Day 11: Malmefjorden to Bruhagen (75 kms)

Today the Ven Claud and I ticked off one of the highlights of this trip -- traversing Norway's five-and-a-bit mile "Atlantic Ocean Road", or Atlanterhavsvegen. Completed in 1989, it connects a series of skerries and small islands across an unsheltered section of sea by means of eight bridges and a series of causeways between the island of Averoya and the mainland south of Kristiansund. It was blowing a Force 6 when we got there -- a friend tells me this is "a yachtsman's gale" -- and it was a spectacular ride. I took ages, stopping and taking picture after picture, none of which do any kind of justice to this incredible sight and engineering triumph. I publish one photo, even more terrible than the rest I took because it has my face in it, but recommend you look online for photos of the Atlantic Ocean Road because really only those taken from above, by plane or drone, can give any idea of what it is like.

On the Atlantic Ocean Road

Prior to that, the EV1 took me round the west side of Averoya, stopping once for a coffee and twice to try and find a handlebar phone holder with arms to replace the one that snapped when I dodged the Mercedes. The first stop was Intersport, who said no we don't sell that sort of thing in rather a superior way, so my second stop was a shop at a place called Haroysundet with a revolving sign. One side said "Antik" and the other "Brukt". Now I know that in some parts of Scotland "bruk" means rubbish so I suspected "brukt" meant junk. Just the place for spares for Claud. Inside I found a number of even more elderly bicycles and a nice old chap who immediately offered me a paper cup of what he called "out local lemonade" -- made from pineapples, a taste for which he had acquired while working in Mauritius, he informed me. Personally I have never acquired a taste for pineapples, and can't understand why people don't realise that nature put those spikes on them for a reason. However I accepted, and found it didn't really taste of pineapple at all and was therefore quite palatable. He rooted around, sure he had what I wanted, before finally announcing he'd remembered giving it to his grandson. He waved me off with a cheerful "See you next year". I have to say this is unlikely, but suggest that anyone else cycling or driving this way should make a visit a must. The large building was crammed with not just bike bits but every kind of bric-a-brac -- boots, kitchen equipment, ancient electrical goods, small furniture. In fact, apart from the apparent lack of any worn-out sheep emasculation apparatus, it sported just as wide a selection of artifacts from Norway's past as the Valborg Krocken collection that I visited earlier in Aheim -- and with lemonade.

Incidentally, Norwegians round here exhibit a predilection for repurposing old bicycles as garden planters. I had got used to the sight of them, painted white, their front baskets overflowing with aubretia, but rounding a corner by a farm on a country road a little later I was greeted by an alarming site apparently pedalling towards me on the wrong side of the road:

Scary Anna!