Ferries from Eidsdal ferjekai

There is no ticket office here, no barrier and nobody to pay. You drive onto the slipway, a camera reads your number plate, and the crossing appears on a card or an account later. Norwegian road ferries work this way almost everywhere, and it catches out visitors more than the fjord roads do.

How payment actually works

The system is AutoPASS for ferje. Roadside readers record the plate, or an AutoPASS tag if the vehicle has one; on most routes there are no ticket booths and cash is not accepted.

• Register a FerryPay agreement with your plate and a card, and you are charged the full fare automatically, with the receipt emailed.
• Paying through an on-board unit gives about 10% off.
• A prepaid AutoPASS account gives roughly 40 to 50% off — and you do not need the physical tag for it, because plate recognition links the vehicle to the account.

Hire cars complicate this: the charge usually reaches you through the rental company with an administration fee attached. Our guide to Norwegian ferry pricing covers the variants.

⚠ Foot passengers travel free

On Norway's road ferries, walk-on passengers are carried at no charge. The fare is attached to the vehicle, not the person, so a car of five and a car of one pay the same.

For a vehicle up to six metres the crossing here is around 140 kroner; larger vehicles scale up from there. Cyclists and walkers pay nothing.

The timetable and the boats

Eidsdal to Linge takes about 13 minutes. There are roughly 56 departures a day in the current season, the first around 06:15 and the last around 22:45, worked by M/F Harøy, M/F Sykkylvsfjord and M/F Aukra.

Our timetable holds 57 sailings in this direction and 66 the other way; the exact span shifts with the season, so treat the first and last departures as the thing to check rather than the frequency.

⚠ First come, first served — and the boat is small

Norwegian county ferries do not take reservations. Vehicles board in the order they arrive, and the Aukra carries 36 cars.

Thirty-six is not many on the road between Geiranger and Trollstigen in July, when a large share of the traffic is motorhomes taking two car-lengths each. If the queue at the slipway is longer than the deck, you wait for the next sailing — which is a short wait here, but not a zero one.

Where the road goes

This is a crossing on Fylkesvei 63, legally part of the highway rather than a service beside it. East of the slipway the road climbs the Ørnevegen hairpins to Geiranger; west of Linge it runs to Valldal and on to Trollstigen.

The service is part of the county's Fram network and operated by Fjord1, which is why two different names appear on timetables for the same boat.