Race to the Måløy ferry

Day 8: Viksdalen-Måløy (116 km)

After some very nice days in the mountains, today I wanted to go back to the coast – specifically to Florø. From here I wanted to take a boat to Måløy. This boat only leaves once a day, at 16:05. According to Google Maps, it was 94 kilometres from my starting point, Viksdalen, to Florø by car. But the car route includes a tunnel which is prohibited, so I estimated around 100 kilometres including the detour around the tunnel.

I normally set my alarm to seven o’clock, snooze it once, then eat breakfast in my tent, start packing, take down the tent and leave at nine. And I thought seven hours should be enough for 100 kilometres, including breaks, without stress.

So I left Viksdalen and had first a very nice ride along or above lake Haukedalsvatnet up to a mountain pass. From there it was a long downhill ride to Førde. I had planned to take a longer break here after forty kilometres, but then I thought, I rather get closer to Florø first so that I’m really sure I won’t have to stress.

So I continued along the Førdefjord which was a very nice ride. I saw a sea eagle from very close distance – it launched from a rock and crossed the road right in front of my nose. Unfortunately, I had just switched off my GoPro, so no good footage.

After a bit more than fifty kilometres, I reached the no-go tunnel and turned right to go around. Not only was this detour much longer than I had expected, it also included a mountain pass with 500 metres altitude difference which I had not foreseen. So I lost a lot of time and had to start calculating if I would reach the boat. My conclusion was that it was going to be very tight, so I decided not to take any more breaks and just go.

Getting closer to Florø, I counted down the kilometres, and it seemed like I would make it by just five minutes. Of course, we had west wind, so that was slowing me down a bit, and those five minutes started to melt away. Finally, I arrived at the pier at 16:03 – two minutes before the boat left – woohoo! I thought I could celebrate with a beer or at least a svele (western Norwegian kind of pancake), but they didn’t serve anything on board. So I had to eat some potato crisps from my supplies instead.

When the boat arrived at Måløy, I decided to eat dinner at a restaurant instead of freeze-dried dinner in my tent. I found a nice Thai restaurant and had a good dinner and a beer there before I continued for another ten kilometres just so that the day will be a bit shorter tomorrow. My camp tonight is not the nicest – it’s on a resting place close to the main road, but I was too tired to go any further today. The place where I hope I can stay tomorrow on the other hand will be pretty amazing, I believe. Coming back to that tomorrow.