Key takeaways
- The ferry links Magerholm on the Alesund side with Sykkylven across the Storfjord, and the crossing itself takes about twenty minutes.
- It is a working commuter route rather than a tourist service. It runs frequently through the day and you queue rather than reserve.
- This puts you on the fjord's shore. It shows you the Sunnmore Alps from the land, which is a different thing from being out on the fjord.
- The ferry and the boat are not competitors. If you have a day, do one of each; they show you opposite halves of the same landscape.
What the crossing is
Magerholm sits on the mainland side, a short drive south east of Alesund, and Sykkylven is across the water on the far shore of the Storfjord. Between them runs a car ferry, and it is one of the busiest short crossings in this part of Norway because it is the practical link between Alesund and the whole Sykkylven side.
It is worth understanding what kind of service this is. It is not a sightseeing cruise with commentary and a bar. It is a road, and the ferry is the part of the road that floats. People use it to get to work, to take a caravan on holiday, and to bring a lorry full of furniture out of Sykkylven, which has been a serious furniture-making town for generations.
How often and how long
The crossing takes about twenty minutes on the water, and the service runs frequently through the day, dropping back in the evening and overnight. Because it is a commuter link rather than an excursion, the timetable is dense at the hours when people travel and thinner at the hours when they do not.
You do not normally book. You drive to the quay, join the lane, and board in turn. On summer weekends and around the beginning and end of the Norwegian holiday period there can be a wait of one or two sailings, which is worth allowing for if you are connecting to anything with a fixed time.
The Storfjord crossing, which is a road rather than an excursion
Taking a car, or not
Most people take a vehicle, because the point of the crossing is to continue a journey on the far side. Foot passengers are carried too, and there is bus traffic across it, so it is possible to use without a car if you have worked out what happens when you land.
Payment on Norwegian ferries is generally handled automatically by number plate for vehicles, with an account or an invoice following, and there is nothing to do at the quay beyond joining the queue. If you are in a hire car, this is worth checking with the rental company before you travel rather than at the ramp.
What the drive shows you
Coming off at Sykkylven puts you on the shore of the country the boat runs into. From there the road system takes you along the fjord and up towards the Sunnmore Alps, past farmland on the flats and under mountainsides that go straight up from the water.
The great advantage of the land route is that you can stop. A viewpoint is a place you can stand for an hour; on a boat it is a place you pass. If you want to photograph a particular mountain at a particular time of day, or walk anywhere, the road is the only way to do it.
The great disadvantage is that a fjord seen from its shore is a fjord seen edge on. You get the mountains and you do not get the thing that makes a fjord extraordinary, which is being in the middle of it with walls on both sides.
20 min
About twenty minutes across the Storfjord, on a link that keeps running through winter weather that stops a small open boat.
How it compares with going by boat
The RIB gives you the middle of the water, at speed, at sea level, with rock towering on either side, and it does it in under two hours from the centre of Alesund with no car involved. What it does not give you is time, stops, or the ability to change your mind.
The ferry and a car give you a whole day, complete freedom, the ability to stop wherever you like, and a view from the outside looking in. What they do not give you is the fjord itself.
If somebody asked which to do with one afternoon, the answer is the boat, because the perspective is the rarer one and the logistics are far simpler. With two days, do both, and do the boat first: it shows you the shape of the place, and the drive afterwards makes far more sense for having seen it.
Reaching the fjord independently
It is entirely possible to reach the Hjorundfjord area by road, using this ferry and then continuing on, and people do it as a day trip out of Alesund. The villages along the fjord are small and quiet, and there are hotels on the water that have been taking visitors since the nineteenth century.
What you should not expect is a straightforward substitute for the boat trip. The road takes considerably longer, and the payoff is a different experience rather than the same one arrived at more cheaply.
Winter operation
The ferry runs year round. It is a road link, and roads in Norway are expected to keep working through the winter, so the crossing continues in weather that would stop a small open boat without hesitation.
That is the honest argument for the land route in the darker months. If you are here in January and the RIB is cancelled for wind, the ferry is still running, and the fjord under snow from the shore is a considerable consolation.
