Lofoten Islands (and beyond)For a few days I’d had a nagging feeling. Here I was, surrounded by stunning scenery day after day, mostly in reasonable weather. Was I now taking it all for granted? Was the daily fare of crystal-clear fjords and majestic snow-capped mountains jading my palette? So what if there’s a fantastic view across the water to distant islands, there was one yesterday and doubtless there’ll be one tomorrow. But I needn’t have worried, because … well, because (as they say) the Lofotens.
The crossing from Bodø (pronounced pretty much ‘Bhudda’ by the way) lasts just under 4 hours and the next crossing didn’t leave until 3:30, so I had plenty of time to stock up and laze about in the sunshine. I had a chat with Mannfred from Stuttgart, also with a bike and waiting for the ferry. He was in his 70s, and had come most of the way by plane and train, but was going to cycle on the Lofotens. On the ferry itself I found a seat next to a socket and recharged my devices. It stayed sunny for the duration of the crossing and a plan formed.
Leaving Bodø
Approaching Moskenes
Mannfred waiting to disembark
At the landing at Moskenes Mannfred made for the packed campsite 200 metres away, but as I’d ridden only about 20km that day and the sun was shining, and it wouldn't get dark for several weeks, I thought it best just to keep riding until I got tired. A good decision, it was one of the best bike rides ever. The road went through Rheine, hopping over bridges from islands to island, and switching from the east-facing coast to the Atlantic coast and back again, then having to go inland to the head of a fjord to come back on the other shore. All the time the low sun was lighting up the mountains which rose steeply from the coast. Now and then there would be a fishing village, and huge racks where fish was hung out. But words cannot quite convey what it was like, so here are some pictures. But they don't convey everything. You'll just have to imagine the smell of rotting fish.
They don’t want the roof of the bus shelter to blow away again.
This is as close to a sunset as you’ll get
At about 11:30 I came to a tunnel, but this differed from all the other tunnels I had ridden through in that it went under the sea. Nappstramtunnelen is only 1800m long, but goes down to 63m below sea level, and then of course climbs back up, its steepest gradient being 8%, quite enough for a heavily loaded bike. I had a bit of a weird feeling afterwards. Because the way out of the tunnel involved a climb, I thought I must be high up somewhere, and the water must be a mountain lake, when of course it was the sea. At sea level. It took some time to get my head round that.
Nappstraumen Tunnel - 2013.08 [CC BY 3.0 (
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], by rheins (Nappstraumen Tunnel - 2013.08), from Wikimedia Commons
At midnight I stopped at a roadside picnic bench and had a snack. Instant pasta with bread and cheese and some fruit.
It was now getting cold, I'd guess just above freezing. Mist was rising from a lake.
I passed through the town of Leknes, which was like a ghost town, but only because it was deserted (it was after midnight, after all) and in daylight. After Leknes there was a climb, then a descent towards the sea. To me what lay in front of me seemed like a badly painted backdrop from a budget 1950s film.
Just when I was beginning to think I was getting too tired and cold to carry on, I spotted a tent-sized patch of grass near a road junction and called it a day. A memorable day.
I slept late the following day and didn't get going till 10:00. And the scenery just carried on as before, helped no doubt by perfect weather.
I met Roy from Canada who was on his way south and didn't believe in travelling light.
I stopped for another coffee on some rocks by the shore next to a little beach. I couldn't resist a paddle in the clear water. The crab and the jellyfish I saw between my feet didn't seem bothered by my presence, certainly no more than I was by theirs.
Even in such surroundings there is the overriding practical consideration of where one is going to find food, so I aimed for Svolvær largest town on the Lofotens, where there was bound to be a supermarket. With that in mind, I stopped at a picnic table with a view of the “cathedral of the Lofotens” on the way into town and finished what food I had left. On the rock behind me were memorials for every royal visit (to the cathedral or to the picnic table?).
As I finished the last of my peanuts, a cyclist came up the road, and stopped for a chat. This was Koen from Belgium. He had followed a route similar to mine (he’d started his journey on the same Breskens-Vlissingen ferry I’d used), but sensibly avoided southern Norway by traveling through Sweden, and like me intended to return through Finland. He has a huge amount of cycletouring experience.
Just look at where he’s been since 2004. We were to meet again.
I duly filled my food pannier in Svolvaer and headed on up the E10 out of town.
The E10 is the main road through the Islands. It is possible to cycle on it and sometimes there's no choice, but there are often numerous alternatives which are longer but quieter, visiting remote fishing communities and giving good wild camping opportunities. I made it a policy to take such long cuts wherever I could and so left the E10 to follow the 888 which loops round to the west. I passed a campsite at Sandsletta but at 220kr a night preferred to take my chances finding a wild camp.
An electric cattle grid. The smoothest cattle grid I’ve ever ridden over.
Some time later I found it, the best wild camp ever, on an island in a fjord, surrounded by snow-capped peaks. The island was connected by causeways to both shores of the fjord, in fact it formed a shortcut to avoid having to go right round the end of the fjord, but was still technically an island. It was quite windy, so I took the rare precaution of unwinding and securing a guy on the windward side.
Satellite view of "my" island (highlighted) on bing
I worked for decades in IT, but from time to time I'm still amazed by modern technology. From my tent on an island in a remote fjord (itself on an island) in the Arctic Circle I rang my mother then had an email conversation with an Australian journalist who wanted to know if I was going to the 100-year remembrance ceremony for the Battle of Fromelles. In fact there were only two places in Norway where I found I couldn't get a phone signal.
It was here that my footwear started to disintegrate.
Next morning as I was packing up I saw a cyclist going across the causeway. I caught up with her at the ferry at Fiskebøll. At Fiskebøll the road rejoins the E10, but the E10 has some long no-cycling tunnels with no alternative, so bicycles cross to Vesterålen and head north to Andenes and the ferry back to the mainland. The cyclist I had seen was another Belgian, Joke from Bruges. She was another well-travelled Belgian, and we compared notes on our trips to Ethiopia.
After the ferry the road goes round the coast of Hadseløya to Storkmarknes. A Hurtigruten ferry/cruise ship was in town, and it was easy to spot the cruise passengers who were taking the opportunity of a stroll round the town centre.
After Stokmarknes two bridges bring you onto Langøya.
Then there's a choice between the direct route and the long way round to Sortland. I plumped for the long way.
I'd bought food in Stokmarknes, and found a patch of grass at the side of the road where I could sit and eat it. A local cyclist came along and wanted to know where I was from. Ah England, he said, I met two English cyclists a few weeks ago. I wondered if these were the two from Hertfordshire I'd met near Namsos, and we managed to confirm that it was because we both remembered that one of them had very narrow tyres. Positively ID’d by tyre size.
That evening I found a just-about adequate wild camp. Next day was cloudy and chilly, and I stopped in Sortland and extravagantly splashed out on a coffee and sandwich in a cafe.
Sortland is famous for having many blue buildings
Later that day I met Alaric from St Neots, who had come from Tromsø and was riding south. We swapped useful information on shops, ferries, campsites, tunnels, all the usual stuff.
By this stage I dreaded bridges more than tunnels. Especially bridges like this
In the afternoon the headwind got stronger. By the time I reached the island of Andøya it was blowing a gale. A week before the friendly sailor on the ferry had told Oriol and me that the road up the eastern side had better shelter from the wind, so that's the way I went. Not that it made much difference. The mountains are on the west, and the road on the eastern side is long, straight and exposed. If I'd wanted long straight roads into a headwind, I thought, I could have stayed in the Netherlands.
I came to a campsite at Kvalnesbrygga, and pitched my tent behind some bushes, hoping that they might give some shelter. It seems to have worked, because the tent didn't blow away. I spent most of the evening in the kitchen.
I only had about 30km to Andenes, where I was hoping to catch the second ferry of the day to the mainland, but the wind almost blew me to a standstill. I averaged only 11kph, but eventually came to the outskirts of the town. As I began to wonder which was the way to the ferry, I saw a cyclist approaching. I soon recognised Oriol. His pithy summary of the situation: “Shit weather, shit town.” He had been on the early ferry, but like most of the other passengers he’d been seasick, anything not secured had been flying about the saloon, and the ferry had turned back. It was uncertain (but very unlikely) that any more crossings would be attempted that day. Oriol had already found out that hotel rooms were prohibitively expensive, and was on his way to the airport to see what was what there.
I had a quick look round the town and then made my way to the tourist office. The woman there didn't know whether the ferry would be running (but why should she? the ferry people didn't know). Oriol then turned up, the airport was closed until the afternoon, but the tourist info woman said we could sit in one of the rooms there and use the wifi. We ended up spending most of the day there. I spent some time reading Oriol’s blog. He would write his blog in longhand, photograph it, then email that and other photographs to his wife back in Catalonia, who then typed it up. While we were there she published his account of meeting me the previous week, and it tickled me to read “qui sap si en futur ens tornem a trobar” - who knows if in the future we’ll meet again. There’s also a picture of us both, and the caption includes the word “sandàlies" and an exclamation mark.
Oriol’s blog is worth a visit, even if you don't fancy reading Catalan (not too difficult with a bit of French and Spanish with google translate as a backstop) - there are some superb photos. During the afternoon he rang his wife, and was told in no uncertain terms that he should catch a plane and definitely not get on the ferry again.
It was a long shot, but in the late afternoon I made my way towards the harbour to see if the evening ferry was sailing, but before I got there a German motorcyclist stopped and told me it was cancelled, and we made our way to the local campsite. Andreas (from Bonn) and I managed to find a relatively sheltered valley on the campsite and pitched our tents there. We spent the evening in the campsite’s dining room with a German motorcycling couple from Munich.
Andreas
We went to the ferry the following morning half expecting it to be cancelled again - it was just as windy as the previous day, but it set off on time. Just as it was pulling away I saw Oriol on the harbour - he had pitched his tent somewhere amongst the sheds and fish warehouses. He caught that afternoon’s flight to Tromsø. Some people were seasick, and my Bavarian motorcycling friends looked distinctly unwell, but Andreas was up on deck, loving every minute of it. It didn't bother me.
There was one other cyclist on the ferry, an old Bavarian who was the spitting image of Uncle Albert from Only Fools and Horses. He had an ancient narrow-tyred ‘racer’ with a trailer. I made the mistake of being sociable and asking him a question, and he replied by telling me his life story. At least I think that's what it was, because I hardly understood a word. This was a bit of a blow to my pride, having studied German dialectology (under no less an authority than R E Keller). But I didn't feel too bad when I heard him and other Germans having to converse in English.
Landing at Gryllefjord left me within striking distance of Tromsø. That day I counted 2 ferries and 7 tunnels. After one particularly long tunnel, thankfully downhill, I met an Austrian couple. I asked if they were riding all the way home. Well *he* wants to, replied the woman. I sensed an impending difference of opinion.
The first tunnel of the day just after Gryllefjord
Another tunnel
Many tunnels in this area have a help-yourself box of hi-viz vests at the entrance
Press the button and the light starts flashing. So the meaning of the warning sign goes from “There
may be cyclists in the tunnel” to “There
definitely are cyclists in the tunnel”
I also saw an arctic fox during the day. It looked as if it might be lame.
I managed to find a reasonably flat not-too-boggy patch of land for my tent just after the ferry from Botnhamn to Brensholmen. But the moss and heather made for a very comfortable mattress.
Next day saw me reach Tromsø. I had to cross a big bridge to reach Tromsøya, the island on which Tromsø lies, and then another to reach the far shore where the campsite was supposed to be.
At first I was doubtful, there seemed to be just regimented astroturf squares for campervan and caravans, but when I checked in I was directed to the woods on the other side of the stream where campers could pitch their tents wherever they wished among the trees. It was like wild camping, but for 200kr (but including use of kitchen etc). I booked in early enough to book a washing machine and drier and laundered nearly all my clothes and my sleeping bag inner. After 2 months it was about time.
Next: a day in Tromsø and the leg to Nordkapp.