Atlantic Road (Atlanterhavsvegen)

The Atlantic Road is the 36 km scenic route between Kårvåg on Averøya and Bud, a chain of seven bridges hopping between skerries on the open coast west of Kristiansund. The scenic-route page gives the road numbers as 64, 6070, 663, 6064 and 6060, and the famous one, Storseisundet, is only one of the seven. On a route it is a detour, not a through road: Molde to Kristiansund is quicker inland, and you come here because the coast is the point.

The question the brief asked, whether it is open year-round, has a two-part answer today. Fjord Norway's page on winter-open roads in Møre og Romsdal states that the Atlantic Road is open 365 days a year and that fv64, which carries it, is open all year. The Statens vegvesen list of seasonally closed roads, which would settle it from the authority, returned an error, so the stop is marked for verification even though nothing suggests a seasonal gate. What the authority's own route page does warn about is wind: it tells cyclists to beware of strong gusts on the bridges, and a winter storm is the one condition in which a car should wait too.

Timing: forty-five minutes to drive it with two stops; two hours if you walk the Eldhusøya loop, which the route page describes as a circular walk accessible to all, and sit out a squall. The road is busiest in July and August; the page itself notes heavy high-season traffic. Early morning and the hour before dusk are quiet in any month.

Practical line: there are no services on the road itself. Fuel and supermarkets are in Kristiansund, Bremsnes or Bud. Traffic alerts are on the vegvesen map and app, or by phone on 175.