Wednesday, July 16th. I slept fine at the shelter and woke up around 8:20am. I checked the ferry schedule again and the departure was at 2pm, some 5.5h away. After checking the navigation again, this seemed possible. I thought about ~3 hours of riding the bike to Bergen and according to Fjordline, the check-in would take 1 hour prior to departure.
So, around 8:30am, I started packing my stuff and omitted unnecessary tasks. About 45 minutes later, I was on the road to Bergen. A few hills awaited until a really big and steep hill made me push the bike for 30 minutes. I’ve climbed 180 meters and was sweating so much that my clothes felt like I came back from swimming. After reaching the top, the descent was followed fast and steep roads with many curves which killed my speed. Despite my worn-out brake pads and screaming braking, everything went well and I liked the fast descent a lot (to cool down and dry my wet clothes).
Luckily, that hill was the only bigger obstacle on route, and the remaining 17 km to Bergen were mostly flat and easy to ride. However, there were a bunch of closed cycling roads due to construction sites, which were annoying when riding under time pressure.
Some 3 km away from Bergen Sentrum, I ordered my ticket for the ferry from Bergen to Hirtshals (Denmark) via Stavanger. The ticket cost me 143 EUR plus some additional 100 EUR for a dinner, breakfast and a “relaxing chair” (basically a comfortable sleeping armchair). I did not book a cabin. Otherwise, the costs would have doubled easily.
So I arrived in Bergen central at noon, made some photos along the way but didn’t see very much. I will close this educational gap next year. The boarding process was fairly easy – the crew guided us to the lowest deck where we would park and secure our bikes. After doing so, I went to the top deck just as we started leaving the harbor. I literally made hundreds of photos and enjoyed this departure very much. I spent the whole afternoon and evening on top deck taking photos and staring at the Norwegian coastline, the passing ships, the blue sky – and later – the amazing sunset on the sea.
I was filled with joy and happiness, and I’m looking forward to arriving at home tomorrow. This concludes my 2025 bike journey, and I’ll post about the travel back home to Braunschweig.
30.00 km, 2h24m, 12.50 km/h, 46.21 km/h max