The Cycling Brit

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I’m Martin and I run www.thecyclingbrit.com blog. Currently cycling around the continent of Europe.
  • 12. The pilgrim’s trail across central Sweden

    12. The pilgrim’s trail across central Sweden

    Sweden represented a bit of an unknown quantity for me. I knew Denmark had the shelters, Norway the epic mountains, but what about Sweden? In all honesty I didn’t really know much about the country at all.

    They’re not short on big brand exports: IKEA, Volvo, Spotify, ABBA. But I’ve never had a clear image in my mind of the landscape, the regions, or the Swedes themselves. I’m also not sure why turnips are called swedes in some parts of Britain – turnip is one of our lexicon’s finest and should be used at every opportunity – but we digress.

    Credit: Wikipedia

    A quick geography recap: Sweden sits at the heart of what this blog refers to as Scandinavia (i.e. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland). It’s the biggest of these four countries, extending from well into the arctic circle down to below Copenhagen, but without getting all skinny at the top like Norway does. It also has double the population of its Nordic neighbours, but most folk live in the southern and coastal areas leaving vast swathes of sparsely populated countryside, especially in the north west.

    Sadly for Swedish public finances they don’t possess a wealth of oil & gas reserves like their Norwegian neighbours, but on the plus side (for me at least) the cost of living is lower here – maybe that sharp stabbing pain whenever the price pops up at the till will subside?

    Sadly there would simply not be enough time for me to spend the best part of a month exploring Sweden as I did in Norway, so my plan was to cross the border at approximately the geographic centre then make my way east to the coast, entering through the historic province of Jämtland which once upon a time was a country of its own.

    Crossing the border

    My time in Trondheim was fairly short lived, where after my 4:30am bedtime it felt almost dreamlike. I rode down from the forest where I’d camped and into the city following a long gradual descent that seemed to go on and on, conscious I would later have to ride back up the hill to my out-of-town Airbnb.

    I spent my limited budget of spare time to check out the impressive façade of Nidaros Cathedral (Nidaros being the old name of Trondheim), the most northern cathedral in Christendom apparently. I was a bit late to go in and see the shrine of St Olaf (the Norwegian king credited with flushing out that nasty paganism and bringing Christianity to the Scandinavia), but I would later find constant reminders that Nidaros is the endpoint for pilgrims walking the St Olavsleden trail on their way from the east coast of Sweden.

    Nidaros Cathedral, Trondheim

    Rather than set off for Sweden straight from Trondheim I took a short train journey up to the town of Verdalsora (aka ‘Verdal’), which had a much quieter looking road over the border. I’d had visions of double-trailer logging trucks relentlessly passing by at high speed on the larger roads in Sweden, which I was keen to minimise where possible.

    As it happens there’s a quarry around 10km outside of Verdal, so I had the good company of double-trailer lorries full of crushed rock for this section instead. The roads typically have a bit of space on the verge side of the white line so you have somewhere to go if it feels a bit close – and if you run out of gap then it might be time to go off road.

    I met a couple of Norwegians in a layby on their way back from a shopping trip to Sweden. They’d filled the car boot with beer, pop and various other goodies that fetch an eye watering price in Norway. Part of me was pleased to hear actual Norwegians acknowledging the obscenely high prices in their country – after a while you start to wonder if this is just what things cost now? Maybe I’m just being nostalgic, like when folk tell you how cheap everything was before decimalisation, without doing the necessary conversations from imperial and adjustments for 50 years of inflation.

    Following the river Inna towards the Swedish border

    Eventually the farm land subsided and was replaced by hills cloaked in trees. The road was following a river that drained from the mountain range that separates Norway and Sweden, the gradients were never too severe, but I seemed to have been going slowly uphill for hours and hours which can grind you down. I tried to take inspiration from the salmon that make the same journey up the river as they migrate to their spawning ground, then remembered that they usually die shortly afterwards.

    At the village of Sandvika I had a choice to make – keep going along the ‘main’ road or go for something more off the beaten track. There hadn’t been much traffic to be fair, but I still liked the idea of the minor road so I took a left and headed for the Swedish border near the Skäckerfjällen Nature Reserve.

    Following the trend of recent weather the heavens opened and it began to absolutely tip it down about 5km from the border. I took shelter in what I think was someone’s driveway under a suitably bushy tree, cowering in the fetal position with my hood up. It might look slightly odd, but it’s a good way to stay dry and get some rest whilst the heaviest rain passes.

    The look of someone who heard Sweden is a lot drier than Norway

    I have no idea what the other border crossings in Sweden are like, but at the one I chose the beautifully smooth Norwegian tarmac road immediately crumbles into a brown assortment of compressed mud, gravel and potholes. It had been raining so much there was a film of surface water over the mud which made the going both slippery and slow.

    Spot the difference

    After 45 minutes or so of riding I became increasingly conscious of the absence of cars and houses, there wasn’t much before the border and absolutely nothing since crossing. I knew that Sweden had some proper wilderness but I didn’t expect to dive straight into it from the get go. The rain was getting heavier, and for the first time on the entire trip it felt like I was in a genuinely remote corner of Europe. It occurred to me that now would be a really bad time to break the bike and I took extra care to weave between the myriad of potholes, although if I did end up stranded at least I had plenty of food and water.

    The dense spruce plantations of Norway were replaced by a much less densely packed and natural looking forest, with plenty of dead wood on the ground and silver birch mixed in with the coniferous species. The wooded areas frequently broke out into wide open spaces where the ground was covered in low lying heather and small mossy knolls. There was no shortage of water up here; the landscape was scattered with deep black pools, occasionally breaking out into vast lakes surrounded by wilderness on every side.

    As I cycled along I was joined by dozens of small finches darting from the branch to branch with flashes of green and gold, whilst the larger thrushes hopped around in the grass verge looking for a meal. Norway sometimes felt a little lacking in bird life but here it was thriving.

    I turned a corner and saw something large up ahead. It was a deer-like animal standing on the verge about 100m away, but it seemed to see me first and quickly extracted itself from view by disappearing into the woods. I was convinced it was a moose, and sure enough the same thing happened again 30 minutes later, but this time the animal stood its ground whilst we stared at one another for a few moments.

    A rather soggy moose – looking at me, looking at it

    After a while the illusion of cycling into the last great wilderness began to fade as I was passed by the occasional car and came across houses here and there. On a sunny day it would have been incredible to find a camp spot in one of those forest clearings beside a vast lake, but I would have gotten absolutely drenched just trying to find a decent spot never mind put up the tent. I’d spotted a campsite about another hour’s cycling away in the village of Kallsedet – so with the weather getting steadily worse I shovelled down a few handfuls of dried fruit & nuts and went fully steam ahead.

    Around five minutes from the campsite it began to truly hammer down, so rather than set up the tent on arrival I just took shelter on a bench under the canopy of the (closed) reception building. I’d have been happy to sit and cook my evening meal there and then, but the owner soon returned from his evening dog walk and showed me to the central heated ‘camping kitchen’. It was as basic as a kitchen can get – two hot rings and a microwave – but a stark difference to cowering for cover in the pouring rain outside.

    Saved by the veranda – heavy rain at Kallsedet

    As I cooked up some pasta I got chatting to a Belgian couple as they battled it out over a game of Scrabble (Flemish rules – less points for a J). We were the only one’s daft enough to be in a tent that evening, but at least theirs was already constructed. I considered sleeping on a bench in the laundry room, but a brief gap in the weather allowed me just enough time to get the tent up one one of the few remaining un-waterlogged patches of grass.

    I would spend two nights at Kallsedet waiting for the rain to pass. It’s a great basecamp for venturing into the surrounding wilderness, as it was for the Belgian couple (they had brought a canoe and were keen bird watchers), but I was getting itchy feet and just wanted to move on.

    Options Paralysis

    If an organisation has a problem, and you give them a full toilet roll list of options to try and fix that problem, that’s a recipe for options paralysis. When you sit and look at a map wondering where to go next, if you have no knowledge about towns you’d like to pass through or things to see, the number of possible routes can be similarly overwhelming. I wanted to see a bit more deep countryside before getting to civilisation, so I settled on taking the back roads to the central city of Östersund, with a goal to find some well preserved rock art along the way.

    It wouldn’t be the first time I would feel paralysis begin to creep in. My ultimate Swedish destination was Umeå – where you can get a ferry across the water to Finland – but I was starting to doubt my original planned route, it seemed too long and most of it was in the more developed eastern areas which after my adventure through the wilderness seemed a bit…tame.

    There was another elephant in the room that was beginning to affect my decision making. Us Brits gets 90 days in the Schengen area before we have to get out and stay out (…for 90 more days). I hadn’t really let this impact any of my decisions until now, but I knew the deadline day would be somewhere in the latter half of July, which meant the 1-month countdown had begun; suddenly I was beginning to feel the light squeeze of time pressure.

    Bear anxiety

    The rain had subsided and the sun was back out, so I left Kallsedet along a gravel road that hugged the edge of a long lake heading east.

    Sweden seemed less intimidating in the sun, and knowing I could turn around and head back to Kallsedet was a reassuring plan B if things went belly up. I wanted to do a wild camp, but there was still one thing in the back of my mind: bears.

    A map of brown bear population density in Sweden, along with my rough trajectory. Source: Wild Sweden

    I knew there were bears in Europe, although I have to hold my hands up and admit that I initially thought they were black bears – you know the relatively small ones that are afraid of their own shadow. But no, Europe is home to a subspecies of brown bear, and although they are much less aggressive than their north American ‘grizzly’ cousins, adult males can weigh up to 650kg and stand 8’2″ tall…that is eleven times bigger than me (by weight thank you; I may be a little short, but am definitely taller than 9 inches). The average adult female is 150-300kg which is still a big unit, and one that is perfectly adapted to their environment.

    When you’re cycling through the deep forest sometimes the mind can wander, you begin to play out different scenarios and wonder how best to react:

    • RUN/CYCLE: bears can run at least 30mph, the only half-chance would be if there happened to be a convenient long dowhill escape route on the bike.
    • SWIM: bears love a good swim. I don’t know exactly how fast they swim, but it’s definitely faster than my shoddy doggy paddle, especially wearing clothes.
    • CLIMB: yup, that bear is going to put you to shame. Just look at those claws, it’s playing on easy mode!
    • FIGHT: Reckon you can take a brown bear in a fist fight? You better pray the bear backs down, because that’s a fight you will lose.
    • THE OFFICIAL ADVICE: the internet will tell you bear spray is the best protection against an aggressive charging bear. But Eurasian bears are less likely to charge you in the first place, so most advice I’ve seen is to remain calm upon a rare encounter and slowly back away in the direction you came from. The Finnish government provides advice on a dedicated website.

    So with bears lingering in the back of my mind, when I came across a perfect little camping area next to a hydroelectric dam in the sleepy village of Rönnöfors, I didn’t really mind that it wasn’t out there in the deep wilderness. I wasn’t’ a campsite, but it was certainly not ‘wild’ camping; the proximity to civilisation brought with it a psychological security blanket.

    The nearby wooden shack provided excellent midge-free dining, and

    The further I rode into Sweden I began to appreciate how rare sightings actually are in this country, especially from the road. It would be incredible to see one…maybe a well fed one, without cubs, from a distance.

    Rock art at Glösa

    I didn’t come into Sweden with a plan to seek out rock art, but it soon became clear there was plenty of it around in Jämtland based on the tourist information boards and maps scattered around. There was one site in particular that kept popping up: Glösa.

    The location helped with my route planning indecision, giving me a solid target and confirming that I would now definitely pass through Östersund. From my waterside camping spot I would head south to the satisfyingly named town of Kaxås, before taking the back road to Glösa and hopefully camp on the shores of the mighty (and curiously stag beetle shaped) lake Storsjön.

    I was basking in perfect sunny weather conditions and the ride to Glösa was about as relaxed and enjoyable as cycle touring can get. Kaxås had a quirky cafe / homewares shop that seemed to actively disguise itself from passers by, and I spotted what looked like a family of emus tip toeing through a field of long grass (I assume they were cranes).

    The road to Kaxås

    I was back on gravel roads and the terrain was getting hilly as the car park for Glösa approached. The site itself is on exposed bedrock at the top of a waterfall, surrounded by woodland. You wander down an idyllic farm track where well-groomed horses watch you intently amongst spring flower meadows.

    Equine fields along the path to Glösa

    The path leads into an area of pine woodland and you can hear the sound of cascading water emerge from an opening in the trees. The water has carved a sequence of smooth steps as it makes its way down the hill side, with an especially broad area of smooth bedrock exposed on the far side – this is the canvas our ancestors chose for their artistic expressions.

    The rock art setting at Glösa
    Detail of the rock art at Glösa. The red colour is a modern addition to enhance the viewing experience

    I’ve seen my fair share of rock art before where you really have to fire up the imagination to transform the scratchy squiggle in front of you into the subject matter, but not at Glösa. Well, they can’t quite work out exactly what species some of the figures are supposed to be, but they aren’t absurdly inaccurate like those medieval artists who seemed to paint from source material acquired via a long game of Chinese whispers. The central moose is unmistakable and looks to be next to a large net, possibly with another net on its back. It never occurred to me that hunter gatherers might use nets to catch large land animals rather than stalking them with arrows and spears etc., clearly they were a bit smarter than me.

    Östersund

    I decided to make use of the good weather and camp on the forested shores of lake Storsjön around 10km from the town, which was ok in the end but it took several attempts to find a spot acceptably far away from the forest’s abundant ant nests and their army of residents.

    Östersund is quite a small city but a pleasant and clean one. The high street is colourful and has a relaxed atmosphere, and there is an undeniably high quotient of stylish and good looking people (I think it’s a Swedish thing). There was a surprising number of big, shiny vintage American cars like Cadillacs and Chryslers on the streets, not just in Östersund but across Sweden, although to my delight there were even more old school Volvo’s and Saab’s kicking around of course.

    To celebrate being out of Norway I headed into town for a few beers on Saturday night, ending up in a rock/metal venue that opens till 3am. Given the late closing time I was waiting for proceedings to evolve from ‘bar’ to ‘club’ at any moment…but the music remained quiet, the conversation polite, and the dancefloor non-existent. It was pleasant an all, but a very different cup of tea to somewhere like Satan’s Hollow in Manchester – more Swedish, I suppose?

    Candle lit conversation at Jane Doe

    I stayed in a quirky hostel operated by the Nationalmuseum Jamtli, which has a significant ‘open air’ aspect where actors wander around in full 18th century costume, sometimes right outside my window. I was in some sense a part of the exhibit, although sadly they didn’t give me a costume.

    A couple of nights in hostels had given my body a break from cycling and a chance to recover, which for me is one of the main benefits of spending time in cities. With the help of some self-administered massage, the perennial tightness in my quads and iliotibial band softens up and the dull ache in my hands subsides.

    The wood amongst the trees

    Nearly 70% of the land in Sweden is covered in forest, and I’ve seen one source estimate the total number of trees at 87 billion. The UK by comparison has only 13% forest cover, but apart from when I crossed the border most of the forest looked like it was being managed for commercial logging. Ancient woodland in the UK is one of our ecological treasures and I was keen to find the Swedish equivalent, if there was such a thing.

    From what I can tell only a few percent of Swedish forest can be categorised as ‘old growth’. It seems that the best place to find these woodlands are in the protected nature reserves, and there happen to be one south of Östersund: Berge Virgin Forest Nature Reserve.

    Berge provided another way-point to plan my trip around, which helped finalise my plan to get through Sweden – I would continue to ride south east and reach the city of Sundsvall, where I could catch a train up the coast to Umeå and take the ferry to Finland. Time was beginning to tick, so the train was necessary.

    Old growth forest at Berge Urskogs Naturreservat

    Berge is not a large forest and at first I wasn’t sure if I would be able to locate the alleged footpath from the map, but if you look hard enough you’ll find a roughly 1km long path that starts from a small layby beside an information board.

    One thing the old growth forests have in abundance is mosquitoes. A face net would be well advised especially after a lot of rain. There’s a lot more life in that forest than mozzies though, and as soon as you walk in it feels different to the commercially forested sruff.

    There was deadwood in every direction: on the ground, standing up, or sometimes leaning over precariously. The tree species were still mainly spruce, Scots pine and birch, but there was a good mixture of sizes with a few whoppers mixed in there. Much of the older looking deadwood was coated in lichens and mosses, with solid looking bracket fungi growing straight from the trunks above and dozens of soft bodied little mushrooms sprouting from the forest floor. Up in the canopy was a bird making a sound I did not recognise – was it a three-toed woodpecker? I don’t think so.

    If you do make it past the mosquitos the path eventually leads to an opening in the trees where you are rewarded by a picnic bench. Worth a visit if you’re in the area, and quite different to the ancient woodland I’ve come across in the UK.

    Completing the (reverse) pilgrimage to Sundsvall

    The rest of my journey was propelled by a strong tailwind, which is superb until you try and put the tent up. I briefly considered the lakeside campsite in the small town of Bräcke but it had been transformed into a wind tunnel, so I headed back into the hills and found a sheltered spot next to a small outcrop of granite bedrock. It was by far the most ‘wild’ camp of Sweden to date, and whether the enormous moose skull that had been placed on the crown of a nearby plinth of rock served to ward off or attract evil spirits, perhaps I’ll never know.

    I was still on the St Olavsleden path and approaching the end (or the beginning rather). As I rode those last few kilometres through an increasingly agricultural landscape I wondered about the differences between Sweden and Norway beyond the landscape. One thing that was not different was their obsession with pic n’ mix: they both go nuts for it, and you often see Lördagsgodis deals in the supermarkets with price reductions on Saturdays…a good day to stock up on your riding snacks! (I had to stop buying the chocolate and fudge ones to manage the urge to demolish my ‘on the bike’ snacks in the evening back at camp.)

    Pic n’ mix done properly – a common sight in Swedish and Norwegian grocery stores

    Norwegian and Swedish seem to be mutually intelligible languages and many of the words phrases you learn in one will be understood in the other. You can in theory include Danish under that umbrella too, but I heard one Norwegian describe Danish to be spoken “like they have a potato in their mouth”, making it somewhat harder to dicipher.

    But there are of course many subtle differences you pick up on. On a few occasions in Sweden I was passed by slow-moving pick up trucks with red triangles displayed on the back – I presumed they were hunting moose, until it happened in the middle of a city. It was actually teenagers (as young as 15) driving modified cars limited to 30km/h under a peculiar sort of provisional license that can be traced back to the 1920s. I would have loved that at 15, but at 38 I’m quite happy this is not a thing back home.

    I kept seeing homemade signs for “Loppis” pop up on the side of the road in Sweden. Eventually curiosity got the better of me and I found out they were pointing to some kind of garage or yard sale. Now Loppis is a good word – maybe not quite turnip level good, but few words are.

    A Loppis sign, painted with passion

    My final camp en route to Sundsvall was at a small lakeside swimming area that is maintained to provide camping facilities for the St Olavsleden pilgrims, with a composting toilet, fresh water and even electrical outlets to charge up the devices. It was about as good as it gets, and I thanked the lady who maintained it as she came down for the morning tidy up – she was pleased I had camped because it meant the local Canada geese hadn’t spent the evening pooing all over her neatly mowed grass.

    Sunset at lake Stödesjön

    I spent the afternoon in Sundsvall doing absolutely no cultural activities whatsoever, opting instead to relax in the conservatory of a restaurant overlooking the square, doing my bit to bring down the average level of stylishness (and cleanliness) of their clientele to a more reasonable level. I got the evening train to Umeå and caught a few hour’s tent rest before a 5am start to catch the morning ferry to Finland.

    —————————-

    PHOTOGRAPHY: Trondheim to Umeå

  • 11. Norway III: the wet n’ wild coastal route to Trondheim

    11. Norway III: the wet n’ wild coastal route to Trondheim

    I was given stern warnings about the weather in Norway before I left. First there was the cold – if I arrived too early in spring there could still be snow on the ground and subzero temperatures at night. The second (and more likely given my late-May ETA), was the rain. People say Norway’s west coast is the wettest place in Europe, but it hadn’t seemed all that bad so far..

    I was still riding the tail end of the 3-day long mini-heatwave, so it would remain warm and dry for my ride up Hjørundfjorden towards the sea before island hopping to the outskirts of Ålesund. It is one of the many fjords where large sections along the edge remain steeply forested with no roads, so a convoluted triple ferry manoeuvre was required to get from Urke to the village of Store Standal, including a chunky four hour wait at Sæbø. It was a good chance to do some bicycle maintenance and enjoy some ice cream in the sun (although I did feel for the local shopkeeper who was rushed off his feet trying to keep up with demand from sweltering ferry passengers).

    Ålesund sits on the end of a narrow island and is effectively surrounded by the sea. There aren’t really any camping options in the town itself, so the sensible option seemed to be to stay on a nearby island and get the ferry from Hareid in the morning. Hareid itself seemed a bit dodge (by Norwegian standards), so I headed north along the coast until the tarmac turned to a gravel path leading up to the Kvitneset WW2 fort.

    Remains of the fort at Kvitneset – you could camp in one of the old ammunition storage caves, if you like dark & damp sort of places

    I managed to find a nice patch of flat grass on what was presumably a former gun platform, where the grass was trimmed low by the resident flock of sheep. I wondered if they might infiltrate the tent to try and steal my food, but with the exception of some nearby bleating, chewing, and (uncannily human) coughing at around 4am, they otherwise kept well away.

    On Sunday I caught the late morning ‘fast ferry’ to Ålesund. Around half-way through the short journey I stood up to go to the loo just as the ferry hit the crest of a wave and jerked forward, propelling my thigh into the solid metal armrest, which was completely non-retractable. I swear the notion of Scandinavian design being the gold standard is one of the greatest PR stunts of all time, I come across bad design over here on a daily basis, so don’t be fooled into thinking the entire place is one big well-designed paradise. I stepped off that ferry with a solidly dead leg, and I hadn’t even done any exercise.

    Ålesund and an unexpected reunion

    I’d heard Ålesund was a favoured stopping point for the big cruise companies, and the closest major town to the famously steep Geirangerfjord (a place I decided to give a miss to avoid a grueling 600m climb in 25°C). Sure enough there was a beaming white steel & glass behemoth sat in the dock with a steady stream of tourists funneling out of the sole exit before scurrying in different directions around the town like ants. This was feeding time for the various tourist industry workers who were standing at the ready: scooping up as many as possible into gift shops, open-top buses and walking tours.

    It was surreal to be surrounded by so many non-Norwegian people all of a sudden – Germans in this instance – and although the cafés and restaurants must get plenty of cruise trade there is definitely something jarring about the sheer volume of people descending onto such a small town. It’s just a good job they didn’t all arrive on touring bikes because that really would be a mess.

    But hang on a second now, did we establish the cruise ship was from Germany? Let’s take a closer look at that boat…

    We meet again – the AIDA prima in Ålesund

    What a surreal moment. I imagined us racing neck-and-neck from Germany like Clarkson and Hammond in a carefully choreographed ‘Top Gear challenge’ segment. But that was far from the case: AIDA’s fjord tours last about 10 days and it was nearly 5 weeks since our last encounter on the outskirts of Hamburg, so I had probably been lapped, several times maybe.

    Ålesund is full of attractive art deco buildings thanks to the fire that ravaged the preceding wooden ones in 1904. There’s a museum about the town’s architecture which is good to escape the rain, and if it’s still raining when you’re all architectured out you can hop over to the fishing museum on the same ticket and learn all about how Norway pioneered salt fish and cod liver oil production (although the exhibition on modern fishing is only in Norwegian, so I don’t know to what extent they touch on how the industry is managing a historically overfished population of Atlantic cod).

    Tough gig – apparently these women would fillet up to 1,000 fish per shift

    Hung up on the walls in black and white were old group photos of the fish processing plants’ workforce, with not a great deal of smiles on offer. It was dangerous work out on the fishing boats at sea, but it must have been grim just standing there slicing and gutting hundreds of cold wet fish all day, especially in winter. I hope they had good soap!

    Wet, Wet, Wet

    The plan from Ålesund was to straddle the coastline and hop between the various island archipelagos via bridges, ferries and one unavoidable tunnel (on a bus) into Kristiansund.

    Credit: OpenStreetMap

    I waited for a break in the rain to depart and managed a few hours of dry riding, but it wasn’t long before the weather caught up with me. I would take strategic coffee breaks or just pull into bus shelters during the heavier downpours to delay the onset of total saturation.

    They say you shouldn’t mow your lawn when it rains, but I don’t know if that gets programmed into the robotic lawnmowers that slowly work their way around gardens right across Norway. I’ve seen one or two in Britain but here they are everywhere – and ok they might seem pretty benign, like someone taught Roamer how to garden – but when the robots rise up this lot will be right there on the front line, getting in our way and tripping us over whilst we battle against other Wi-Fi connected household appliances that have turned against us, wondering when it all started to get out of hand.

    I’m pretty sure that grass doesn’t need more cutting

    I lucked out that evening when I stumbled upon a large weather proof shelter in a small patch of woodland beside a beach, avoiding the ordeal of tenting in the rain. It felt great to be sleeping on a dry surface, and other than a deer making strange noises around 2am it was quite peaceful out of the wind.

    The next day didn’t really have heavy downpours, but the rain was more consistent. I glanced ahead to see two more cycle tourists going a little slower than me – the road was quite winding so I waited for a safe moment to pass. As I did so the chap at the back asked in a German accent where I was from, and before I knew it we were chatting away. It was a real pleasure to slow down a little and cycle alongside Hartmut and Beatrice that day, who were both kind at heart and stoic in the saddle, not letting their age or past health issues stop them from an attempt to reach the Nordkapp. Danke schön for the sandwiches and good luck on your journey!

    I think they thought I was a bit mad choosing to wild camp that evening – they would turn out to be right

    We reached the campsite where Hartmut & Beatrice settled down in the small small cabin they had booked for the evening and I took a short break before pushing on to find a camping spot of my own. I was feeling quite fresh after the reduced pace and my tent was bone dry so it seemed like a reasonable decision. However, the coast turned out to be quite limited in terms of camping options, especially ones that didn’t involve getting your feet soaking wet in long grass or risk puncturing the tent floor on rough vegetation. I came across a group of small islets connected by bridges and began to put the tent up at the end of the road next to a car park, only to be mobbed by mosquitos – the proper ones where it actually hurts and you get a bump – so I abandoned and found an alternative patch next to a tiny little harbour containing a single boat.

    Not ideal weather for taking down your tent

    That night the wind really began to pick up. The tent was pegged in ok but it’s hard to get a real solid anchor on gravelly ground, so I reinforced my fabric seaside cottage by attaching the windward facing guy rope to a heavy log. It was the biggest test to date of the tent in strong wind, and despite the customary wobbling everything survived intact. The problem was despite my efforts to stall departure it was still pissing it down when the time came to pack up and go; despite my efforts to shield from the rain the inner tent (i.e. my bedroom) was now soaking wet, which is where I draw the line in non-emergency situations.

    Foreseeing that such a situation might play out and that I would need a break from the weather that evening, I had booked an Airbnb the evening before, and with a relatively early check in time of 2pm the plan was now to cycle 14km between Askevågen and Farstad ASAP. I think because it was only 14km I didn’t bother putting my waterproof trousers or overshoes on – that was a mistake, I was absolutely dripping.

    Approaching full saturation

    The Oasis

    My Airbnb was by far the cheapest in the area, with the reassurance of plentiful glowing reviews accumulated over a decade. It was a recently renovated detached wooden cottage from the early 20th century which was also the landlady’s home, although given she was away that week I had the full place to myself…not bad for £22!

    Conditions outside were getting progressively worse but by the time I had showered and changed into dry clothes the foul weather just made my cottage oasis seem even more cosy. I put Bach and Hummel piano concertos on the well stocked CD player, drank complimentary tea in Moomin cups, and basked amongst the trinkets and quirky objects gathered by the owner on her own travels.

    My room was in the attic up the world’s steepest spiral staircase. It could sleep four or five, so I used the spare space to erect the tent and let it air out. By the time I left the following day everything was bone dry…except of course, the weather.

    The push for Kristiansund

    Kristiansund is almost exactly half way between Ålesund and Trondheim and a natural target for the day ahead. I learned from my previous mistake and went fully waterproof this time with trousers and overshoes. The main issue I have in this regalia is ventilation; it doesn’t take long to get quite sweaty, but it’s such a faff getting in and out of everything that I try and find other ways to keep cool. One method that works well is when descending after a sweaty climb, unzip your jacket and pull up your t-shirt to reveal your midriff: you might get puzzled squints from onlookers trying to rationalise the sight of someone cycling in a waterproof trousers and a tube-top combo, but it will dry off a sweat-soaked back in no time at all, give it a try!

    I crossed over the famous Atlantic Ocean Road sequence of humpback bridges that connect a chain of small islands between Vevang and Kårvåg. The bridges are impressive to observe with their steep and bendy inclines, but not particularly pleasant cycling with the abundance of traffic (especially motorhomes), so I was glad to get across onto the large island of Averøya.

    The Atlantic Ocean Road, which after nearly 100 years of planning was completed in 1989

    During a supermarket pitstop I picked up a litre of chocolate milk with the intention of attaching it to my bottle cage (as I have been doing with regular milk) but the bottle was a funny shape and wouldn’t fit, so I drank the full litre. Riding the sugar rush, I headed for what I thought was a shortcut across the island, but turned out to be a tediously winding climb on gravel roads. Mercifully the heaviest rain held off until I had safely descended into the southern village of Kornstad, where I immediately dumped the bike under a tree and ran for the sanctuary of Kornstad church’s eaves (I’ve found the actual church buildings to be invariably locked in Scandinavia).

    But even in the heaviest of rain there can be sunshine close behind.

    The passing storm
    Is that…blue sky!?

    I continued to push onwards, playing hide & seek with the heavy downpours along the way. It was slow progress, but with intermittent highlights such as the incredible light show following that storm and the village of Kvernes with its well preserved stave church and abundant ancient burial mounds.

    The weather finally improved around 10:30pm (which is still quite light) and I decided my best bet was to get myself to the lighthouse that overlooks the bay around Kristiansund. The path was gravelly and a little steep in places, but the decision was a good one: there was beautifully short well-drained grass just next to the lighthouse, and thanks to the wonders of mechanisation the old lighthouse keepers are a longtime redundant, leaving the place to just me and the gulls.

    Stavneset lighthouse, with an approaching fishing boat on the left

    It felt good to get a high quality coastal camping experience in the bag, most to date had been tainted by the bad weather. I felt a misplaced sense of importance being up there on that precipice, like I was the new lighthouse keeper watching over the trawlers and ferries below. Fortunately for them their safe passage was nothing to do with me, and I took a bus through the tunnel into Kristiansund to relax and eat pizza before carrying on.

    Lock-gate

    One thing I like about Kristiansund is on one side of the street you have the sea front commercial properties – cafés, bars, architects etc. – and on the other you have the dock. So if you’re in a good sized ship and want to park up for a pie and a pint, you don’t have to lay anchor in some distant industrial port and book a taxi into town: just rock up, lower the access ladder and you’re in amongst it. Now that’s a proper seafarer’s town.

    Crew of the Eidsvaag Polaris sussing out a parking spot in downtown Kristiansund

    Usually when I use Google Maps to do a quick route for me it works out fine, and it saves time over using dedicated cycling software (Komoot). When I used it to guide me to my ferry en route out of Kristiansund, it took me around the back of the airport on the steepest gravel path I’ve ever attempted to ride the bike up – it was a full gas effort just to move the thing forwards without tipping over: utterly exhausting. The route wasn’t wrong, it just took me an insanely difficult way because that route had a bit more cycle path and that’s what the algorithm prioritises. The lesson being sometimes it’s worth checking what terrain lies ahead before you blindly follow the nice robot lady’s directions.

    When the ferry rolled into port at Tømmervåg I felt pretty good. I’d had a good chat with an older Norwegian gentleman who I’d befriended in the passenger waiting room. He was being collected by his wife, and as I waved him goodbye and pedalled off into the evening light my legs felt strong – like a load had been lifted. Fuelled by a huge bag of dried fruit & nuts and a strong tailwind I was whizzing along at a rapid pace.

    Stopping for a brief rest in a bus stop between Nordheim and Ånes, I got the unsettling sensation in my bones that something wasn’t quite right. I recalled briefly contemplating at the last stop that my lock was not in its usual place strapped on top of my rear rack bag, assuming I must have placed it inside the bag (as I occasionally do). I always remember a colleague once saying to me “Never ASSUME, it makes an ASS out of U and ME” – well this was a prime example: the lock was gone.

    I actually stitched together a daft little video about this incident on the social media platform Instagram – which is not all that easy to access if you don’t have an account – but I will probably upload these little videos to YouTube at some stage to make these clips a bit more accessible. In short, I turned around and started cycling back in the direction I came from (into a savage headwind) hunting down my beloved Kryptonite D-lock. I prayed it had just been placed on the floor in the last place I’d stopped 17km away, but deep down I knew it wasn’t there…I distinctly remember taking it off on the ferry and had no memory of picking it up again.

    Not only did I end up retracing the full 35km back to the ferry but I was too late to board the last of the day to have a look, so I had to find somewhere to camp. In a bid to avoid pitching my tent I ended up following a footpath through a forest towards a hiking hut, before turning back again when the terrain became unmanageable. It was 1:30am on this footpath in the woods when I spotted a baby owl up in a nearby tree, screeching away whilst looking at me. It’s amazing how wildlife can lift your spirits in moments of hardship. I camped on some grass at the edge of a field beside the footpath.

    The next morning I boarded the ferry only to find no lock in sight. I had braved myself for this because the local shopkeeper had warned me there were actually two ferries on that route – I boarded the second and held my breath as I approached the cycle parking corner.

    My lock, in the exact place I left it 13 hours previously

    At that point it was not about the cost of replacing a lock, it was about not letting that time and effort go to waste. I had psychologically prepared myself to ‘let it go’ if the lock couldn’t be found on either ferry, because at that point I would have done everything I can within reason to get it back. But a successful mission is bloody good for morale, and it was only a few hours until I was beyond yesterday’s turning point and making new ground.

    One last rain dance

    I was making good ground but the forecast predicted a tremendous volume of rain from around 4pm: I needed a shelter. The small town of Aure has a pizza restaurant that is also a café and a bar, where I managed to stretch out a coffee, pizza, and bottle of pop over five hours without being asked to leave. I timed my departure for a break in the rain, and tweaked the route so that it would be a monster tailwind for the duration.

    Clearly not learning anything from my previous ‘shortcut’, the new route took me over a mountain pass rising well over 200m above the valley floor in just a couple of kilometres. The conditions were far from ideal but I had the wet weather gear and took it especially steady on the downhills. It was beginning to feel like I was up against the final boss of Norwegian foul weather: everything had been leading up to this battle, culminating in sideways rain under dark grey skies wondering whose idea it was to place a Hollywood-style “Aure” sign at the top of this hill? California can only dream of rainfall like this.

    Welcome to Aure – we hope you brought a coat

    I made my way to a roadside ‘rest place’ and pitched the tent as quickly as I could before the wind picked up again. It howled from around 1-3am, but then that was it. The rain stopped, the wind subsided, and the sun slowly began to show its face throughout the day.

    Riding the solstice

    Trondheim was finally starting to feel within reach just as the weather was picking up again. The landscape was saturated even more than usual from the relentless rain and one valley in particular seemed to have a waterfall cascading down every nook and cranny, they were everywhere.

    I turned a corner and immediately recognised the couple patiently pushing their loaded bicycles up the long incline – it was Hartmut and Beatrice! We must have been doing a bit of cat and mouse since our last rendezvous, although it sounded from the faint hint of trauma in their voices that they’d spent a good amount of time pedalling through heavy rain instead of hiding in restaurants nibbling on pizza in slow motion. They were happy to see the sun again though and we rode together for another hour or so before parting ways.

    Beatrice and Hartmut above Gagnåsvatnet, west of Orkanger

    It’s amazing what Beatrice and Hartmut have already accomplished on their trip, regardless of where it takes them next. I do wonder if they might find their next cycling adventure a little less arduous with a sprinkle of E-bike magic for those pesky hills…and at least one GPS!

    When I rolled into the outskirts of the attractive town of Orkanger my eyes were drawn to the golden arches of McDonald’s. Clearly not something you should eat every day, but at 10pm when everywhere else is closed and with no desire to whip out the stove and start cooking, it was a no brainer.  I even saw a couple of beavers play fighting in the river outside…that’s Norway for you!

    Not your typical fight outside McDonald’s – beavers in the river Orkla

    With my evening meal sorted and in perfect conditions on the longest day of the year 63° north of the equator, here was an opportunity for a memorable night ride. I decided to push ahead to Trondheim at an easy going pace and camp at a nice looking shelter & camping spot run by the Norwegian Trekking Association (DNT) at Rønningen, up on a hill in a forest just outside of Trondheim.

    I will finish with some pictures from that blissful evening ride. It was perfectly still, and the sun dipped below the horizon at 11:40pm before rising again at 3am – there was no real end to the sunset or beginning to the sunrise, just one continuous blending of burnt orangey pink light shifting slowly from west, to north, to east. My flysheet was wet from the night before but it was so sunny I didn’t need it, and by the time I got into bed at 4:30am the sky was blue. It was the shortest night of my life, and a special one.

    ——————————–

    PHOTOGRAPHY: Urke to Trondheim

  • 10. Norway II: a mountainous detour down Sognefjord

    10. Norway II: a mountainous detour down Sognefjord

    WarmShowers was just what I needed. My host Rob treated me to a hearty dinner and a warm, dry haven from the torrential rain hosing its way down the cobbled streets of central Bergen. On top of the recuperation, it was refreshing to have some more extended conversation after a stint of solo wild camping, and I was grateful to receive intel on my planned route and where some of the most dramatic scenery can be found. Thanks again Rob, and best of luck with your future glacier research – I was about to do some (rather less sophisticated) research of my own!

    Bergen has a well preserved cluster of timber buildings beside the central dock and I was keen to have a poke around, so I opted to park the bike and panniers in a locker using the Bikely app. There are several clusters of these lockers in Bergen and are free for the first 4 hours, absolutely perfect for cycle tourists looking to spend a few hours in a city.

    The locker narrows towards the rear, so you need to remove the panniers and slide the bike in backwards

    Bizarrely, on my 1 km journey to the bike lockers I managed to ride up a very pointy kerb and gave myself a flat front tyre. It was my own fault for not putting any air inside since Denmark – but if you’re going to get a flat tyre it may as well be in the middle of a city with multiple bike shops and mechanics at the ready if needed. I decided to take some time out and spend the afternoon fixing, cleaning and adjusting. By the time I left it felt almost new!

    Ice cream and the Art of Bicycle Maintenance

    After all the fiddling and tweaking I didn’t manage to escape Bergen until 6pm, so it was another evening ride on the cards. Once free from the urban sprawl on Bergen’s north side there are a couple of road bridges linking to the small town of Knarvik. 3D road designs never come across that well on 2D maps and I briefly ended up underneath the larger bridge at dead end where a campervan and cyclist in a small green tent were bedding down for the night. It was 9pm and the night was young, so I carried on.

    Nordhordland Bridge, with a relic from Nazi occupied Norway

    With every intention of finding a spot to pitch the tent, on a rural road junction I stumbled upon the Rolls-Royce of bus stop shelters: fully enclosed at one end with double glazed windows, chairs and a bench. I know it’s a bit cheeky, but with the buses long since parked up for the night I couldn’t resist the convenience. The issue with this strategy is that if the shelter is a little bit too comfortable, you’re less likely to be up and gone before society springs back to life. So Anna if you’re somehow reading this: I hope you got to school ok, and well done for choosing archery instead of rock climbing like all the other kids at summer camp; it’s important to do what makes you happy, rather than following the crowd.

    We ride together

    On a solo cycle tour you spend a large part of your day in your own company. You have fleeting interactions with cashiers in the supermarket and cafés, and the heavily loaded bike is a good conversation starter with intrigued strangers in the street, but for the most part it’s just you and your thoughts.

    I think the idea of being alone for such a long time puts a lot of single people off cycle touring, which I can understand. But like with other modes of travelling there are ways to make it more sociable, such as staying in hostels, or as I found out, by getting yourself onto a major cycle touring route.

    EuroVelo 1 is the first of 17 long-distance cycling routes across Europe, spanning the Atlantic coast from Portugal up to the most northerly tip of Norway (Nordkapp). The Norwegian leg of EuroVelo 1 starts in Bergen, and I had spotted a few cycle tourists wandering the city’s streets (we don’t exactly blend in seamlessly with the locals, so it wasn’t difficult).

    After waving goodbye to young Anna as she boarded the school bus (equipped with an anecdote about practicing her English with an actual Englishman, eating his breakfast at the bus stop), I rode for an hour or so before stopping to make an adjustment to the bike. Hunched awkwardly over the back wheel, I heard the screech of another cyclist coming to a halt.

    “Hi! Where have you come from?”

    Finn was a high-speed train engineer from Hamburg and a big St Pauli football team fan, with the Jolly Roger emblem I had seen plastered on every street corner in Hamburg adorning his water bottle. He was also practically a baby at 22 and riding an aerodynamic setup equipped with with aluminium frame and time trial bars. He had 6 weeks to get to the Nordkapp and catch a pre-booked plane home, so he was optimised for maximum speed and minimal faff, quite different to my maximal comfort setup. Like a Lamborghini and a Rolls-Royce, horses for courses.

    A rare moment of me riding ahead of Finn

    Realising we were both set to be on EuroVelo 1 for the rest of the day we agreed to ride together. I could just about hold on to the pace even if it did require some heavy breathing and Finn to wait for me at the top of the steeper climbs. After a couple of hours riding we pulled up in a local shop for lunch, where a cycle touring couple from Belgium were sat at the large adjoins picnic bench doing the same.

    Jan and Hannelore were from Flanders and also heading for the Nordkapp (am the only cyclist in Norway not going there?). They were loaded up in a slightly more ‘bikepacking’ style than mine, with less luggage on the rear rack and knobbly tyres, but had a more relaxed approach to daily distances than young Finn, having the luxury of a bit more time to meander their way up north.

    As we lunched in the early afternoon sun someone got chatting to a young chap donning an orange high-vis flotation jacket. He seemed to be some sort of Norwegian social media personality who was ditching the party animal life to renovate an old lodge he had inherited.

    “Things got dark, I nearly died jumping into a swimming pool.”

    He showed us a video on his phone: he was perched on the roof of a house poised to jump into a nearby swimming pool, but something went awry and be botched the entry – smashing his face on the way down

    “The surgeon said I was lucky, if I landed one inch the other way I’d be a dead man!”

    We agreed it was for the best that he was now off the booze – doing less Steve-O style stunts – and wished him good luck with the house renovation. Not everyone in rural Norway has always lived the quiet country life.

    That day we rode as a quad along EuroVelo 1 as the terrain slowly became steeper, more dramatic and wild as we approached the mouth of the mighty Sognefjord, Norway’s longest and deepest fjord. The route climaxed with the largest most difficult climb of the entire tour to date, and poor Finn (who had ridden for longer than any of us and burned a lot of matches going quickly up the shorter climbs) was beginning to suffer. After a much needed descent to the ferry terminal we accidentally took the scenic route on our final crossing to Rysjedalsvika, before settling down on a patch of grass Jan had managed to find using an app for wild camping spots.

    Kudos to Finn for the high-vis Monsters Inc. Crocs attached to his saddle bag

    After the setbacks in Bergen with mechanical issues it was refreshing to talk with fellow adventurers about their own trials and tribulations, and it’s always interesting to see other people’s touring setups…the envy I felt for Jan and Hannelore’s camping chairs was palpable, and this will be front of the queue once Ioffload some dead weight in my own panniers.

    Thanks folks, it was great to ride together

    A detour up Sognefjord

    Rob had recommended checking out the conglomerate rock formations on an island at the mouth of Sognefjord which I was keen to do, so I’d be waving goodbye to the gang as they pressed on along EuroVelo 1. It would have been nice to ride together for a bit longer but it just didn’t quite fit with my desire for going off-route and exploring the mountains and fjords a bit more.

    I caught an early afternoon ferry to the Solund islands and rode into the hills to have lunch amongst the conglomerate, a rock you don’t see much of in other parts of Norway it seems. If you don’t happen to be a geology nerd: conglomerates are a sedimentary rock full of rounded fragments of different rock types, often formed from the remnants of retreating glaciers. They are incredibly knobbly and quite fun to climb, if that’s your thing.

    Conglomerate formations between Krakhella and Domba

    The weather was near perfect for cycling, sunny but not too hot or windy. I’d intended to spend the night on Solund and catch a local ferry out to the small outer islands before taking the ‘fast ferry’ east into the heart of Sognefjord. With a simple tap of my phone screen the Solund plans were scuppered: I’d booked the fast ferry a day early, it would leave 7pm tonight. With no option to amend the booking I took the next ferry off Solund and hooned it over a mountain pass to the fast ferry terminal at Lavik.

    I suppose these nets are effective up to a certain size of boulder…

    I didn’t really know what to expect from this so called ‘fast ferry’ I had booked. I knew it was operated by a private operator Norled and I nearly got on their long-distance car ferry heading back to Bergen by mistake. But there was a separate, much smaller dock for the fast ferry, which turned out to be a small catamaran for foot passengers only. I boarded along a narrow plank laid down between the jetty and the bow, where the crew member instructed me to park my bike at the back of the boat.

    Passenger view of the front ‘fast ferry’ entrance on Sognefjord

    I suppose I expected to enter a foyer or storage deck of the boat, instead it was like walking on stage – the door led straight into the main passenger deck, and I would have to carefully manoeuvre the bike between the handbags, legs and rubbish bins strewn across the aisles. Once onboard it’s a good ride though, especially on the open-air top deck – just try not to spill coffee on your head taking a photo in the wind.

    You don’t need to spend a fortune to cruise the fjords (cost was c.£40 from Lavik to Sogndal)

    Castaway

    The map revealed another ‘dead-end’ road along the opposite bank of the fjord to Sogndal, so I would try my luck for a camping spot. The road turned out to be much longer in reality than in my mind and I was beginning to contemplate a quiet corner of a field on a haunted looking farm – until I spotted a group of islets just next to the shore.

    With the tide drama still fresh in mind I checked the forecast and could see the islands would be cut off from the mainland at high tide by about 20cm of water across a 10 metre wide gap. It was low tide upon my arrival and could walk on quite easily without getting wet.

    The islets at Vinesholmane

    The island was rocky and relatively flat, with only a few small trees and bushes for protection from the elements. The rocks were heavily folded gneiss with marble-like swirls of quartz veins, and broken mussel shells littered the ground. It seemed to be more windy here than anywhere else in the entire valley, but there was something intoxicating about the mere concept of being on your own little island. I found a small patch of grass where the tent would just about fit and settled down for the evening. The wind howled and the tent lunged back and forth as I lay there helplessly; foul weather always sounds worse than it is from inside the tent, doesn’t it?

    I spent two nights on my little island. The plan was to head into Sogndal on the Saturday afternoon and stock up on supplies, only to discover that supermarkets had closed early on the eve of Whit Sunday – when they would be closed all day. I did a stock take and decided there was enough to get through till Monday, just.

    My neighbours on the rock next door were a pair of nesting gulls and a rather noisy oyster catcher. They were initially wary of my presence, but by day two were completely unfazed. There was a log laid in a protected corner under a pine tree which became the kitchen/diner, overlooking the neighbours.

    I knew I would run out of fresh water before Monday arrived. At low tide I grabbed the bottles and set off on foot for the waterfall I’d spotted around two miles up the road, running fresh from the snowmelt above. It was the first moment of the trip that began to feel truly primitive: conserving food, fetching water by long treks on foot, spending extended time in a completely human-free environment.

    It was Sunday evening when I finally twigged and spotted the source of mussels shells: beds of them growing along the stems of bladderwrack just beside the island shore. It was too late to enter the water by then, perhaps I could combine a spot of foraging with a morning swim?

    Can you spot the mussels quicker than I did? Look closely

    I’d already had a brief dip the day before and knew how cold it would be, so I would need to rely on my Danish saunuga breathing exercises to stay relaxed and power through the initial cold shock response. I brought along my small plastic bowl (which helpfully floats) and began to feel my way around the slippery seaweed stems for mussels. There were plenty of them but it was difficult to see, you really did have to feel your way around. I thought of those Japanese women who dive to the bottom of the sea for pearls to see if I could channel some inner strength as my hands and feet began to go numb – my signal to get out, dry and warm.

    After thawing out in my thermals and feeling human again, I got rid of the floating dead mussels, gave the rest a rinse and cooked them up with red pesto for breakfast.

    A successful breakfast

    As I began to pack up and leave something wasn’t quite right on the island. The gulls and oyster catchers were agitated, leaving their precious eggs to circle the rocks whilst screeching at full volume. Were they annoyed at me for eating their mussels? There were plenty more where those came from. Maybe they thought I got too close to the nest? But I was nowhere near their rocky outcrop. I looked up and saw a different bird making its way slowly up the fjord – a white tailed sea eagle, with a phenomenal chunky, sharp beak. Spotting a creature that might realistically turn around and eat you and your family seems like a valid reason to be agitated. I was just glad the neighbours weren’t mad at me.

    Up amongst the glaciers

    Now that I was deep into Sognefjord I was within touching distance of the Jostedalsbreen National Park, where mainland Europe’s largest glacier lurks in the high mountain valleys above, largely hidden from view of onlookers below.

    The best places to see the glacier are where the main body of ice branches off and makes its way down into the valleys below, before melting and dumping thousands of tonnes of crushed rock and boulders in the process. I decided to head for the nearest such place – the valleys north of the isolated town of Veitastrond.

    I waved goodbye to the seagulls and oyster catchers and called into Sogndal to stock up on supplies. It would be 8pm by the time I set off, but with calm weather forecast I was happy to arrive a bit late and sleep in the next day.

    The route followed the banks of several large lakes. The second lake at Hafslo was a picturesque setting, where rolling fields sat below modest-sized hills covered in trees, it was like cycling through my beloved Tulliemet in Perthshire, Scotland.

    A calm evening in Hafslo

    The town of Veitastrond sits at the far end of the third lake, a vast reservoir, where you pass through several tunnels along the way*. There is only one road in and out of Veitastrond, with a gate on the town entrance: when the weather conditions are too dangerous they lock the gate and the townsfolk are cut off from the rest of Norway. Interestingly I cycled past a group of around 20 people gathered on a Friday night working together to construct a kids play ground; perhaps their isolation fosters a sense of community. Or maybe someone was paying them, I honestly have no idea, but it was an unusual sight.

    *Cycling the tunnels of Norway*

    Norway is bloody steep. When building a road that can present somewhat of a challenge, so Norway has drilled hundreds of road tunnels to provide direct routes between valleys and through steep buttresses of rock. However, you can’t cycle through all of them – so it’s worth checking Cycle Tourer UK’s helpful online guide to see what you’re in for and the possible alternatives for non cyclist-friendly tunnels.

    The first tunnel I encountered was on my way to Hardangerfjord. At 1.3km long, the first half was eerily silent, then I heard a distant low pitched rumble – was it an avalanche outside? Is the tunnel collapsing? A Balrog on the loose? The rumble grew louder and louder, resonating through the void as if I were cycling into a giant concrete horn. Eventually three old fashioned Triumph motorcycles came into view and thundered past on their merrily way. Everything feels more intense in a tunnel, so you need to brace yourself – but most are quite short, and every now and then you get to push a big button to engage the ‘Cyclist in tunnel’ warning lights.

    The trykk is to push it then check the lights actually turned on (…sometimes the button is a bit stiff)

    Beyond Veitastrond the road kicks upwards and the surface shifts from asphalt to gravel, passing through a self-service toll booth to pay for upkeep of the privately maintained road that leads up to the car park. There’s a DNT tourist hut where you can stay if you don’t mind splashing the cash, but also plenty of space for campervans too. Being on a bicycle I wanted to get a bit away from the car park if possible, so I headed to the western valley through a small farmstead.

    Usually when you encounter sheep on the hill they keep their distance. It was around midnight so I was trying to tread as quietly as possible as I made my way between the farm buildings, but the sheep must have thought I was treating them to a midnight snack and began to follow me like I was a shepherd, baaing and neck bells ringing as they went. Not ideal, but I was soon past and onto the relative peace of a bouldery river bed.

    I knew it would be a pain to try and do everything with the bike loaded up, so I did another foot scouting mission and found a candidate flat spot before shifting everything across. It was tiring but in perfect conditions, and from what I could make out of my surroundings in the evening twilight I knew it would be worth it.

    It is hard to find adequate words to describe my experience camping below the Langedalsbreen glacier. With my tent camouflaged in the middle of a boulder field, I would lay in my sleeping bag with the door open and gaze up at the mesmerising complex of ice above, spilling over the edge of the mountain and splitting to leave wrinkle lines of deep crevasses. Like gazing into the campfire it was another of nature’s TV channels, and hard to look away.

    Let’s finish this section with a few photos, including from a five-hour trek up to see Austerdalsbreen glacier in the valley around the corner from where I camped. See if you can spot the tent in the first photo..

    Summer sun in the Sunnmøre Alps

    A Norwegian man once told me to be careful going to the toilet when it’s sunny and warm in Norway, because by the time you come out, summer might just be over.

    There was a solid block of three properly warm and sunny days on the forecast (25°C), which sounded like the perfect opportunity to wash my clothes at a campsite and lounge around in the sun whilst they dry. The difficulty was that – due to afformentioned restrictions on cycling through major tunnels – I was now marooned in Sogndal.

    The ideal route out would be along highway 5 up to Skei. After getting up early and failing to get on the coach (they don’t officially allow bicycles, leaving you at the mercy of the driver) I found the local bus to be more accommodating. Without a bicycle rack though you have to flip the bike on its side and slide it into the hold, placing panniers around in a bid to stop it sliding all over and getting damaged.

    After making it to Skei I had a Motorgrill style service station breakfast and made my way along dramatic Glencoe-esque valleys and through a few medium sized towns where I could stock up on supplies, including a pair of swimming goggles..

    There were a few more road tunnels, most of them having an old road along the side that remains open to cyclists and pedestrians. Weirdly, although Breimsfjell tunnel is marked as safe to pass through in the online guide it seemed to have an old road, so I opted for that over the c.850m long tunnel. But there was a reason this was not marked as a viable alternative: the road has been decimated by a rock fall. Why they didn’t at least have a small sign to inform people of this considerable hazard that lay ahead I’m not quite sure, but maybe that’s just the Brit in me.

    You shall not pass!

    As night approached I was making my way along a gravel track into a deserted ski resort. There were hundreds of chalets dotted around, most of them surely empty, and I wondered who I could ask to spend the night in one with an off-season discount. The ground wasn’t ideal for camping with too much long vegetation, so I plodded on hoping for something better, at one point nervously passing a small herd of cows who had refused to budge from the road upon my arrival.

    In the corner of my eye I spotted a wooden construction along an adjacent path towards the hills. Although it was enclosed on all four sides, I think what drew my eye was it appeared to have a chimney. It was clear from how the door opened and locked that it was empty, so I lifted the large wooden latch and took a peek inside. There was a portable fire pit and a large central table, with wooden bench seating around the perimeter furnished with animal skin rugs, and candle holders hung around in all shapes and sizes. The sign in Norwegian on the front confirmed it was available for anyone to use so long as you tidy up after yourself. Definitely the cosiest shelter so far, and I gave the place a much needed sweep as thanks.

    The hut had an integrated chimney in the ceiling for the fire, but I was happy to stick with candles

    The next day the cows I had passed previously made another appearance during breakfast, but were well out of the way by the time I set off. The target destination was a campsite in Urke.

    This really is an attractive part of Norway and one that I was completely unaware of. Indeed many of the Norwegians I met in Urke campsite were visiting for the first time and were equally impressed; although the mountains are not Norway’s highest, they are steep and dramatic, and with the onset of warm weather the spring flowers were in full bloom and everything was glowing under strong sunlight.

    Lupins and the distinctly jagged peaks of Slogen

    Urke was a perfect mini-holiday from the tour. I did all my washing, didn’t do any cycling, and even managed to use my swimming goggles during a dip in the fjord. If you want to try this at the same time of year I recommend doing very little swimming and just floating on the warmer surface layer – without wasting oxygen on swimming you get a longer look underwater with each breath. There are all sorts of seaweeds, shells, small fish, even the odd jelly fish. If only it wasn’t like swimming in liquid ice as soon as you dip 15cm below the surface.

    Laundry day at Urke

    Urke would be my final days in the high mountains of Norway. They had been the highlight of my trip so far, but came at the expense of being away from the coast and maybe riding for a few more days amongst friends. But I wasn’t far from the open seas again now: tomorrow I would finally get back on my original route, at the cruise ship hotspot of Ålesund.

    ————————

    PHOTOGRAPHY: Bergen to Urke

  • 9. Norway I: wild camping 101 in the valleys of Hardangerfjord

    9. Norway I: wild camping 101 in the valleys of Hardangerfjord

    Let’s get this straight, Norway is the main reason I have come to Scandinavia. Although intrigued by what Denmark, Sweden and Finland would be like, I’ve had a clear vision of Norway in my mind’s eye ever since laying eyes on the glossy, colour-saturated images of Lakes & Mountains package holiday brochures as a child. I don’t quite know why we even had those brochures in the house – package holidays weren’t really our family’s thing – but something about the snow capped mountains towering above cyan blue fjords really struck a chord with me, it looked straight from the fantasy realm.

    Forgive me for breaking the fourth wall for a moment. I’m writing this blog entry whilst still in Norway, which is a bit of a novelty for me since I’ve always moved to the next country by the time I get around to writing about somewhere. But Norway is long, hilly, with the only long straight roads being tunnels that you’re not allowed to cycle through, so it takes time to get across. It is also stunning, with plenty of opportunities to divert from your original plans.

    So make yourself comfortable on the nearest damp rock, fill up a paper bag with your favourite pic n’ mix, and pour yourself a £10 beverage –  this is where the real adventure begins.

    The start point at Voss station

    Boggy Beginnings

    With the evening meal taken care of all I had to do was find somewhere to pitch the tent. It was around 6pm, which at this latitude meant around 4.5 hours until sunset.

    One of the appeals of Norway to outdoor lovers is the Allemannsretten, or right to roam. A bit like in Scotland, you can pitch a tent for a night or two in open countryside so long as you follow a few basic rules, such as to keep 150m away from houses and avoid camping on ‘cultivated land’.

    I didn’t have to cycle very long to realise the dilemma. Norway is about as un-flat as a country can get, covered in high mountains and forest: the sparse areas of low-lying flat land are a precious commodity and the natural place to put settlements and farms. But low-lying flat land is perfect for camping, so the challenge would be to find suitably flat spots within reach of the road without coming into conflict with residents or farmers…easy peasy!

    My opening strategy was to get off the main road and follow the river upstream to get away from Voss. It was forecast to lash it down at any moment, but the rain gods showed restraint with only a few light showers as I slowly eased my way up the valley. And I do mean slowly: within minutes I was on the steepest roads seen since the Peak District, in my lowest gear performing the how-slow-can-you-go balancing act.

    Looking around I wasn’t exactly inundated with potential camp spots, and started to wonder at what point to just park the bike and continue the search on foot in the woods. After around an hour of riding I noticed a shelf of uncultivated ground above a farm field surrounded by woodland, a good 250m away from the nearest farmhouse. It felt instinctively good, albeit with the minor drawback of being a good 40m above the road up a heavily overgrown farm track. I dismounted, readied myself, and began to push the bike (panniers and all) uphill.

    Swapping asphalt for long grass near Reppen

    It was slow going, and a little bit sloppy in places, but the ground eventually evened to something that approximated flat ground. It was without doubt a bog (which is why it sat outside of the farm field boundary), but there were one or two relatively dry islands of ground sitting above the waterlogged trenches, upon which I pitched my first ever wild camp.

    Into the wild – my first pitch in Norway

    It felt satisfying to finally get a wild camp under my belt aged 38, but there were some definite downsides to the spot. The access wasn’t ideal but I can live with that, it was the complete soaking of my shoes and socks that really lingered. I might chalk down bogs as ‘possible, but best avoided‘.

    To the Fjord

    The next morning was brighter, and without a checkout time hanging over me I started the day with a short stroll to the nearby open-air museum at Nesheimstunet. It is the site of an old village where they have preserved the buildings in their original state, some of which date back to the 1600s, plus it’s free to get in (so don’t wander up the neighbours driveway looking for reception, like I did).

    What struck me was the enormous roof slates the Norwegians used to use. Sure it would be bad news to get hit on the noggin by a stray modern roof slate, but these monsters would slice you down the middle like an apple. Most of the buildings themselves are made from wood, along with pretty much every day-to-day object inside. There is no shortage of wood in Norway and the Norwegians seem to make use of it wherever they can.

    The preserved village at Nesheimstunet

    I packed up and set off back towards Voss, taking in a brief detour to the impressive Tvindefossen waterfall where they charge only £1.10 for the toilet, that’s a 25% Oslo discount! But if you’re a real waterfall lover and bargain hunter you should consider holding it in until Skjervsfossen just off highway 13, they don’t charge a penny for the loos and it’s a better waterfall. You’re welcome.

    Looking down from above Skjervsfossen waterfall

    If you look at the picture above you will see a road at the bottom. This is the same road I was on and would therefore need to lose quite a bit of altitude between here and there, by descending a series of hairpin bends. I tend to ride the tight corners quite slow, but my word the bike wants to move going down the steep sections…release the brakes for a few seconds and it’s like riding The Ultimate rollercoaster at Lightwater Valley (RIP), the acceleration and momentum is immense. Having already seen and heard the waterfall, I would soon be riding straight through it as clouds of misty spray drifted away from the foot of the falls across the bridge. Quite the sensory experience.

    My plan was to go through the city of Bergen at some point, so it would make sense to approach it from the south before continuing north on my original coastal route. Voss is actually north east of Bergen, so I would have to go down to come up. Come to think of it, this would be a lot easier to visualise with a map:

    I got off the train at Vossevangen, aka Voss. X marks camping spot no. 1 (credit: Google Maps)

    As you can hopefully see by the red line on the map, I was now heading towards a narrow stretch of water and the village of Granvin. With no intention of stopping I was set to pass straight through and see where I ended up in an hour or so, but my eye was drawn to an impressive timber yard at the mouth of the river. The yard was equipped with wat appeared to be loading docks, there was a mild scent of salty-fishiness in the air, and the shoreline boulders were covered with dark seaweed – I had found my first fjord.

    What also caught my eye was a small wooden construction next to a few picnic benches, intended presumably for family BBQs and such like. Amazingly it had electricity sockets where I could charge my phone, but the location wasn’t suitable for camping being in direct view of some very well kept looking houses. The map showed a small road on the east bank of the fjord which was effectively a dead end – leading to only a few houses before disappearing into nature – which sounded like perfect camp spot hunting grounds.

    The road quickly degraded to gravel, making movement slow; to my right were steep drops onto large seaweeded boulders, to my left 45° slopes covered in dense pine forest – not exactly ideal camping terrain. I briefly notched down a grassy passing place as a ‘maybe’, but soon scribbled it out when it occurred to me that my tent is actually quite well camouflaged: wild camping is challenging enough without people inadvertently driving through your tent as they politely wave through an oncoming vehicle.

    I came across a slight narrowing of the fjord where the protruding land looked less steep and bouldery. The peninsula extended a few hundred metres away from the road so I hopped off the bike to review the area on foot. Certainly too awkward to ride or push the bike fully-loaded, it would require several back-and-forth trips with the panniers, but I had found a spot.

    Morning sun on the Granvin fjord

    This was quite a step up from camp 1. Although my feet still got a bit wet from all the traipsing back and forth it felt worth it this time, especially in the dry and sunny morning weather. I sat down on the least damp rock available and began to make coffee.

    SPLOSH.

    That was odd. There had been the occasional fish jumping out of the water since my arrival, but they were only tiddlers and didn’t make much of a splash.

    SPLOSH…”Squeak! Squeak!”

    Clearly a mammal was on the scene, my mind began to leap to conclusions as to what it might be. Was it a seal? Nope, too small. A beaver? Too agile. It was a couple of otters out on their morning fishing expedition, ducking and diving right out of the water as they went: I managed to scramble together a short video. My assumption was they were sea otters but apparently you don’t get those in Norway, so they must have been the regular variety. The biggest wildlife moment of the trip so far; everything was coming together.

    Is that you, Nessie? An otter on its morning swim

    Crossing Hardangerfjord

    After leaving the camp spot I called back in at the BBQ shack to charge my phone whilst I crunch through a bit of ‘tour admin’ in the morning sun. It can become a bit of an obsession keeping your devices charged, always on the lookout for a socket or usb port; cafés and pubs are usually pretty good, but transport hub waiting rooms are always worth a try if you want to keep costs down.

    My plan was to keep heading south west, but rather than stick to the main road I wanted to seek more more peaceful surroundings by crossing the mighty Hardanger Fjord onto the wild looking Folgefonna peninsula.

    I knew there was an hourly ferry from Kvanndal to Utne, I just couldn’t work out the price for me and the bike. Norway has an incredible network of ferries going back and forth across the fjords throughout the day. They are effectively part of the road network and without them a 10 minute ferry trip could soon turn into a four hour circumnavigation of the fjord. I eventually twigged they use number plates to charge for crossing – and without such labels pedestrians and cyclists ride for free. Each crossing is like a mini cruise of the fjords…and another opportunity to charge your phone!

    One good thing about heavy bikes is they are less likely to tip over at sea

    Safely across the water I began to make my way anti-clockwise around the peninsula. The glaciers and deep wilderness were much further inland; I was riding through rolling hills of apple orchards where farmers drove up and down the narrow rows of coppiced trees in tiny tractors, spraying the leaves with a fine mist in the afternoon sun as they went.

    Orchards along the south banks of Hardangerfjord

    Realising I was running low on carbohydrates for my evening meal, I stopped at an unstaffed roadside kiosk with an honesty box, the kind that would sell jam or maybe free-range eggs in the British countryside. I managed to get a packet of flatbrød (flatbread), which is less of a pita and more of a cardboard poppadom: crispy yes, flavoursome…not so much. The carton of cloudy apple juice fresh from the orchards more than made up for it, even if it did look like I was bottling my own wee.

    The Forest

    The road kicked up into a long climb around the shoulder of a steep column of rock by the shore. Leaving behind the orchards I was riding into a coniferous forest.

    To begin with it seemed like a regular plantation of commercial spruce, but there were patches of less densely packed Scots pine trees with their characteristic orangey-red bark. I could sense a camping opportunity, but it would need another reccy on foot before I haul the bike into the woods.

    The Scots pine provided beautiful surroundings, but they were growing on quite boggy and uneven ground, heavily vegetated by bilberry and heather plants. It’s the kind of terrain you could camp on if you had to, but not if you can help it. I wandered further up the forestry track and saw a small path leading into the spruce.

    Green, green, brown, green

    The breeze completely disappeared as soon as I entered the wood, leaving an eerie silence other than the faint trickle of a small stream. There were no animals or birds to be been, and the entire forest floor was carpeted in a thick shagpile of moss and lichen. Between the sunlight and the shadows it seemed that every shade of green in nature’s palette was on display.

    After a bit of back and forth I managed to squeeze the tent in one of the bigger gaps between the trees, although one of them did prevent me from pegging down a door properly.

    Like a glove – the pic looks worse than it was, but it did require caution to avoid ripping the tent

    It was one of the scarier camp spots to begin with, probably too many Grimm fairy tales burnt into my childhood memory, but once I’d satisfied myself there were no wolves or bears preparing an ambush it was really quite a good spot. The moss carpet provided soft cushioning for sleep, there was shelter from the elements, and it was peaceful. Except the forest was not completely bereft of animal life – as word got out of my presence, the local midge population descended for a celebratory feast. It was the first battle of an ongoing war, and that evening the midges came out victorious.

    Despite the midges I could see myself camping in woods again, especially if I had a bit more fly protection. The next morning I packed up and headed for the ferry crossing at Jondal, passing through more stunning natural pine forest along the way. There were definitely some better camping spots, but that’s the game you play – do you take the spot in front of you, or risk pushing on and not finding a better one? The right answer will depend on your energy levels and willingness to accept you may just have to turn around and cycle back up that big hill to the place you saw earlier…are you feeling lucky?

    Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) trees along the Folgefonna peninsula

    The Beach

    Having crossed back to the northern bank of Hardangerfjord at Tørvikbygd I continued to straddle the water’s edge heading south west. The weather had brought plenty of sunshine but it was still unsettled, with sudden but fleeting outbreaks of light rain.

    The ferry crossing was a perfect opportunity to scout potential camp spots using Google Maps’ aerial photography layer, and I had noticed a cluster of small beaches on the east side of a peninsula near the town of Mundheim. One of the beaches came briefly into view on a descent and it looked perfect: away from houses and overlooking a small uninhabited island around 100m offshore.

    All I had to do was get to it. The map showed a small road leading more or less right up to the beach, so I turned off the main road and went to scope it out. The small road was more of a track, with its entrance behind a closed gate in the middle of a farmyard. Beside the entrance was a triangular road sign warning drivers of frogs, which gave me confidence it was indeed a public road, but before I could get close a farmer popped out from behind a parked tractor.

    “Hi! The road, is it a public road?”

    He seemed puzzled by the question, like there was an obvious reason people would not want to venture down there. Or maybe he misunderstood and my lazy reliance on everyone speaking good English might not extend to farmers, but I needn’t have worried.

    “I have a few sheep in this field, but there is another way to the fjord”.

    He recommended I go further along the road and turn down a different farm track, maybe one that belonged to a neighbouring farmer whom he didn’t much like. Either way I ended up on a less defined track heading towards the same beach, but away from the sheep on the other side of a small lake. The aerial footage map suggested there was a route on this side too, but it looked a bit overgrown.

    The evening was still young and my energy levels high, so I decided to go for it. After stashing the bike and panniers behind a hillock out of view from passing vehicles, I threw on some trousers and a jacket to keep the ticks away and hoofed it to the beach. It was a long walk over variable terrain, including some narrow overgrown paths, but doable with multiple trips. The bike and two panniers would remain where I arrived, so I only had to carry four bags in two trips.

    If you’ve ever been fortunate enough to have seen The World’s Strongest Man on TV you probably remember the Farmer’s Walk event, where contestants lift a ridiculously heavy weight in each hand and see how far they can walk in the allotted timeframe. The mechanics at play are pretty much the same here, except the weight I’m lifting is around 3% of the 160kg they have in each hand. But I had to walk along uneven paths obscured by bracken, pass through farm gates with unfathomable latches, and traverse swamps by treading on tufts of cotton grass between shoe drenching pools of stagnant water – they walk in a straight line on flat ground, the pansies!

    With everything moved to just over the half-way point the heavens opened and it began to pour. I picked up the panniers and cowered on a slope under the canopy of a tree.

    “Really? Seriously!?”

    Having passed the point of no return I sat out the downpour and finished the job with soggy feet after trudging through the final section of long grass to the beach itself.

    One of the small beaches at Flatesvik

    It may not have been the Costa del Sol, but it felt a genuine achievement just getting to the place. The fjord was remarkably still, with just the smallest of waves lapping against the dark grey sand. I found a flat area of dry sand at the back of the beach and pitched the tent, making use of washed up fishing rope to help anchor everything down where the pegs were not biting securely.

    With the tent set up I could finally relax…and then it dawned on me: fjords are tidal – could I be rudely awoken by a flood during the night? My gut instinct was that the dry shelf of sand was just above high water, but gut instinct is no substitute for hard data.

    The Norwegian Mapping Authority Kartverket produce tide tables across Norway, where you can use the current position from your phone to get a local reading. I started crunching numbers based on the tidal effect alone, which seemed ok, but then I noticed the actual water level forecast which also takes into account other factors such as weather. It was too close to call, especially with the error bars on their forecast, and a guaranteed way to not sleep a wink. I had to move the tent.

    Rather than completely deconstruct the tent I opted to save time and effort by unpegging the corners to carry it up the adjacent grassy bank to a small plateau The plan was almost scuppered by a flurry of wind that whipped in from the fjord, and I jumped into the tent as a human anchor before it took off like Mary Poppins.

    The morning after the night before

    I thought about getting up at 4am to check if the high tide would have flooded my tent or not, but what would be the point? The right decision prevailed, even if it was a mega-palaver. You could argue the right decision would have been to not camp somewhere with such a grotesquely long and difficult approach from the road – but if you never push the envelope you’ll never know how much is too much: and that my friends, was too much. Did I mention I got eaten alive by midges, again!?

    Night Rider

    Following yesterday’s exertions I decided a long lie in was in order, especially with the rain not forecast to clear until around 11am. I lazed about nibbling on high calorie snacks and doing a bit of writing until the sun was out and my tent could properly dry. By the time I had executed the pannier shuttle in reverse it was 6pm, not exactly the 10am daily start I had coded into my spreadsheet when planning the tour.

    Although it was late in the day I felt remarkably refreshed after my lie-in, so with 5 hours of daylight still remaining and an evening of perfect conditions forecast, I just wanted to ride and see where I ended up.

    The wind had all but fizzled out and the evening sun lit up the forest covered mountains on the opposite side of the fjord. I wound along undulating roads past haymaking farmers and pristine white wooden churches. The road crossed a steep gorge onto the island of Tysnesøy where the bridge had a separate cycle path, allowing me to safely hop off the bike and look down into the chasm of blue fjord below. Where were all the fish? It seemed bereft of life other than the solitary seagull floating aimlessly along with the gentle tide. To be fair fjords do contain fish, they just tend to hang out near the bottom and edges where all the food is, but there is something eerie about the emptiness of that deep blue water.

    A seagull contemplating the inconsequentiality of its existence, maybe

    On Tysnesøy I turned off the main road to a small country lane meandering uphill beside a reservoir. The evening moved into dusk and although the sunlight had waned it was still light enough to see my surroundings. There were no houses along this part of the island and no traffic at this time of day; nowhere on my trip had I felt this remote and isolated.

    The waterfall at Hovlandsnuten

    I buttoned up my jacket to insulate myself for a potentially chilly descent and soon enough arrived back in civilisation in the villages along the south-east coast of the island. It was getting late now, and although I could have kept going through the short night and into dawn I kept half an eye on the side of the road for potential camping spots.

    Suddenly my Danish experience kicked in and my eye was drawn to a stone shelter set back about 20m from the main road: the sturdy bench was wide enough to lie down on and the south facing aspect had warmed the rocks to toasty temperature. Yes it was a hybrid between a post box and a bus stop, but it was an extremely well built and cosy one, perfect for catching a few hours of light sleep before the morning commuters turn up, and with a fraction of the faff of the tent.

    Dawn of a new day – 04:56 on Tysnesøy

    It may not have been a full night’s sleep, but after a big bowl of musli coated in raspberry squirty jam and a coffee at 6am, I was recovered and ready to push on to Bergen.

    My route required catching a ferry from Våge to Halhjem. With not so many hours of sleep in the bag the ferry was an opportunity to rest my eyes, so as soon as I arrived in Halhjem I hopped on the next ferry to Sandvik – a relatively long journey at 45mins – then got off, had a coffee, and caught the next straight back to Halhjem. If the ferries were super busy with passengers I would not take the piss like this, but when they are practically empty and you need a bit of time out of the elements or some charge in the phone, cruising the ferries is a great option.

    The road to Bergen was well cycle-pathed but long, passing through endless sprawling towns and villages along the way. I stopped for lunch in the town of Osøyro and spotted what looked like a bike repair shop advertising 10Kr (75p) coffee…a bargain in any European country!

    I’d been having issues with the spade connector of my SON dynamo rear light, which kept quietly popping out when I rode over large bumps in the road. After explaining my predicament a man promptly appeared from the back and began to examine the light, giving the connector a light pinch with some pliers before reattaching it. To my confusion he wouldn’t accept any money, so I stayed for a coffee and a chat – Livskvalitet Ski & Sykkelverksted is a local authority funded enterprise that gives adults struggling with drug addiction in the town a chance to get into a drug free environment, learn some new skills and interact with the community – so if you’re passing by on your own cycle tour why not pop by for a 10Kr coffee, they might even fix your bike. Tak!

    As I made my way through the confusing multi-storey mishmash of cycle paths and roads that led into the centre of Bergen, the heavens opened and the heaviest of rain began to pour. Fortunately I had managed to link up with a fellow Brit on WarmShowers, Rob, who had kindly offered to put me up for the night. After five nights of wild camping bootcamp, it was exactly what I needed.

    —————-

    PHOTOGRAPHY: Voss to Bergen

  • 8. Copenhagen, Oslo and the joys of public transport with a touring bike

    8. Copenhagen, Oslo and the joys of public transport with a touring bike

    The challenge that lay before me now was no longer one of physical endurance, but of logistics. My goal was to get to the west coast of Norway and begin riding again through the fjords, but having turned east to head further into Denmark I was diverted from my original plan to take the ferry from Hirtshals to Stavanger. I needed another way.

    With my train ticket for the first leg already purchased – Nyborg to Copenhagen – I needed to work out the most hassle-free option to get up to Norway without paying through the nose.

    Turns out the ferry prices are little spicy from Copenhagen compared to Hirtshals, so they got ditched first. The train is cheap-ish if you get an advance ticket, but frustratingly there were no direct trains to Oslo, and I had no appetite for making a connection, so they joined the ferry on the scrap heap. The Flixbus will take you from Copenhagen to Oslo in one go and is the cheapest fare, but also has the disadvantage of being a bus. Flixbus is a bit like Megabus in the UK, cheap and cheerful, except they do usually come equipped with a bicycle rack on the back which is a big plus: no need to dismantle your bike to make it fit in the luggage hold (praying it comes out again undamaged). So Flixbus it would be.

    Bizarrely I almost abandoned Flixbus altogether after ballsing up the booking process and falsely believing there were no bike slots left. But I was mistaken, there was actually one left – a nine hour Sunday night bus from Copenhagen to Oslo via Gothenburg, departing at 23:50.

    With the most complicated international leg sorted, I could focus on the immediate task of catching my intercity Danish train from Nyborg to Copenhagen, where I would enjoy a few days of rest. The station wasn’t far from my shelter, so without a tent to pack away for once I had a bit of spare time on my hands, enough to treat the bike to a much needed deep clean.

    People often ask me “What will you do with all your spare time?”, and I did wonder this myself before starting the trip; for a while I genuinely contemplated bringing a laptop to produce music along the way. I suppose if I wasn’t blogging there would be a bit more free time, but there’s something satisfying about trying to capture the experience in some way, shape or form, and for me it is the blog. So I’ve come to appreciate those peaceful interludes between the travel, daily chores and blog writing: you can pick up a less pressing matter like bicycle beautification, or simply sit on your bum and do nothing. No stocktake of the pannier pantry or planning where to go and how to get there, just empty your mind, and do nothing.

    Taking it slow at breakfast, with a gaggle of onlookers

    How to board a train: the stressful way

    I got to Nyborg railway station with plenty of time to spare, so I took the opportunity to have a quick google about taking your bicycle on trains in Denmark. I came across this useful summary on cycletourer.co.uk, which to my horror warned me of the obscenely high triple-step between carriage floor and the platform edge on intercity DSB trains. I know the bike can tackle two steps fully loaded, but three would almost certainly be too steep, too awkward – I would have to remove the panniers and bring everything onboard in two trips.

    Poised on the platform ready to pick up my bike as soon as the train doors opened, my heartbeat began to accelerate with anticipation. The train arrived and passengers began to pour out of the doors and into my way. Swimming against the current I poked the front wheel between busy looking Danes and got to the door where I picked up the bike and carried it up the three stairs. Now onboard I began to scan the carriage for my reserved spot, only to discover that DSB have a system of sharing the bicycle storage with fold down chairs where people without seat reservations can sit down if the space is free. A girl in her early teens was sat in my spot – headphones in, eyes glued to the infinite deck of TikToks and Instagram reels in front of her – but this was not the time to play train manager, so I dumped the bike in a corner and got off to collect my panniers.

    “PEEEEEEP!”

    That was not the sound I wanted to hear. My assortment of bags was piled in a heap around 10 metres from the train door, so a 20 metre round, and the conductor had just blown her whistle. I knew it would be physically impossible to collect all bags and make it on in time, so I grabbed two and ran for the door. Two ladies on the platform were alert to my dilemma and heroically grabbed the remaining bags.

    Now you’re not supposed to obstruct closing train doors, partly because you could get trapped if the sensors fail but mainly because if everyone did this all the time the trains would be even later than they already are, but with few cards left to play I lunged forward with my rack pack to try and jam the rapidly closing door in the hope it would reopen and buy me some time at the expense of every one else’s. It was futile, the door closed. There was only one thing left to do:

    “MY BIKE IS ON THE TRAIN!!!”

    The conductor responded in Danish which one of my new found fairy godmothers translated:

    “She’s holding the train, go to her door, GO!”

    The ordeal was over as quickly as it started, and the conductor barely acknowledged the drama. Maybe it was a daily occurrence.

    There were two main lessons learned. One is that there is always a potential complexity in placing the bicycle into its designated spot on the carriage, faff that is best dealt with once the train is moving. Much better to dump your bags onboard first then immediately get off and grab the bike – you can fine tune what goes where once everything is on board.

    The second lesson is that generally speaking, people are quite kind and willing to help those in need. The two women who came to the rescue in my hour of need would almost certainly have been just as willing to help if I had approached them before the train arrived and asked if they could help carry on a few bags for me. If you think you can’t do something on your own, recruit your passenger assist in advance, or you might just end up waving goodbye to half your belongings.

    Copenhagen

    Getting off the train at Copenhagen Central station went a bit more smoothly, I’m glad to say. Although I was keen to have a look around the rain was quite heavy and I wanted to get settled at my campsite 8km north of the city centre.

    I’ve never camped so close to a major city before and wondered if I would feel secure leaving gear in the tent whilst out and about. As it happens the site was that of a defensive fort from the early 20th century – surrounded by a moat with monitored entrances. Quite unusual, and hard to imagine a more secure setup, putting my mind at ease.

    Anti bike-thief artillery at Charlottenlund Fort Camping

    Copenhagen is clean, has top notch cycling infrastructure, and the parts I visited felt safe even at night. There are some quite unusual areas too, such as the ‘Meat Packing District’ (once filled with abattoirs and meat processors, now filled with artsy looking businesses, bars and restaurants) and Freetown Christiana (an ex military base turned commune, which I only saw the fringes of unfortunately). It can be really pricey though; I tend to use cappuccinos as my international cost-of-living benchmark and they rarely came in south of £5 a pop in Copenhagen.

    A generously wide one-way cycle path in central Copenhagen

    I won’t go into great detail of all the touristy things I got up to in my downtime, so have a few photos instead:

    Tivoli – a relatively un-tacky amusement park, slap bang in the centre. Looks its best after dark
    The Amager Bakke energy-from-waste facility. Note the terrifyingly tall climbing wall on the side, and…
    … there’s a dry ski slope on the roof. Just watch out for the air ducts where you might get a heady waft of residual municipal waste
    The bay at Charlottenlund, our plunge pool for a Sunday evening ‘saunagus’ session – think ‘guided meditation in a sauna’, turned up a notch by pouring fragrant oil infused water onto the coals

    Any city that can turn the municipal residual waste treatment facility into a popular tourist attraction must have something going for it, even if it did cost $670m to build. Having worked in the waste industry I can confirm that’s quite pricey, even more than a cappuccino.

    Bus to Oslo

    The scheduled 23:50 Flixbus departure gave me plenty of time in the day to gee myself up for the 9-hour journey. At least the boarding was pain-free, just flash your ticket and one of the drivers takes your bike and secures it to the rack. Just remember to take off your water bottles to avoid unwanted ejections onto a motorway.

    The main challenge was hand luggage. I walked on with my big rear rack bag and handlebar bag, neither of which could fit in the paper-thin overhead shelf. The smaller bag just about squeezed under the chair, but the bigger one could fit nowhere except the empty seat next to me – I held my breath and prayed that nobody would sit there whilst the coach slowly filled up: they didn’t. Looking back I don’t know why I didn’t just ask the driver to pop it in the hold, oh well.

    The journey was peaceful enough, but sleep was difficult especially at stops, and being trapped in a chair didn’t help. The chairs recline a little but it doesn’t get much more comfortable. I arrived bleary eyed at Oslo bus station just after 9am, and headed straight for my hostel.

    Oslo

    I had two nights booked at the Bunks at Rode hostel, a few tram stops out from the city centre. Oslo is pretty small by European capital standards, but it also tends to be raining, so I found the trams to be quite handy.

    In true Norwegian fashion the city sits at the top of a fjord and the harbour serves as the focal point of the city. There does seem to be a lot of construction and renovation work going on at the moment, and a lot of buildings look very 1980s in style, presumably relics from the oil boom that has continued to benefit Norwegian public finances so well.

    Not always raining – a view of the harbour from Oslo Central Station

    Interestingly the cappuccinos were coming in less than in Copenhagen (c.£4), but this is where the coffee-centric inflation index falls over, because make no mistake: Oslo eats your money. On two different occasions I was caught short and had to use public toilets where I was duly charged 20 Kr. That’s £1.50, for a wee! The standard price of a 0.5 litre beer is 110 Kr which works out at  around £9 a pint, and even a small can of non alcoholic lager is over £5…looks like I’ll be keeping away from the pubs, which is a shame because they are good for writing in.

    Although still feeling lightly toasted from sleep deprivation I scooped myself up to have a look around the National Museum of Norway on the afternoon of my arrival. Feeling more refreshed, the next day took a tram west to Frogner Park where the bronze statues of Gustav Vigeland shun the great and the good to instead depict quite ordinary looking folk having a good time frolicking in the nude. There’s a Munch museum too, but I settled for the single room dedicated to his work in the national museum (which has the original ‘Scream’).

    Happy families – a mural in Grunerløkka
    A young Edvard Munch (self-portrait)
    Enjoying a brief spell of sunshine in Frogner Park

    The mountain train

    I had been aware of the railway between Oslo and Bergen before this cycle tour. Between Norway’s capital and second city lies some pretty substantial mountains, and whilst there are many tunnels through the steeper sections the tracks still rise to a dizzying altitude.

    I booked the late morning train plus a reservation for my bike. Unlike in Nyborg the train would be starting in Oslo, which I hoped would buy me some more time to get on and off. Either way I was stood at the platform ready to pick up all six panniers in one fell swoop and swiftly return for my bike.

    I needn’t have worried. Not only was there plenty of time to board in Oslo but it seemed to be similarly generous at other stations along the way, with passengers often hopping off for a quick vape safe in the knowledge they had time to play with. The bike racks were vertical and there were a lot of them, with a stack of shelves in the bicycle storage car ideally placed to put your panniers. By far the best bicycle-on-train experience I’ve had on an intercity line, top marks!

    Extra storage in the bike storage carriage – saves lugging your panniers through the train to your seat

    The train seems to start climbing as soon as you leave Oslo, and it’s not long before you’re chugging along through deep forests and along the shores of glistening lakes. Around 3 hours in we rose above the snowline and the driver mentioned a glacier was visible on our left, before stopping at the snow covered station of Finse at over 1,200m; this really is quite something, I bet Michael Portillo would love this…oh, he did (UK only, I’m afraid).

    A typical view along the Oslo-Bergen line

    My ticket did not reach as far as Bergen though, I wanted to get off earlier and ride through some of the mountains before encountering yet another city. After discounting the stops at seriously high altitude I opted for the small town of Voss, of which I knew basically nothing.

    Having descended into Voss on Ascension Day – a public holiday in Norway – every shop was closed except a small kiosk, where I stocked up on overpriced snacks and bought a copy of the local rag to see what was going down in greater Bergen.

    It was overcast, a bit cold, and I was surrounded by mountains on all sides. I’d spotted on the map a campsite just down the road, but this is Norway, and for the first time on my trip it was now completely legal to wild camp. The tour was about to get turned up a notch.

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    PHOTOGRAPHY: Copenhagen and Oslo

    —————————-

    BONUS CHAPTER

    I was going to include the section below in the Danish shelter post, but it got the chop to reduce word count, so I’ll just drop this here for an added bit of Viking goodness.

    The Vikings of Ribe

    If you went to school in northern England anywhere near York, you might remember that school trip to the multi-sensory experience that is Jorvik Viking Centre. You climb into a repurposed rollercoaster carriage and meander your way back in time through various aspects of Viking life, with robotic Viking mannequins occasionally turning their head or lifting an arm. It’s good!

    The Danish town of Ribe has its own Viking centre, but this one is outdoors. They have painstakingly rebuilt an entire Viking village using traditional materials and methods, and for a few months a year they have a team of experimental archaeologists living on-site as Vikings. I’m guessing they are allowed to go to the 21st century hospital if there is an accident in the wood whittling workshop, but they really do bring the place to life. I got chatting to a couple of women sat beside the large window of the main lodging, a dog was snoozing beneath the table and the open hearth was filling the room with the sort of heady aroma you might expect when your fireplace doesn’t have a chimney.

    The reconstructed 9th century Angsar’s church

    Next to the church is a pool where they have decked out a wooden jetty, where even the ‘nails’ holding the thing together have been carved out of wood. It looks like the sort of thing you don’t let museum visitors walk on top of, but this is a hands on sort of place so you have free roam.

    An ideal perch for the pied wagtails & swallows amongst us

    Whilst I was enlightening myself about the daily lives of Ribe’s viking ancestors my powerbank was being steadily charged up by one of the E-bike charging stations installed in the car park, I just plug it in, pop the charger in my lockable handlebar bag and everything is secure…quite a neat little setup if you plan to stop for a few hours.

    Runic artwork as it may have looked back in the day
  • 7. Helter Shelter: ditching the tent for Denmark’s wooden camping sheds

    7. Helter Shelter: ditching the tent for Denmark’s wooden camping sheds

    Fair warning: this blog post is a bit longer than the others, and I expect longer than any future blog post I will publish on this trip.

    —————–

    Have a search for “shelter” on Google Maps in your local area. If you live in the UK or USA, the results will generally yield temporary accommodation provided by local authorities, charities and religious groups in the support of the homeless. Run the same search in Denmark and the results will look a little different – smaller, more wooden, usually in the middle of nowhere – like sheds in a field.

    I heard about Denmark’s network of shelters online a few years ago and was intrigued by the concept. My memory was that they are small wooden buildings where you can rock-up and sleep for the night free of charge, a bit like a bothy in Scotland, although I’d never met anyone who had stayed in one until my hostel buddy in Bremen gave them a solid thumbs up. Despite the recommendation I still had lingering reservations about one side of my sleeping quarters being wide open to the wind, insects, and early morning dog walkers – nonetheless, I decided a key mission for Denmark was to give the shelters a proper go.

    The first steps into Scandi

    As I was packing up my tent at the forest Trekkingplätze, the morning serenity was punctured upon arrival of several groups of tweens who had been staying at the nearby forestry school. All quite civilised and well behaved when their teacher was around keeping tabs on proceedings, but when a group returned unaccompanied the dynamic soon changed – within minutes one of the boys chucked a girl’s sandal into the pond which promptly sank to the bottom; without hesitation the girl struck back, swiftly grabbing the boy’s recently removed t-shirt and lobs it into the water. After a heated exchange the boy took off his shoes, rolled up his trousers and waded into the pond to seek out the submerged garments.

    As the only adult in attendance and feeling increasingly like Victor Meldrew, I wondered where you draw the line and intervene in the antics of youth. Nothing wrong with a bit of goofing around, and the kids who were at each other’s necks one minute seemed to be sitting and chatting the next. I concluded as long as nobody is actively throwing punches or trying to drown each other, then it gets a pass from me.

    A dragon fly enjoying the last moments of morning peace

    After a swift getaway from the Lord of the Flies I was at the border and across into Denmark in less than 30 minutes. Needing to pick up a few groceries I headed for the nearest decent sized town, Tønder.

    Within seconds of crossing the river at Tønder  you are into the old town centre. Not dramatically different to Germany on first impression, but the buildings seemed to be more colourful with a different architectural twist, and the public artwork (like the lotus flower fountain in the river) had a distinctive style that did not feel German to me.

    A shiny new BMW Isetta in Tønder, which seems to belong to the local dentist (credit to Dan, my go to microcar expert!)

    Whilst dragging out a cappuccino in a local café I downloaded the ‘Shelter’ app that my roommate had recommended back in Bremen. The app has an interactive map with each shelter marked with an orange pin. When you first log in, the map is quite zoomed out, and the entire country of Denmark is a sea of orange – there really are a lot of these things about. I zoomed in to the area north of Tønder and began to rummage through my options.

    My first misconception was that all shelters are free and allocated on a ‘first come, first serve‘ basis – some of them are like this, but well over half can be booked in advance, and most do cost money. But with the going rate coming in at £3.30 a night I wasn’t going to grumble, and I liked the idea of guaranteeing a spot, so I booked one around 10km away along a gravel track not far from the sea.

    Shelter No.1 – the friendly neighbours

    The two shelters at Emmerlev

    I arrived to find one of the shelters occupied by a couple who were clearly on a cycle tour of their own, only they were bravely doing it on a tandem! The shelters themselves were fairly big and chunky by design, and you could easily get four adults in there, more if you like to be cosy.

    One nice feature about the Emmerlev shelters is you can spin them around to face away from the wind, although a light breeze did still make its way through between the boards underneath from time to time. They had your basic amenities of drinking water and a composting toilet, plus a firepit with wood that could be purchased using your phone.

    But what defined this shelter was the fact I had neighbours, Maarten and Willemijn from the Netherlands. We got talking and soon realised the three of us were sheltering for the first time, which broke the ice. Their planned destination was Europe’s most northern tip – the Nordkapp – well within the arctic circle, which explained the cosy looking sleeping bags laid out in their shelter which I was feeling a little jealous of.

    My neighbours had a bit more touring experience compared to me and were kind enough to share some of their wisdom – I especially liked the elasticated netting with hooked edges they use on top of their rack bag: you can quickly stuff a jacket underneath the net without the rigmarole of unstrapping, opening, closing, and re-strapping your rack bag – a massive time saver! They also gave me some advice on my wobbly front panniers, which I had failed to secure properly to the rack.

    Sunset at Emmerlev

    The sun lowered itself into another spectacular retreat and we settled down into our respective shelters. The floor was coated in a layer of wind-blown soil dust, so I laid down the groundsheet of my tent to protect the airbed, sleeping bag and inflatable pillow. It was certainly a strange feeling to be exposed to the elements on one side; although the walls of a tent are paper-thin it’s amazing how secure and protected you feel once curled up inside. I was chatting with Maarten the next morning and he felt like the shelter sleep was lighter than in a tent, but yet he said he felt remarkably refreshed. It was similar for me: although you wake up in the night more often, there’s something about opening your eyes after a cycle of REM – that moment when you piece reality back together from the confusing kaleidoscope of a night of dreams – and seeing dawn unfold in front of you, that just makes you feel, good.

    The view from my shelter at 05:48 – lovely and all, but I still went back to sleep

    It was very much a positive first-time shelter experience, and it gave me confidence to try out a few more as I made my way across Denmark. The question now was, which way should I go?

    After chatting with Maarten and Willemijn about how they like to tour I realised the importance of keeping things flexible and making sure to do things I enjoy, and I was becoming curious to see a bit more of Denmark than just the western region of Jutland. That was the moment I made the first major divergence from my original route – instead of straddling the west coast of Jutland and taking a ferry to Norway from the northern port of Hirtshals, I would now head east to Copenhagen, via the island of Fyn. I could figure out how to get from Copenhagen to Norway another day.

    Getting a wash

    As I set off on my slightly more loosey goosey way, there was a feeling that had been creeping over me that was now becoming hard to ignore; I was starting to get a bit manky.

    My last proper shower was four days prior and the weather had been warm and sweaty, I needed that refreshing feeling of water against my skin, even if it wasn’t as luxurious as a warm shower. I checked the Shelter app for any nearby with a shower, but no luck. Instead I booked a woodland shelter located a little further north towards the historic town of Ribe, and decided to spend my afternoon exploring the island of Rømø…maybe there would be a shower there?

    You can get to Rømø from the mainland by travelling along the Rømødæmningen, or Rømø dam, a 9km raised embankment not unlike the one I rode across in the Netherlands, except this time against a disgusting headwind. The road was dead straight and the speed slow. After a while my eyes began to play tricks on me, it was as if the world around me was being slowly ejected from a small dot in the centre of the horizon, like some kind of inexplicable Danish black hole. The more I stared into the dot the more my sense of perspective distorted, I was losing all sense of depth perception – the scene in front of me was reduced to a flat canvas of straight lines radiating from the black hole. I was like a hamster in a wheel, getting nowhere.

    Stare at the centre for long enough and the mind plays tricks – no blinking, that’s cheating!

    There are lots of little tactics you can employ to stop yourself going insane on a bicycle, or at least delay the onset. On this occasion I tuned into the fact there was a finite number of pylons between me and the shore: each tower passed was a moment to be celebrated – “ONE PYLON CLOSER!”. The aim is to take the seemingly colossal task that lies before you and break it into bitesize chunks, and it works both in the saddle as well as off the bike (e.g. you might be better off thinking about the tour and what lies ahead in sections, rather than in totality).

    After a brief wander around the tourist shops and cafes of Lakolk I decided to go and check out the massive beach that dominates the western shore of Rømø. And massive it is. I’ve not come across many beaches where the public are allowed to drive on, but here it was allowed, so the shifting landscape was littered with the oversized campervans of people who wanted a nice view of the sea without the long walk. I actually managed to ride my bike for a while where the sand had been compacted, before eventually succumbing to the lack of friction and pushing it to a solitary wooden post a stone’s throw from the water’s edge.

    I’m not sure of the exact moment I decided to hurl myself into the sea. I looked around and couldn’t help but notice not a single other person was bathing, even though it was a sunny day. Finally I saw a chap head out into the waves for a session of kite surfing, which was all the encouragement I needed.

    Beaches and bicycles, not natural bedfellows

    The water was shallow and the waves quite gentle, so shallow it wasn’t really possible to swim without walking right out to sea (which I didn’t fancy), so I gracefully squatted down and let the sea water do its thing. I don’t know how often you jump in the sea, but I honestly couldn’t believe how soft my skin felt afterwards, and the perennial patch of dry skin above my left eyelid seemed to dissolve in the brine. It might not have been a warm shower but the manky feeling was gone.

    Shelter no.2 – the woods

    I knew the shelter I would be staying at that evening did not have electricity (most don’t), so I swung by Cafe Retro in the nearby village of Brøns to charge my phone and concede defeat to the world’s largest bowl of chips.

    The shelter was one of three nestled in a patch of woodland on the eastern edge of Brøns. The other two were unoccupied leaving the whole site to myself, including full reign of the firepit. The shelter was a bit more solid than at Emmerlev, and although there was no way of turning it around it didn’t really matter amongst the wind-shielding trees, and besides the evening was still, dry and peaceful. It also had a lower roof, so vigilance required to avoid a head whacking.

    My freshly swept shelter at Brøns

    I spotted a large sweeping brush so decided to give mine a spring clean before unloading my gear. It felt a bit more homely after a good sweep, topped off by lighting a few of the candles that had been left in the corner. It might sound sketchy lighting candles in your combustible wooden shed bed, but the real fire risk is from the firepit to the surrounding woodland.

    The shelter owners had provided a pile of firewood in the corner of the site, and there was plenty of kindling around, so after checking the local fire brigade website for any local warnings (or bans) I lit a small campfire with a primitive device fashioned out of two sticks my lighter.

    Fireside at Brøns shelter

    You definitely need a bit of extra vigilance with fires in the woods, mainly to keep an eye on the wind, make sure the fire doesn’t get too big or start belching out hot embers, and to put it out before you go to bed. If you do hear a big pop and see a hot ember shoot out, make sure it hasn’t gone rogue in starting a little fire of its own.

    It felt like a milestone to get my first fire going. The warmth, the soft crackles, the trance inducing flames, even the smell is appealing (even if it does linger on you for days). I don’t plan to have a lot of them, so I want to savour the ones I do.

    Fire roasted pepper – just scrape off the charcoal and you’ve got a tasty snack

    Shelter No.3 – the Shire

    After a night camping next to a field of red deer in someone’s back garden (…with permission) and a morning spent mooching around the clean but unremarkable city of Esbjerg, I began to head east into the heart of Jutland.

    It felt good to be going a different compass direction for a change, yet not so good on the legs as I was now ploughing directly into another headwind. Touring bikes are a bit like boats when it comes to wind, you will glide along effortlessly when the wind is in your sails, but when it’s against you the going gets real tough real quick, and you just have to accept it will take a lot longer to progress now.

    There were slightly less shelter options inland compared to the coast, but I managed to secure a booking at a remote looking standalone shelter around 15km south of the city of Legoland Billund. As I moved deeper into the country the farmland began to give way to pine forest plantations, and I had took a short break to climb a bizarre looking viewing platform. You don’t really get these things in the UK, and especially not ones with a wooden prism at the top with ladders inviting you to climb up to several small viewing portholes. Sound dangerous? It was, a bit.

    A canopy peep hole – just watch that 12ft drop on your left from the ladder you’ve just ascended

    The asphalt roads gave way to gravel, which slowed me down further. It really did feel like I was beginning to stray from civilisation, at least as much as you can in a small country like Denmark. I reached the dead end road leading to my accommodation and by chance met the owner and his son in a car on their way out for the evening.

    “The farmer will be spreading tonight. Spreading er, how you say…”

    “Shit?”

    “Yes! But you know, animal shit. You get used to it quite quick. He does it once a year and there’s no stopping him, I’m sorry!”

    I did think he could maybe have mentioned this detail in our email exchange, he had no financial incentive not to: the shelter was provided free of charge. I wished them well on their way to wherever they were escaping the evening’s muck spreading and located a somewhat shaky looking shelter standing precariously close to the edge of a field.

    The view from Vejs Ende shelter

    The shelter was built on top of an old trailer, with the entrance suspended a good two feet from the ground with no steps. There was a large nail protruding from the wooden beam overhanging the entrance, and potential splinters lurked everywhere. However, this was one the best evenings I’ve had enjoying the outdoors that I can remember.

    There was something about the remote location, along with perfect weather conditions and having plenty of food and drink. The inclusion of a little seating area within the shelter was a nice touch, and there was even a metal stove that I didn’t dare to use. It was shabby, but it had charm and the location to compensate. Just please don’t rent this shelter if you use a wheelchair for heaven’s sake. And thank you Mr Farmer man for not spreading the field directly next to me, whether this was an act of mercy or otherwise.

    Shelter No.4 – Going upmarket

    I continued my journey east aiming for the narrow strait of water separating Jutland and the island of Fyn, known as the Little Belt. With the weekend upon me all the good shelters had been booked up – you have to get in early if you want a weekend slot at the popular shelters – so I pitched up at a ‘primitive campsite’ near the Old Little Belt Bridge, which turned out to be a field with instructions on where to find the nearest public bogs.

    The next morning I crossed the bridge and headed south east along the coast towards the town of Assens. There seemed to be a lot of shelters in this area and with it now being Sunday I could pick whichever one I fancied. I  opted for the Aborg Mark shelter site that offered a lot in the way of amenities, maybe I could wash my clothes in an actual washing machine?

    The two-storey beehive style shelter at Aborg Mark

    Just look at that thing: it has multiple doors into various compartments, adjustable air vents, porthole windows, and the bottom sleeping compartment has a sliding internal door to separate you from the non-closeable aperture which is just out of shot in the photo, so you are fully cocooned from the elements.

    The site is a real 5* experience as far as shelters go. There is a central heated communal area with kitchen, toilets, a shower, power sockets, washing machine and a selection of long life groceries, all payable through the honesty box. I did have to pay the two person minimum rate for my beehive shelter (not uncommon) but still only around £6.50 a night. I do understand the 2-person minimum charge, but I feel like it could be waived or partly refunded if there are other empty shelters that night.

    This would be my recovery shelter. I spent two nights here and made friends with a nice chap called Lars who was on a bit of a cycle tour of his own around Fyn. I even managed to do a bit of cooking on the firepit (with variable degrees of finesse and success, much to Lars’ amusement), and took a sunny afternoon to relax in the empty pool & jacuzzi of a nearby campsite. Less success on the clothes washing front though; someone had carelessly left inside a couple of wet tea towels, which had since bloomed into little mold garden.

    One of my more successful efforts on the firepit

    No.5 – The shelter that wasn’t

    It was quite a challenge to drag myself away from Aborg Mark, but with the weather still feeling more like summer than spring I decided to change my plan of visiting the city of Odense and instead take a ferry to the smaller island of Ærø, around 10 miles from the port of Faaborg.

    Fresh spring growth on the southern shores of Fyn

    Suspecting the island would be a sleepy sort of place I stocked up on gifflar cinnamon rolls along with more nutritional food at Netto before boarding the ferry for the hour long journey to Ærø.

    My target destination was a free to use shelter located in woodland not far from an inland lake at the north west end of the island. It didn’t take long to cycle to the woodland edge, all I had to do was find the shelter. That’s where my plans began to slowly unravel.

    All shelters on the Shelter app are marked with grid coordinates which you can open in Google Maps. I rode the bike along an increasingly overgrown forest track, ducking and diving between the branches and brambles, but the path did not lead to the shelter site – I needed to get about 50m off the path towards the lake, but it was through dense deciduous woodland.

    After scanning the woods for an obvious way in I settled for the path of least resistance and began to heave and manoeuvre the fully loaded bike over the forest detritus. Movement was slow and dead wood cracked under my wheels, I just hoped the tyres would remain unpenetrated.

    “This must be the place” – satnav issues in the woods beside Vitsø Nor

    Eventually I ditched the bike against a tree and got myself to the exact geo location on foot – nothing. Not a shelter to be seen, or even any sign there ever was one. I don’t know if it was my GPS signal, an erroneous coordinate, or maybe the local Ærønians have installed a hidden series of webcams in the trees to amuse themselves as they watch off-islanders flounder around the dense undergrowth in search of a shelter that never was. I don’t know, but I do know it was a pain in the arse.

    Fortunately I had a plan B around 8km up the road, another primitive campsite, and this one even had its own compost toilet and a tap…what luxury! The wind picked up and cloud set in with the arrival of a new weather system: it would be the last day of this miraculous heatwave that blessed the start of my tour.

    Shelter No.6 – The end of the road

    After escaping Ærø on a ferry to the port of Svendborg I now had two options: island hop to my way east and approach Copenhagen from the south, or make my way north and get a train across the Great Belt Bridge linking Fyn and Zealand (which is closed to cyclists). I’d had my fill of island hopping by this point, so began to cycle my way north to the city of Nyborg.

    After discovering I would have to pay £20 just to see the famous Egeskov Slot (a moated castle), I set my GPS to call by the less famous Damestenen – a glacial ‘erratic’ plucked from the bedrock in Sweden and dumped by the melting ice in what is now a Danish field. In fairness the local tourist board hasn’t tried to oversell it by claiming it looks like something it doesn’t, but it is just a rock.

    “It’s a rock”, but not Frog Rock

    I rolled up to my final shelter on the outskirts of Nyborg, unpacked my sleeping gear and spent the evening sheltering from the wind in a different sort of construction: the local café bar. It was quite windy and the shelter, although with plentiful character and in a great spot overlooking a lake, was not exactly the most windproof. It reminded me of the 1930s wooden garage that has survived almost a century of Scottish winters beside the cottage where our family holidays up in Perthshire.

    Pizzas not included – the shelter at Dyrehavehuse nature campsite

    That evening I booked a train ticket for 1pm the next day. The train would not only carry me across the Great Belt Bridge, but take me all the way to Copenhagen, drawing to an end Phase 1 of my European tour. The plan was to take a bit of R&R  in Copenhagen before extracting myself – and all my kit – to Norway, somehow.

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    PHOTOGRAPHY: The Shelters of Denmark

    STRAVA: rides from the 13th 21st of May

  • 6. Hamburgers and Holsteins in Northern Germany

    6. Hamburgers and Holsteins in Northern Germany

    After medicating myself with an early night I woke from my long sleep with the usual tent dilemma: being warm, comfortable, and busting for a wee. I’m more of a night owl than a morning lark so having such a forceful alarm clock is actually quite handy. I thought the trip might re-tune my circadian rhythm and I would rise with the sun like a medieval farm labourer, but apparently not yet.

    As soon as I sat upright it was clear my back pain had much improved and I would be able to carry on towards Hamburg. I cooked up an extra large bowl of porridge and offered a few oats to my new neighbour the mallard duck, who had been justifying my anatidaephobia as he sat and watched me eat breakfast. The oats were enthusiastically received.

    I googled it and yes, you can feed ducks oats – just don’t cook them first (the oats or the duck)

    The Worpswede campsite was remarkably empty and I hadn’t seen a single staff member since my arrival. It would have been quite easy to just leave and save a few euros, but this is Germany – where following the rules and making money are part of the national DNA – so I wandered further in to try and locate a reception.

    As I carefully leaned my bike against a wall I was greeted by the campsite owner. There was a warmth to his character and he quickly expressed an interest in my trip, boasting of his passion for the British countryside. When the conversation turned to my sore back he suddenly disappeared behind the counter and returned with a tube of ‘Voltaren’ pain killing gel, insisting that I take it with me free of charge. I don’t really know how effective the Voltaren was, but the gesture lifted me for the rest of the day; I realised the importance of communicating with people I meet along the way, and the power they can have to change a situation with their knowledge, resources, and little acts of kindness.

    To the owner of Worpswede campsite; danke schön for the Voltaren!

    With my new lease of life I began to cycle my way north-east through the flat pastoral landscape of fields separated only by the occasional patch of woodland. Curiously, one of the larger villages I passed through was equipped with a vending machine stocked with trays of eggs – those on higher shelves in the machine were cheaper than their lower counterparts. I like to think a German chicken farmer has sat down and developed a pricing formula that accounts for the probability of eggs breaking when dispensed from different levels of the machine, I wouldn’t put it past them.

    You could save €0.80 by going for the eggs on row 3, but are you feeling lucky?

    Over time the open fields of grass and cereals were interspersed with dense orchards, sleepy farmyards were replaced by industrial estates, and the once occasional traffic was becoming more of a constant. Hamburg was approaching, but there was still a significant barrier between us: the river Elbe.

    Hamburg

    The cycle path was becoming busier and I tucked in behind a group of commuters heading in the right direction. After around 20 minutes our little peleton arrived at the airport ferry crossing – a small jetty floating on the south banks of the Elbe.

    As we waited for our ferry there was another boat making its way downstream towards the North Sea, a colossal 125,000 tonne cruise ship from German operator AIDA. Looking like a skyscraper that had been toppled by a giant toddler and scribbled on with a crayon, even the locals seemed bemused at the ridiculous spectacle that was floating along in front of us.

    Give us a kiss – less than half of the flagship AIDAprima

    The hostel I was staying in was in the northern part of St Pauli district and not far from the lively Schanze area, basecamp for the regional hipster population. The heavily graffitied buildings are not in a state of abandonment, they are full of life and activity. The streets are dotted with countless ‘kiosk’ shops – each a slightly different hybrid of newsagent, off-licence, post office and café – and the countless bars and restaurants seem to effortlessly draw in the punters even on a Tuesday night. It seems there is no shortage of money changing hands in Hamburg.

    Hamburgers enjoy the Friday evening sunshine on a St Pauli street corner

    I wanted to stay for a bit longer in Hamburg to explore and catch up on travel admin, but with only one night booked and a lack of beds I had to move hostels. The new one was nearby and turned out to be more of a ‘proper’ backpackers hostel, with key ingredients including a big common area with free tea & coffee on tap, and sociable members of staff including the very down to earth Irishman who shared my name. The hostel functioned partly as a little haven for the city’s English speakers, some of whom were studying in Hamburg but just liked to swing by for the good vibes and a break from the Germanic world.

    As a sort of ice-breaker for guests the hostel put on a weekly open mic night, where if you’re lucky you might hear Martin the compere play something from his wide busking repertoire, and if you’re unlucky you might hear Martin The Cycling Brit butchering Johnny Flynn’s theme tune to The Detectorists – the problem with forgetting both the lyrics and chords to a song is that, well, there’s not much left to perform at that point. We decided the best course of action was to try another song, so I went for The Divine Comedy’s My Lovely Horse which I knew Irish Martin would join in with, which thankfully went a bit more like it did in Ted and Dougal’s dreams than their performance at the Irish Eurovision qualifiers. I declined the free beer offered to open mic participants though, I’ll grab one when I do that Johnny Flynn song justice.

    I would spend four nights in Hamburg in the end, with an extra day to have a look around the Harbour festival with my new hostel friends from India and Pakistan, who calmly elevated themselves above the aggression of their country’s governments only hours after missiles had been fired in the ongoing Kashmir conflict.

    Although I didn’t quite get around to all of the tasks on my travel admin list, after much research & confusion I did eventually manage to send a package home – partly to send birthday goodies for Mum, but also to return a few stowaways that had snuck into my panniers. Yep, I cycled from Amsterdam to Hamburg carrying a 60W power supply for a Wahoo Kickr turbo trainer, i.e. an exercise bike. If there is one thing you don’t need on a cycle tour, it’s an exercise bike, so you probably don’t need the power supply for one either.

    Episode 1 in the mini-series of ridiculous things I brought with me on tour: a turbo trainer power supply

    I did find time to get out of the hostel and explore the city to be a bit of a tourist. The ominous concrete bunker – built by forced labourers under instruction of the Nazis – might be the most solid looking building I’ve ever seen, and clearly strong enough for them to stick a multi-storey hotel on top and cover the roof in trees & shrubs.

    Flak Tower IV, with the new hotel & gardens on top – the perfect Bond villain mansion

    Sadly the Church of St Nicholas did not survive the allied bombing raids quite so unscathed, the ruins of which remain as a memorial. I’ve seen the ruins of countless monasteries torn down at the behest of everyone’s favourite fat-man Henry VIII, but there’s something quite unsettling about the church of St Nicholas, probably the fact the enormous spire is still intact; you can see the soire from miles around, it’s only when you get close it becomes obvious the rest is missing. Apparently it was destroyed by a fire in the 19th century too, so they might struggle to get building insurance after rebuild no. 3.

    Remains of the Church of St. Nicholas, with its working glockenspiel bells

    Finally I couldn’t leave without sticking my head in the cunningly named Miniatur Wunderland (not ‘The Model Railway Museum‘, which might somewhat narrow the demographic appeal). It’s quite easy to imagine how dull a badly executed version of this museum would be to your average city tourist, but kudos to them – they have put together a small army of craftsmen & women in the workshops to create this little parallel universe spread across several floors of an old warehouse by the docks. Everything comes to life too thanks to thousands of hidden electric motors, circuits and LEDs, all overseen by a slightly overkill control room that seems to be modelled on NASA’s Houston.

    A riverside exhibit from Miniatur Wunderland – recognise anything?

    After making my way through the miniature exhibits – each showing a different geographical area and various human & economic activities – I sat down for a coffee in the cafeteria and got talking to an English couple from York who were in Hamburg for the weekend. The topic turned to the museum and how long we had been inside – they’d been told by a friend back home that it would take three days to see everything properly.

    “Three days in here, can you imagine?!”, the wife exasperated.

    I took a sip of my rapidly cooling cappuccino and looked at the husband. It seemed like he might be on the verge of launching a defence of their friend’s position – maybe with a monologue about the time needed to truly appreciate good craftsmanship – but he thought better of it. They had negotiated to spend 5 hours max. He finished his slice of cake and headed upstairs to checkout the Italian Alps on level 3, she ordered another cup of tea.

    My time in Hamburg was coming to an end. I had met a variety of interesting people at the hostel, from both Germany and beyond, and felt that despite the short time we had spent together we became friends. Before my departure I grabbed lunch with a German man of a similar age who was in the process of renovating a boat; it sounded like a long and complex project, but one I could understand. We were both finding meaning and satisfaction in our own journeys.

    From campingplätze to trekkingplätze

    It felt good to be out in the countryside again. The sun was still beaming in the unseasonably warm spring heatwave that had started on day 3 back in Horn and continued ever since.

    I was now heading north towards Denmark through Germany’s most northern state: Schleswig-Holstein. The area is famous for its classic black & white Holstein Fresian dairy cows, which you see all over Shropshire and pretty much everywhere else that produces milk on an industrial scale.

    A couple of Holstein Fresians – the most popular way to convert grass into milk (and methane)

    I had a rummage on Google Maps and picked out a small campsite in the hamlet of Hodorf not far from the city of Itzehoe, about 50km away, so not too arduous for my first day back on the road. As I slowly emerged out of the suburbs and into the countryside the first sense I had of being in a new region was the number of wind turbines, they were multiplying! There was no shortage of turbines in other parts of Germany, but here they seemed to be sprouting up from every direction.

    A handful of the hundreds of wind turbines in Schleswig-Holstein

    I was greeted at the campsite gate by the owners, who were in the midst of a struggle with a newly purchased hosepipe. It was designed for a yacht and so was super light weight, but you have to fully unwind the pipe for water to flow…not ideal. There’s usually a compromise with ultra-light gear, as well as the price.

    The owners were a sociable couple and made me feel extremely welcome, recommending I watch the sunset up on the dike with the rare absence of wind, so I did. As the sun approached the horizon it melted through shades of orange to red, and the sound of birdsong and insects filled the perfectly still evening…then a sheep started to use my foot to scratch the itch on its head, rude!

    Here comes trouble. The cat knew to keep its distance from this lot

    The next morning I got back onto my pre-planned GPS route and continued the journey north, stopping in the picturesque coastal town of Husum to wander haplessly in search of a public loo and seek out a German B&Q to pick some gas for my stove.

    Not long after leaving Husum I found myself on some of the longest and straightest cycle paths I have ever bore witness to, and with the sea & mudflats on one side and a tree-less grassy embankment on the other, it was barely obvious that any progress was being made at all. But with a sympathetic tailwind the progress was good. I treated myself with a food product sold to me as ‘Fish & Chips’, and immediately regretted it.

    I’m sorry Germany, but this is not Fish & Chips. Come on, salad dressing!?

    One difference about this final section of touring before entering Denmark was the nature of my camping spots. Until now I have always stayed in ‘proper’ campsites that are run as businesses and always have the basic facilities: a shower, toilet, wash basin etc. But when scanning the map for places to stay I noticed a new word popping up, Trekkingplätze. They seem to be a northern Germany phenomena and are provided specifically for people travelling by foot or bicycle. You can only spend one night at a time, but they are free!

    This trekkingplätze came with its own cosy little cabin, perfect for blog writing

    Maybe I just got lucky and picked a couple of good ones – and everything seems better in good weather of course – but the two I stayed in at the end of my journey through Germany were bloody great. The first even had a shower (albeit cold and in full view of any passers by) and the kind lady whose garden it sits in came and dropped off a thermos of coffee before leaving for work, bless her. The second was nestled away in a woodland glade and had its own private island. Yep, an island with a picnic bench that you can row a boat to, which in early May is basically one big dragonfly orgy.

    Setting sail for breakfast – the boat could probably do with a lick of paint to be fair

    The trekkingplätze were a glimpse into how you can trade in a bit of convenience (and cleanliness) for a massive accomodation cost saving, tactics I will surely need to survive mega-pricey Scandinavia without falling into destitution. A timely lesson, I was mow only 10km from the Danish border.

    ——-

    PHOTOGRAPHY: Schleswig-Holstein

    STRAVA: rides between 6th and 13th of May

  • Update: 21st May 2025

    Hello everyone (or should I say ‘Hej’? One of two three-letter Danish words I can just about use in a conversation without the recipient looking confused at best, and occasionally in actual pain).

    This post is not an official ‘episode’ of the blog but more of a general update and a bit of housekeeping.

    I am currently in the Danish city of Nyborg and have booked a train to Copenhagen for tomorrow afternoon, where I will hopefully remain for a little while so I can catch up on the blog writing and plan how I haul everything to Norway for the next phase of the tour.

    In the meantime, I noticed that I forgot to add links to photo albums on my last two blog posts, sorry about that. I have added these now, as well as a new ‘Photo Gallery‘ page which has links to all of the Google Photo albums that accompany each blog post, including a variety of bonus pics in the ‘Preparations’ album from the months preceding my departure from Shrewsbury.

    I hope that you are keeping well and enjoying the blog. I genuinely enjoy writing it, and it’s a good excuse to extract myself from the day-to-day of touring – namely planning, packing, pedaling, and unpacking – to plonk myself in a cosy coffee shop or bar to do a bit of writing.

    All the best,
    Martin

  • 5. Campsites & city lights in Lower Saxony & Bremen

    5. Campsites & city lights in Lower Saxony & Bremen

    I crossed the Dutch border and entered the German state of Lower Saxony on the 30th of April. Why Lower Saxony is higher up than Saxony on the map I’m not sure, maybe they were rebelling against the ‘north bias’ emerging in 16th century European cartography – preferring to see the world from south-up – but I doubt it.

    I was a little anxious about leaving behind the gold-standard Dutch cycling infrastructure and stepping into unknown German territory, but Deutsche Infrastruktur is generally pretty good and that extends to cycling. The majority of roads have a separate cycle path, but sometimes they are a little narrow and often shared with pedestrians, so you do have to be vigilant.

    The sun was continuing to beat down and I made the rookie mistake of running out of water, so I kept my eyes out for a church with a graveyard. This is a top tip by the way if you’re ever running low, but you need one where the residents are fresh enough to be remembered by the living; nobody waters the flowers anymore at the weathered headstone of Hans Schmidt, B.1725 D.1802 (RIP). They say you die twice: once when you croak, and again when the last person who remembers you croaks – if your chosen graveyard is full of people from the latter then don’t bank on there being a tap for the mourners.

    A handy church graveyard tap, with its own pitched roof

    Die Campingplätze

    Fully watered but now running dangerously low on food, I tracked down an Edeka supermarket in the appropriately named town of Weener. Edeka is basically the Tesco of Germany, more choice than Lidl & Aldi and just about cheap enough to not turn your nose. I stocked up on groceries and made the inaugural use of my oversized bottle cages, which are the perfect size for a 1.5 litre bottle of pop…once finished you can either buy more pop or keep the bottle for extra water capacity.

    There’s a campsite located on the outskirts of Weener, just beside the river Ems (which was hiding behind a dyke, as they all are in this region). Campingplatz Weener is a very German campsite, filled principally with static caravans owned by Germans, some of which looked like they had been there since the late 1970s, with little attempt made to scrape off the decades of moss and algal growth since their arrival.

    The man on reception scribbled directions to the tent area on a paper map that appeared to be a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. After some squinting and a few wrong turns I was greeted by my fellow campers: a friendly Dutch couple who were on a week-long trip, and a local man who had come out on his bike for a few days around the May Day bank holiday. I wondered if people who camp in tents and travel by car avoid Weener for some reason.

    After almost ruining my evening meal by adding Bergkäse ‘mountain cheese’ that was way too strong for my delicate English palette, I handed the rest of the pack to my hardened cheese-eating Dutch neighbours. The Campingplatz Weener campers were all beginning to settle down for the evening.

    Macaroni cheese with currywurst sauce and German sausage – the trick is to choose a cheese that you actually like the taste of

    At around 9:30pm, as the attractive dome shaped street lamps began to glow around the campsite, a new cyclist parked up at the edge of the grass and began to inspect the area for an optimum location for his tent, commentating a relentless stream of German as he did so. He was a stocky sort of fellow, around middle age with long wispy hair emanating from the patches where it still held on.

    Until this moment I had thought of my own touring setup as being very much at the heavy end of the spectrum. Although the bike he rode in on was not itself too out of the ordinary – it had relatively small wheels with orange reflectors attached to every spoke, and an extra-wide seat upholstered with the sort of fluffy fabric you expect to find on a plush rug at Dunelm – it was the fact being towed along behind was a seriously hefty trailer. Most of the trailer’s contents were obscured by a blue tarp, but strapped on top was the silhouette of a large, oddly shaped object that was difficult to make out in the evening twilight: it looked like another bicycle, but surely nobody would tour with a spare bike? This man would, and does!

    Our new camping neighbour unloaded his trailer, erected a solidly 5-man tent with high ceilings, and parked his main bicycle in the tent’s lobby. I have at times felt a bit eccentric in the planning and execution of this trip, but there are always bigger fish out there, and there is some comfort in that. From now on whenever I feel weighed down by the gravity of my luggage, I shall imagine if I were dragging along this touring setup, and feel the kilogrammes float away.

    Campingplatz Weener had not only been quirky but it was quite cheap at €15 for two nights, half the price of the Dutch sites I had been staying in. The record for cheapest accommodation of the trip was to be short held however, with the title taken by Auecamp the very next day at a bargain busting €4, trustingly paid for via an honesty box. Despite being in the heart of Wildehauser Geest nature reserve, Aucamp is within earshot of Autobahn No. 1, so it would not be the quietest of night’s sleep. Another problem with cheap accommodation is feeling like you’ve now got spare budget to burn, which in this instance went into the onsite bar’s cash register.

    Das autobahn, slicing through das nature reserve

    Now call me easily pleased, but you do start to appreciate good facilities when skipping from one place to another on tour. At Auecamp it was the immaculately clean, warm and well stocked toilet / shower cubes dotted around the site and required no token to operate – just step in, lock the door and it’s yours. After tiptoeing between patches of mud in the cold, dank men’s shower block at Weener, stepping into my own private shower booth was veering on decadence. I do not intend for this blog to be a running commentary on the good, the bad, and the ugly toilets of continental Europe, but these ones really did leave an impression! Maybe I am easily pleased.

    The toilet / shower cube at Auecamp

    Into the city

    You spend a lot of time in the countryside on a cycle tour. Birdsong rings out from swaying trees, crops carpet the neverending patchwork of fields, and the sort of drama you might typically encounter is a farmer struggling to round up his more uncooperative livestock. It really is quite a peaceful place and you soon become accustomed to the gentle pace of country life.

    So when I rolled into the city of Bremen and was met by hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters marching through the main square, with a pro-Israeli counter-demonstration lingering on the periphery – everyone carefully watched over by armed German police – it was quite the sensory overload.

    A jolt back to reality – both protests went by peacefully

    I had booked into my first hostel of the trip, two nights in the Meininger around 200m from the train station. It was one of those hostels that is essentially a hotel in every regard other than the fact you share a room, in my case with three other people. The facilities are great but there are  limited opportunities to mingle with other travellers besides your roommates. Fortunately I was sharing with a fellow cyclist from Poland who had also not eaten yet, so we ventured into downtown Saturday night Bremen to replenish ourselves.

    Cities may be chaotic and stressful, but they also have stuff going on. Take an evening walk into the centre of a provincial market town and you will be lucky to find a bar with a jukebox. In Bremen we wandered into the cathedral at 8:30pm and caught a live performance of some seriously experimental electronic music as part of the Lang Nacht der Musik event. Amid the soft overhead lighting and soaring gothic stonework, high frequency crackles & pops fizzed out over harsh mid-range synths, with the occasional deep bassline swooping out across the pews from a surprisingly small PA system. The performance wasn’t structured like classical music, it was closer to a Jackson Pollock painted in sound. You don’t get that in the countryside.

    Not your typical venue for a gig

    After our burritos we took the scenic route back to the hostel, taking in the handful of older buildings of Bremen that survived the allies’ WW2 bombing campaign. German city centres are lined with the glass and steel panels of generic modern buildings and you can’t help but wonder how they might differ today if some of those bombs were saved for military targets.

    By Sunday morning Rafa and my two other roommates had moved on, so I had the place to myself, quite a rare treat in a hostel. I took the day to relax and do a bit of blog writing before heading for Hamburg in the morning.

    I think it was when manoeuvring the fully loaded bike around the awkward hotel corridors that I noticed all was not right with my body. My lower back muscles had become tense, and certain actions – like lifting my leg over the frame to get onto the bike – resulted in acute pain. I rode out of Bremen hoping the pain would soon subside but it did not. I had to rest, so I headed for a small town called Worpswede which a man had recommended to me as a place to visit in the elevator as I returned from breakfast.

    Worp speed ahead

    Worpswede is not far from Bremen, but it seemed to take a lifetime to get there. I knew there were painkillers in my first aid kit but I couldn’t be bothered with the palaver of stopping to retrieve them, so I bit the bullet rode on.

    If you had to pluck a small town out of thin air as a place to kill some time whilst feeling sorry for yourself, I can highly recommend Worpswede. It is a small town whose trajectory was forever changed by the arrival of artists in the 19th century. There are statues and public art pieces everywhere you look, and many of the houses are washed in colourful paint. I read a short history of the Worpswede artist colony and they remind me a little of the British Pre-Raphaelites: shunned by the mainstream art world, they decided to go their own way, with things getting a little bit incestuous amongst the small social circle of country-dwelling artists.

    After taking some down time to eat cake and rest my aching muscles in a deckchair I had commandeered outside the Tourist Information centre, I necked a couple of Ibuprofen and hauled my arse back up to try and find some culture in this quite unusual place.

    Either the statue was carved that way on purpose, or there was only enough bronze for 1 out 5 appendages

    It was a Monday afternoon and the main art gallery was closed, so I decided to seek out an oddly shaped building I had spotted on a display board in Tourist Information – the Käseglocke.

    The Käseglocke – an ideal Mystery House on Escape to the Country

    The Käseglocke, which translates to ‘cheese dome’, was built in the 1920s as the eccentric home for one of Worpswede’s resident artists. Apparently it wasn’t long before he opened up the quirky building for guided tours and that tradition continues to this day. There’s a wide variety of colourful ceramics, anti-ergonomic furniture (which you are allowed to sit in), and bizarre fixtures on displays, including a large stove built in the ‘Impressionist’ style. I can see why Impressionism took off more with oil paint than it did with stove manufacturing, but I like the idea.

    The stove – a bit like when Homer Simpson built a spice rack, but more solid

    Above the stove was a Kaffeeschacht: a Wallace & Gromit-esque hole in the ceiling to the master bedroom for the rapid retrieval of a freshly boiled pot of coffee. It really is a fun little building, filled with objects that give you a flavour of the unconventional artists who have lived in Worpswede over the years. It is set within some old growth woodland too for that extra fairytale vibe, and if you’re lucky some local ladies might turn up with a couple of donkeys in tow for a chat with the museum keeper.

    See if you can spot the farm animal in the bottom ceramic

    Although it had been a challenging day with the onset of back pain I felt lucky to have spent it in somewhere like Worpswede. I headed to a riverside campsite to pitch my tent for an early night to maximise my recovery, the plan was to see how I felt in the morning and decide if I would carry on to Hamburg.

    At the campsite I was greeted by two ducks: they had clearly been fed many times before by campers and hoped I might throw something tasty in their direction. But in my mind they saw a weary traveller who’d had a hard day and could do with some company, and that’s the version of reality I embraced.

    Ducks are pretty useless at constructing tents, but they make for good moral support

    PHOTOGRAPHY: Bremen & Lower Saxony

    Strava: rides between 2nd & 5th of May

  • 4. Polder Dash: the Netherlands’ manmade and natural wonders

    4. Polder Dash: the Netherlands’ manmade and natural wonders

    There will be no shortage of royal hangovers the morning after King’s Day, but the price of beer had done a good job in limiting my own consumption and I even managed to pack up and set off in good time. The plan was to try and join my pre-planned route in Flevoland, but to do this I would need to cross the body of water that separates Holland from the north-eastern Dutch provinces.

    Provinces of the Netherlands
    (credit: Wikipedia)

    I assumed this body of water was a large tidal bay crossed by a couple of impressively long road bridges. But the Dutch being Dutch, these roads are not bridges but dams: they form part of the Zuiderzee Works that have totally transformed this landscape over the 20th century. My crude understanding is the dam provides a barrier to protect the area from flooding by the North Sea, whilst also turning the bay into a freshwater lake that can be drained at low tide. This ability to drain water logged areas has given birth to significant areas of brand new land – so called ‘Polders’ – one of which is Flevoland where I was heading.

    The continued sunny weather brought the locals out to enjoy their favourite Sunday morning waterside activities along the winding cycle path that followed the shore of the Markermeer lake, which was now glistening in the midday sun. Odd to think that if the proposed Markerwaard polder had been built and the lake was fully reclaimed as originally planned, there would have been no waterside left for these people to enjoy. As it happens, the NIMBYs of Hoorn are a formidable bunch and the battle was won to protect their waterside amenities – the idea was scrapped in 2003 after a century in the planning system. Typically a sea view offers reliable protection against development encroaching your backyard…not in the Netherlands!

    Upon arrival at the entrance to the dam that splits the Markermeer and IJsselmeer I snook into a museum toilet to top up my water and caked myself in factor 50 suncream, there would be virtually no shade for the next 26km so the protection was needed. Except it wasn’t the sun that was about to subject me to torture but hoardes of midges, strung out in long black clouds along the waterside cycle path. My sunglasses protected from direct eyeballs strikes, but they seemed to ricochet their way in through the open sides. The hair on my arms and legs quickly became saturated with the corpses of fallen flies, which had either exploded on impact or dissolved in the toxic mass of hair, suncream and crystallised sweat salt.

    I tried ducking my head, weaving, and even swearing at them but it was futile, I needed a better strategy.  Not long after joining the cycle path I passed a man with a road bike who had stopped for a toilet break (no. 1); after battling through several kilometres of midge clouds the man caught up with me and overtook on the left hand side. This was my chance. I stamped on the pedals and managed to tuck in close behind the bigger man, whose large silhouette not only sheltered me from the plague of flies but also the mild-yet-irritating headwind that blew across the lake. The man glanced around to inspect the source of heavy breathing that was now following him – a sunbaked Brit covered in dead flies hauling a 46kg quite un-aerodynamic bicycle – and mercifully continued his 28km/h tempo which I could just about hold onto for a good chunk of the dam.

    Eventually the flat road briefly ramped up to a small gradient as we crossed a channel and my human shield pedalled away towards the horizon. Thankfully the flies had now largely dispersed, but there is still something quite soul destroying about cycling along a very long, straight, flat road – the scenery becomes static and unchanging, with only the occasional seabird breaking the monotony. People complain about riding up hills on bicycles, but at least your legs get a rest on the descent, endlessly flat roads can feel relentless – and there would be plenty more in this part of Europe.

    Victory – look carefully at my right eyebrow and you will see the bodies of several midges lost in the Great Houtribdijk Massacre

    Don’t tread on the tulips

    The thing about a dijk is they are necessarily quite tall structures, so I didn’t see much of Flevoland at first after joining the polder along the long straight road that runs along the lakeside. Upon crossing the Ketelbrug bridge I was finally on more conventional roads again, heading into the heart of (the slightly mushroom-shaped) Noordoostpolder.

    The odd field of tulips had appeared on previous days but these were under more overcast conditions. The fields beside me were suddenly beaming with saturated hues of red, yellow and white, like unmixed oil paint squeezed straight from the tube. By pure chance I had arrived more or less in peak tulip season. If you’re wondering what they do with millions of tulips upon harvest in late spring – although they may sell a few flowers they are mainly after the bulb. The flower head is removed and the plant diverts growth to the bulb instead, which is then dug up a few weeks later for sale or replanting.

    Most tulips have their own moat to keep invaders at bay

    The majority of tulip fields are protected from the public by an encircling ditch, but these particular fields – located along the signposted ‘tulpen route’ – had a small access bridge allowing for closer inspection. The farmer’s children were on duty to keep the tourists in check and bark instructions at those getting a little too close, led by the eldest boy who seemed to relish in this minor delegation of authority; I was sympathetic to the cause, but there was a mildly irritating style of execution, and I did wonder how easy it might be to pick up the little bureaucrat and hurl him into the nearby drainage channel (…don’t scrunch up your face, we’ve all met annoying kids before). But I was here to ride a bicycle not assault the local children, so onwards I went.

    It may look like I crossed into the demilitarised zone between tulips and plebs, but I was using the magic of camera zoom, honest!

    Into more natural surroundings

    I took a brief pit stop at the edge of a car park in the uninspiring town of Emmeloord to ponder where I would stay for the night. After a toss up between a pricey hostel and rustic campsite I opted for the better value camping option, located in the National Park Weerribben-Wieden.

    The natural habitat of this region is of course wetlands. The expansive, hedge-less agricultural fields were slowly replaced by water logged bogs, with many more woodland areas appearing along the roadside. After a few navigation blunders I found myself in the picture-postcard village of Kalenburg, with its idyllic modern looking houses lined up along the banks of a canal. Locals and tourists slowly chugged along in their pleasure boats, sipping wine in the evening sun and offering the occasional friendly wave, with some younger residents playing a game of ‘jump into the rubber dinghy’.

    The campsite was small but picturesque, occupied by only a few couples (and their dogs) in motor homes. The owner was nowhere to be seen, so I picked a spot and got setup for the evening. I knew the site would be rustic but I did find the lack of showers to be a bit annoying given my sweaty condition after 116km of pedalling in the sun. The solution was obvious, change into the pair of orange swimming shorts (with saguaro cactus motif) I had brought and cool off in the canal, which had an access ladder leading right onto the campsite grounds. As you probably guessed, the water was excruciatingly cold, so I took a moment to compose myself whilst grasping onto the ladder until the cold shock response fizzled out, then had the briefest of swims and extracted myself back onto dry land. It wasn’t until my evening after-dinner walk that I discovered the shower block, equipped with hot water on the opposite side of the reception building.

    The dining experience when camping is greatly enhanced by a bench, even a slightly scabby one

    I would normally have been ready for a lie down after a long day in the saddle and late dinner, but I was struck by the chorus of peculiar sounds emanating from all around me, growing louder as the sun retreated. There seemed to be more bird life in this national park than all the other regions I had passed through put together, in particular ducks and geese; there would barely be a second pass without a honk, shriek or caww ring out. The amphibians joined in too – I can’t tell you if they were frogs or toads because I didn’t see a single one, but I was a trapped audience in the relentless symphony of croaking.

    Dusk in the Weerribben-Wieden

    The windmill

    There’s no escaping them, the Dutch landscape is scattered with windmills. Well, not exactly: the majority nowadays are the familiar white turbines that generate electricity, but there are still plenty of old fashioned ones around that either mill grain or pump water, and they can be quite stunning.

    So when I cycled beside an ‘open’ sign pointing towards a textbook example, and time on my hands, I parked up the bike and headed in.

    Spot my bicycle for ‘Where’s Wally?’ points

    A Dutch ‘prijslijst’ of bready sounding products stapled onto the front door made me question whether it had been converted into a bakery, but it was soon clear the building had been restored into a living museum for public consumption. After climbing the steep stairs to level one I was met by a weather-beaten Dutchman of around 65 years, who had the rare distinction of speaking no English whatsoever, which as a fellow mono-linguist I respect greatly. He called up to his co-worker, a softly-spoken man of similar vintage with a short white beard, who climbed down a ladder from the second floor and I was treated to a personal tour of the mill. After talking through the history and inner workings, we headed out onto the sun-drenched balcony to release the brake – after a gentle nudge from his colleague the sails began to turn in the light breeze and the mill suddenly came to life.

    The brake cable is attached to that big wooden arm sticking out behind the sails

    A bit like when steam railways still provide passenger services on heritage lines operated by keen volunteers, the windmill was being put to work by grinding grain, mainly for animal feed these days. What was nice about the experience was not so much the windmill but the two chaps operating it – they understood every little piece of that mill and how to maintain it, which follows a design changed very little since the 1600s. It is easy to see how practical knowledge can be lost when people like this weld their last rivet or mill their final grain of wheat without an apprentice to keep it all going for the next generation.

    Pottering around inside a windmill felt like a fitting end to the Netherlands, but the time had come to move on and head for the border. Next up, Germany – a country that had barely registered in my mind when planning the trip.

    A happy Brit – but would Germany wipe away that smile?

    PHOTOGRAPHY: Flevoland & north east Netherlands

    STRAVA: rides between 27th and 30th of April