Julneset

It's Sunday, it's beautiful weather, we can't waste a sunny day as it somehow seems that we won't get many of them this summer....but we are both quite tired. With two weekends in a row celebrating the upcoming wedding of friends - first with a fabulous bachelorette party, next with a spectacular party for the groom to be - the batteries seem to have gone completely dead in both our bodies. We need to reload them as Monday is right around the corner and busy jobs are waiting. The best way to get the energy levels back up is sometimes to use a bit of energy, so that's what we did.

Today we have been to the first of many different Stikk UT! (Get OUT!) posts in our area. Stikk UT! is a concept created by the local Intermunicipal Outdoor Recreation Board to promote better physical and mental health by getting off the couch and getting out and about in the beautiful nature in Molde and the nine surrounding municipalities. Each municipality places 10 different posts out in nature - either on a gorgeous islet in the middle of the fjord you can paddle a kayak to, on the top of a high peak, or right on a culture trail passing different historic monuments - varying the posts to suit for families with strollers or for those who want a more challenging hike.

Each post is marked by the Stikk UT! mailbox, filled with the normal "achievement book" that you write your name into, but also with a special code connected to that specific post. For each of the posts you visit in the Stikk UT! period of the middle of May until the end of October, you register that code either online at the Stikk UT! website  or by sending a text message from your phone. After visiting seven different posts you have earned both bragging rights and the Stikk UT! mug with that year's specific design.

The post we visited today is the one at Julneset, a bit to the west of Molde's centre. After parking our car at the ferry quay at Mordalsvågen, we followed the cultural trail through the forest to the tip and top of Julneset - a stroll of 1 km that suits both families with children and two tired adults very well as the top is at only 30 metres above sealevel. The trail passes the remnants of many different bunkers that where being used by the Germans during the second world war to keep track of all the boat traffic out on the fjord.

Even though it was very windy right at the tip of Julneset, we decided to do a bit of fishing and see whether we would have some fresh fish for dinner that evening. It didn't take that many throws before we both felt the fish bite, but unfortunately we only seemed to be able to attrack pollacks too small to make a meal out of.


So it became more a game of catch and release....until some of the small pollacks where too damaged to throw back into the fjord....then we started to feed the damaged pollacks to the eager seagulls, fighting with each other for every little bite of fish.

A little bit of fishing led to a little bit of sunbathing at the less windy top of Julneset. We could have been there until the sun had set, but our stomachs started to long for dinner...so then it was just to pack our fishing gear together and follow the trail back down to the car park....this time with recharged batteries, ready for the week to come!