it no doubt will be going faster!
Prior to our return to the ship, we visited the Kvernes Stave Church which is beautifully sited above the fjord and adjacent to a 19th century church which was built to replace it, but it was deemed too good to destroy. The former dates from around 1600 and has a richly decorated interior with an unusual 15th century Catholic altar piece with the Virgin Mary figuring prominently. This altar piece was lucky because many were destroyed at the time of the Reformation though this one survived and has had additional carvings since the 17th century.
During dinner we left for Bergen.
