The Town Of Roses

Molde - 16th June

Thank goodness for decent curtains, and possibly having a bedroom in a cupboard, because as we travel further north we are getting much shorter nights. 

This photo was taken at 3.24am – yes Roger gets up that early to take photos for the blog; it doesn’t matter whether it is 11.00pm or 3.00am it looks as light as the picture shows.

 The only time it has got darker is during a 1 hour storm; not that handy, especially when it’s late afternoon.

Today we drove from Alesund to Elnesvagen (Hustadvika), which is a couple of hours by car including a 30 minute ferry ride between Vestnes and Molde.
We broke up our journey by stopping in Sjoholt to complete a geocache at a small park with an old locomotive and dolls house version of the local hotel.

The next stop was for lunch near Vestnes before catching the ferry to Molde. It is Sunday so there was not much on offer so we settled for whatever the supermarket had. To get around the regulations restricting the size of supermarket that can be open on a Sunday, a large store reconfigures the entrance and restricts the customers to 2 aisles, some vegetable bins and a couple of refrigerator cabinets. It is quite well done because you can get basically everything you need or, if not, you get an eclectic array of food for lunch or tea.
We got suitable food for lunch and ate it by the harbour-themed lighthouse built by volunteers.

The Town of Roses or Molde is our main point for a break today as it has a lot more to see and do than our end destination. Molde is a harbour town with a well maintained wharf area and endless motor home traffic coming off the ferry. We made a quick exit up the Varden Mountain to the lookout point before having to contend with any motor homes on the narrow steep road. There are car parking spots and trails all the way up for avid hikers to get out and enjoy the great outdoors and feed the mossies. Apparently you can see over 200 peaks from the top, I’ll take their word for it.

The restaurant at the top of Mount Varden has your typical sod roof, birch underlay, peat, weeds and the tree for Christmas 2026 on the roof making sure it captures the light over the 2025 tree on the ground.
A sod roof is an energy efficient way to keep the home warm, however it needs maintenance, local plant types and snow has to be removed or it gets too heavy and saturates the roof with water when it melts.

The photo above is not of a sod roof, but somebody obviously thinks it looks nice while others of us want to get out the weed killer. The gardens of Chateau-Hagen, a small Chateau in town, are open to the public free of charge.

Molde coincidently is on the river Molde, the Moldefjord and in the Molde Municipality, very original naming. The word Molde translates to fertile soils, which is obviously why plants grow so well here and they can adopt the name Town of Roses. The bronze statue is the Rose Maiden and dancing fountain, you can view more roses on the Council roof or follow the green garden trail around town.

There are three natural gas powered ferries that run between Vestnes and Molde every 30 minutes during the day, even on Sundays. Our ferry was packed very tightly, mostly with motor homes, we are learning to stay in the car and not make the mad rush to the cafeteria every trip.

A Park-Off between a mighty VW and a Tesla

Tesla meets VW, this is the problem with owning a big Tesla in Norway, they don’t always fit in the short narrow car parks. It wasn’t the photo I wanted to post but I was too polite to take the other one. A family returned from lunching in town and in order to get the pushchair etc in the boot they had to drive out of their park into the road blocking us from leaving our car park and several others. Access to the boot wasn’t their only issue; they had gull-wing back doors, with rotating car seats for getting children in and out with ease, I assume this also needs more room than a narrow car park allows, oh the tough life of being rich. Then we waited another five minutes while planking child refused to have its nappy changed and all the relatives came to say goodbye. Cheap entertainment, as the car park was free on Sundays and we had an ice cream to consume before it melted in the warmth.

Today’s ABBA tribute is ‘Ode to Freedom’. Just like Alesund the Nazi Germans occupied the area. They also bombed harbours and surrounding towns to stop Great Britain getting a foothold or even landing on the shores. Most of the buildings in Molde were either destroyed or partially ruined.

The above pictures were taken at the Royal Birch and Peace Garden. The King and Crown Prince sought shelter in Molde while evading the Nazis, a memorial was set up and famous Norwegians, such as Nobel Peace Prize winners planted trees, to symbolise the continuing struggle for freedom, peace and human dignity both today and in the future.   

If I ever write my ode to freedom
It will be in prose that chimes with me
It would be a simple ode to freedom
Not pretentious, but with dignity
I would like to think that freedom is
More than just a word
In the grand and lofty language
Odes to freedom often go unheard