travel

Just south of Trondheim

Tuesday 20^th June: That date makes tomorrow the Summer Solstice, the longest day. I heard somebody ask on the radio ‘what are you going to do to celebrate?’ What I’m going to do is be in the Arctic Circle where the sun won’t set at all but I am not going to stay up all night just to make sure that it doesn’t.

Today started off in that campsite just south of Trondheim. I woke at 6.45 and got going, packed things up which was so easy because everything was dry. I made a coffee, had a couple of cereal bars and left at 8.45. It always takes two hours to break camp – surprising. Then I was on the road. I put Mo I Rana into the GPS and it said that I’d be there by 4.30. This seems a reasonable time compared to when you first read that a trip will take 7 hours which seems very long, too long. There was though a bit too much traffic. I stopped for petrol and wasn’t sure whether to stop again. In the end I did stop at a scenic layby. I talked to an older German man there travelling with his partner on a motorcycle (or was it two?). They were taking a much more leisurely approach. He showed me his map of Norway. He’d drawn circles of every place he was going to stay, every few inches, whereas I’m travelling at least twice as far as them every day. So I headed off.

Eventually I decided I needed some food and drink so stopped at a little town and went to a supermarket where I bought a kind of cappuccino milk carton and a roll and that helped and then I headed off again. It was a long, long way, endlessly on this road, though it was beautiful but I was a bit tired I think. But then the heavens opened. I could see it coming. Beautiful mountainous views on either side and lakes and snow up on the peaks. But the rain just fell down. I was wearing my waterproof gear already. It was so heavy and made visibility so poor that some people pulled off the road. I did for a moment or two but it was pointless. I kept going and then it stopped which felt so good. All the time the petrol was going down but I just don’t trust the petrol gauge. I had ridden 230 miles but the gauge was showing just under half a tank and telling me I could ride for another 120 miles. One day I will have to test it with some spare petrol.

At this place where I am now – which I will explain later – its not as far as Mo I Rana, maybe 30 miles south of there. I was wet and tired so stopped. I rode past this big campsite in the town which had a few tents but lots of cabins and a lot of them had motorbikes parked outside them and I thought ‘OK this is possibly a place to stay, in a cabin, like other people on bikes are doing’. I searched for a petrol station, found it then thought that I would stay in a hotel. I promised myself I would if it was wet – and it was raining again and I was wet. I found the hotel that I am in now. Its called the Fru Haugens hotel in Mosjøen. Its £112 for a room but I had no hesitation. The bike was wet, I was wet. I came up into this economy single room. I took all these wet clothes off, had a shower, dried my clothes on the radiator, dried my helmet. Plugged everything in. Ah – it was such a relief, so welcome. The only downside is that they are remaking all the roads in this town and right outside my window was a man with a mechanical whacker and a digger, this incredible racket just outside my room.

I ventured off through this small town to a brand new supermarket in a shopping centre that’s open till midnight and bought food for dinner in my room. I thought having spent £112 on a room I am not going to spend more money on an expensive dinner here. The guy on the digger stopped and I felt my spirits lift – but then he started again and my anxiety wound up again. Finally, he stopped and went home and I breathed a sigh of relief.

I put in the Arctic Circle Centre into the GPS. It will take just over two hours to get there so its not very far. That’s fantastic and that will be Wednesday. The downside is that Thursday morning it will start raining – all day. But the app on my phone has a little symbol for rain which is perhaps psychologically misleading because it looks really dark. Now I have got, for the rest of my time here, to do these manoeuvres to avoid the rain. I even thought of going across the border to Sweden where there is not as much rain but when you look in more detail the amount of rain is much greater so I won’t do that but I do want to figure out some strategy. Maybe its just riding in the rain and staying in hotels. It makes the trip more expensive but maybe it’s the way to go. Anyway, it’s the Arctic Circle tomorrow on the summer solstice which is fantastic and then head back down south. Tomorrow is the 21^st and my boat sails on 28^th so I have 7 days to wind my way, perhaps down the coast.

Travelling north through Lillehammer

19^th June: I slept pretty well in the end and woke up around 7.30 and tried to move as fast as I could although I took the trouble to make a filter coffee and ate a cereal bar–that was breakfast. The tent was wet, the bike cover was wet but thankfully everything inside was dry. I had to pack everything up before it had properly dried out. Amazingly, even though I woke up at 7.30 I didn’t actually leave until 9.45. I took ages to pack everything away, particularly when I was waiting as long as I could for things to dry out a little. I headed off via Honnefoss and it was raining, drizzling, wet. I stopped twice to put on more waterproof gear and warmer clothes but once I had got everything right, I was very comfortable despite the cold and rain. I was thinking that when its super-hot (as it was in Portugal last year) you can take off as many layers as you want and open as many vents on jackets as you can but you still suffer with the heat. But when its cold and wet you can actually keep it out pretty effectively with the right gear. Perhaps that’s the impact of global warming on how I am approaching motorcycle travelling. I stopped in Lillehammer at a petrol station and had a welcome coffee and a roll. There was a bunch of six or seven bikers from Poland. I knew they were from Poland because they had it written on the back of their jackets (I just can’t imagine British bike riders doing that).

I headed off from there with a full tank of petrol and maybe about half an hour later, travelling north on the E6 (the E4 seemed to turn to the E6) the traffic thinned out and the weather even got better. I had looked at my weather app and I could see that where I was heading, Trondheim, was 25 degrees and in full sun. Where I was, was raining and about 14 degrees so that motivated me to get going. Gradually as I rode north the weather did get better and the traffic changed to only big trucks and travellers in camper vans – or at least that’s how it seemed. And lots of bikers. I went through a national park and it felt as though I could keep riding for ever. The road was really good, not too tricky; the weather was good, not too hot or too cold by this time, not too much traffic; the bike was running well. Everything was comfortable. I stopped about 30 miles south of Trondheim – in Støren I think is the place, found a supermarket and a campsite which is good enough. It’s a bit noisy because its close to the E6 but its also close to a river. I like the place. Its relaxed. A lot of people come here to fish. You need 10Kr for the shower so maybe I won’t bother because I don’t have it. I just had dinner: noodles, smoked salmon (again), and red peppers with a garlic olive oil dressing. With a beer I found in the supermarket and yoghurt and a couple of sweet things.

Storen campsite near Trondheim — Tablecloth stapled to the table

My entry here was so much more poised than yesterday because it was 22 degrees and just about sunny. There’s a lot of space and thankfully no mosquitoes. In fact I think I have brought here one or two mosquitoes that were squashed in my tent and somehow survived the day. So much nicer. The weather app is telling me that on Thursday it will rain all day but in the south it is sunny again. So I am trying to plan a route and a timing to avoid as much of the rain as I can. I won’t linger but if I travel back sound on Wednesday I might avoid some of the rain. I have promised myself that if its dry I will camp but if its wet I will look for hotels to stay in. That seems a good simple approach to travelling in Norway (I had not discovered cabins at that point).

Arriving in Kristiansand and first camping

18^th June: This is Sunday night and I’ve already lost track of what day it is but I didn’t sleep as well as the first night on the first ferry. I was awake at 5 with stuff just running through my head but had breakfast with a croisant and a coffee which was hot and then packed up. They wanted everybody out of the cabins in good time before we docked so it’s enjoyable to sit on the sunny deck with most of the other passengers, watching Kristiansand come into view and eventually we rode off the boat.

It went very smoothly: up onto the E 18 motorway turning sharp right toward Oslo then I stopped for another coffee and bun and then stopped again to get petrol and then stopped a third time to change into some rain gear because it had started raining. There were traffic jams, slow moving traffic so I had lots of practising at filtering (which I don’t normally do) and eventually I launched my plan to find practically the only supermarket in the country open at Drammen railway station which was on the route. It was a little convenience store crammed full of stuff as well as people. I bought food and drink for dinner and then eventually, eventually after riding all day on the motorway got onto the small scenic roads that you come here for and I found a campsite just outside Honnefoss. It was drizzling when I got here and putting up the tent it started to rain. Added to this, swarms of mosquitoes must have heard about my recent arrival. So what with the rain and the mosquitoes I felt really stuck in this tent. I didn’t want to unzip it because of the mosquitoes buzzing just outside so luckily I had the smoked salmon that I bought, a carton of orange juice and some mushrooms so I just sat here in the tent huddled eating with my bare hands the smoked salmon and the raw mushrooms washed down with orange juice. I think this must have been the low point – of sorts – of the trip.

It’s a nice campsite and the person that works here is very friendly. It also seems super quiet. There are other people around, lots of mobile homes but it’s slightly down at heel so you don’t really get a sense that there’s people around. However, the shower and bathroom are very close to where I am and they’re individual with lots of room so that really doesn’t feel like it’s roughing it and awkward like those communal facilities often do. I have just had a shower and I’ve dried myself with paper towels because my towel is somewhere in a bag on the bike covered over the rain cover which I’m so pleased I’ve got it because the bike would just be soaking wet. My helmet and everything is under that cover so hopefully it’s going to be alright and hopefully it’ll be cloudy but dry in the morning. I put tomorrow’s route into the GPS (to Trondheim I think) and it’s going to be 6 1/2 hours riding, so I’ve got a feeling I will not get that far but the Norcamp app I’ve got with a huge number of campsites is really good and there’s campsites everywhere by the main roads here so I can just stop when I feel that I’ve done enough riding. Then another long day up to Mo I Rana and then the Arctic Circle and then I can stop and I can breathe a sign of relief I’ve done it and done what I said I’d do. Then I can be a bit more mindful on the way back. I’ll writing this on the 20th of June and it’s super light if my eye mask is deep in the luggage on the bike somewhere and the sun rises at some crazy time so I don’t know how much sleep I get maybe if it’s dry I can head off early. If it’s dry I will crack out my stove and make some coffee; if not maybe I’ll grab some at a petrol station. So this is my first day in Norway and true to form is it’s raining so let’s hope for better weather.

Thoughts from the Stena cabin on 17th June

17^th June: This is the morning of the 17th of June in my cabin, so, last night, I slept like a log, better than I normally do at home. The whistling Dutchman comes on the cabin speakers at half past five, which may be half past six local time but is still half past five as far as my body is concerned. The coffee and croissant was better than I remember from years gone by; the coffee was hotter and stronger. And the croissant was slightly bigger. Even the jam was slightly thicker than I remember on a previous journey. So, one extra layer today but it could be hot. It could be the same as England was here in the Netherlands. One of the other guys on a bike told me he was going to take a route around the north coast of the country. So I’ve decided to do that because you can’t – the ferry company say don’t get to the ferry terminal before two o’clock, so we dock at eight this morning. It should be a leisurely no hurry kind of ride. But I always seem to hurry. I don’t know why. So maybe this time I’ll just try and take it easy – whatever that means. It’s a pretty early start on this trip. I know that, but once you’re up and going then it should be fine.

Norway – leaving London for Harwich 16th June

Note: On this trip I recorded my thoughts on a Dictaphone and these are transcriptions. They have a different feel to writing. Its an experiment.

16th of June. From my cabin on the Stenna ship to Hook of Holland. Well, it seems that the last couple of trips, we’ve had a kind of disaster in the first 100 miles of getting from home to the ferry even last year, it was a motorbike malfunctioned in a very strange way. This time, leaving London, the traffic was so, so heavy at every point, and there were some brief moments of respite when you can actually go to proper speed but, but very quickly, you’d end up just in queued traffic again, whether it was accidents, or just the volume of traffic. Maybe Friday evening, leaving London wasn’t the best timing. But that was more than that. So having got the three quarters of the way to here, I just stopped for petrol, which I needed. And when I got off the bike, I could see that the bag that I’d put all this food in: the delicious apricot tart that my partner lovingly made and freshly made loaf of sourdough bread and the beautiful cheese and the bottle of water in a really nice bag just dropped off the bike at some point. Got no idea when. And it was really all the effort that had gone into making that little, that little feast. Really, really sad.

I arrived via the crowded A12 much later than I normally would.

So arriving at Harwich there’s usually other people on bikes. And that always actually really nice people that you chat to. Bikers on mass I kind of have a kind of aversion to but when you actually meet individual people, you know, they’re just nice people interested in travel and all ages. So in the cabin, I’ve eaten my snack, my dinner which is from Morrison’s in Harwich. With a little bit of some Italian beer. And I’m seeing whether I’ve got the energy to get out of the cabin to find someplace with a signal for the phone just to send a text back to my partner. I’ve been frantically charging everything.

Norway 2023 Route Summary

My aim was to visit the Arctic Circle relatively directly and then journey back to the south, where the ferry arrives and leaves from, in a slightly more relaxed way, down the west coast through tunnels and many short ferry trips.

The trip was 2,812 miles in total. I went out through Holland close to the north coast, which I thought might be more scenic (it wasn’t) and came back a more direct (though much busier) way. The main ferries were Stenna’s line from my old favourite Harwich to Hook of Holland and the new HNL, Holland Norway Line from the port of Emden just over the border into Germany to Kristiansand at the southern tip of Norway. Both are overnight journeys. Stenna cost £360 and HNL £714. I’m really supportive of a new venture in this complicated and costly sector. HNL’s offices at Emden were a series of tents.

This is looking down from the boat when everyone had boarded and the customs and other people were packing up and going home. But Stenna have a much more oiled operation and their boat and the cabins are noticeably nicer. HNL kindly changed my cabin when I complained that I was just under the performers on the sundeck.

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