Bird paradise Runde island

Day 9: Måløy-Runde (113 km)

Since I haven’t used any rest days yet, I have been lying one to two days ahead of my schedule. Thanks to this, I could plan a little detour today to the small island Runde which is located southwest of Ålesund at the Atlantic coast. Runde is a bird island as has the third biggest bird cliff in Norway and the southernmost in Norway. In addition, the Norwegian tourist association has a cabin here at the old lighthouse. So my plan for yesterday was to get here and hope for a free bed (since you cannot book in advance).

I started cycling from my camp right outside Måløy at nine o’clock. It was half cloudy, half sunny today. And since it was rather chilly, but warm when the sun came out, I put my jacket on and off a dozen times today.

The landscape was more hilly than I had expected given that I was so close to the coast. But the coast is quite steep here many places, so I had a lot of up and down cycling today anyway.

After 60 kilometres, I took a ferry from Koparnes to Årvika. And after 80 kilometres, I swinged left to go to Runde, where I would have gone right towards Ulsteinvik and Ålesund normally. Runde was thirty kilometres away from this junction.

The ride to Runde was a very scenic island hopping with bridges connecting the small islands. Runde is the last one of these islands. The road stops after four kilometres, so I parked my bike there and repacked my stuff so that I had everything I needed for one night in one of the panniers which I then used as a shoulder bag.

There is a trail leading from the road into a nature reserve. We had a fantastic view today, so I took many pictures and videos on my way. After one hour, I reached one of the bird cliffs. I sat down at a spot from which I had a good view and watched the spectacle for quite a long time. There are 100000 pairs of sea birds nesting there. In the evening, they swarm out which apparently is a social ritual. There are mostly gannets (Basstölpel/havsula), kittiwakes (Dreizehenmöwe/krykkja) and puffins (Papageientaucher/lunde) breeding here, but also many other species.

After an hour or so, I continued my walk towards the lighthouse. Luckily, there were some empty beds, so I could stay here for the night. There were two other German tourists in my room so far. I had dinner on the cliffs and enjoyed the sunset outside. It’s a great place to stay, especially when the weather is as great as it was today. Today, I am looking forward to a rather short day and to seeing Vegar who guided our ski trip across Greenland four years ago.