Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Canal Trips
Southern Norway's Telemark region has an extensive network of canals, rivers and lakes.
There are regular ferry services or you can travel using your own boat. See the boxed text
on
Click here
for details.
Hurtigruten Coastal Ferry
For more than a century, Norway's legendary
Hurtigruten coastal ferry ( 81 00 30
30;
www.hurtigruten.com
)
has served as a lifeline linking coastal towns and villages and
it's now one of the most popular ways to explore Norway. Year in, year out, one of 11
Hurtigruten ferries heads north from Bergen every night of the year, pulling into 35 ports
on its six-day journey to Kirkenes, where it then turns around and heads back south. The
returnjourneytakes11daysandcoversadistanceof5200km.Inagreeableweather(which
is by no means guaranteed) the fjord and mountain scenery along the way is nothing short
of spectacular. Most of the ships are modern, others are showing their age; the oldest ship
dates from 1956, but all were substantially remodelled in the 1990s.
Onboard,mealsareservedinthediningroomandyoucanbuysnacksandlightmealsin
the cafeteria.
FARES
Long-haul Hurtigruten trips can be booked online, while all tickets can be purchased from
most Norwegian travel agencies. The Hurtigruten website carries a full list of internation-
al sales agents. You can also purchase tickets through
Fjord Tours (
81 56 82 22;
THE HURTIGRUTEN - SLOW TRAVEL?
Although the Hurtigruten route is a marvellous journey, some travellers are keen to
emphasise that it's more useful as a means of getting from one town to the next than
it is for sightseeing at towns along the route, as the ferry usually only stops in ports
for 15 to 60 minutes and these times can be cut shorter if the ferry is behind sched-
ule. As one traveller noted: 'There was only one stop which gave any opportunity to
visit a town, Trondheim, but that was at 6am till 9.30am… The attitude of the ship
