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Going home on the MS Romantika

STOP the presses! I have just (september 9th) learnt that Holland Norway Line has been declared bankrupt and I believe that some travellers with return tickets are having to make their own way home. This is such a shame as it was a startup in only 2022. When travelling with them it was obvious that ferries are such a complex business to operate. I feel so sorry for them, for those who had the vision for the company and for all of their employees who seemed a very sweet and professional bunch of people. There seem to be fewer and fewer ferries in Europe, forcing travellers to use carbon-crunching air flight. See here for some more details.

28^th June: This is 28^th June and this is the news from cabin 8814 of the Romantika. Its my second cabin on this voyage so far, the ferry sailing from Kristiansand down to Emden in Germany. In my first cabin, I thought I had vaguely heard some music in it and thought ‘this is going to be slightly annoying’, had a shower, had a short sleep and then I heard loud singing and guitar playing. It turned out that the cabin was right under the sundeck with the Entertainer who was, I presume, entertaining a whole bunch of people a few feet above me. I was really pleased with myself that instead of just putting up with it I felt no hesitation in going up to the information desk and asked if there was another cabin. As a result they have given me a new cabin on the same deck but right at the other end of the ship. I am so pleased. Its completely quiet here.

How did the day go? I didn’t sleep well last night (again). I was awake at 3.30 and slept fitfully until shortly after 7am. I got up and made some lovely coffee with my filter dripper which has been great. I washed up, washed out the little hut (which would have cost Krhundreds if I had asked the staff to do it). I headed out over the sand dunes to walk briefly on the beautiful beach. There was not a soul in sight – just footprints. On the way back to my hut I chatted to the couple of cyclists I mentioned before, who are Italian and certainly well into their forties. They had cycled here from Italy(!) and are cycling to Nordkap planning to arrive there by August. The timetable of people on pushbikes is so different to mine. I certainly take my hat off to them.

I headed off with the bike packed up (that is so satisfying) taking it easy on the road, unlike yesterday when I hurried around. Eventually the last 14k was motorway and lots of tunnels (and higher speed limits) and made it to the ferry. I was greeted by the sight of loads of motorcyclists who were mostly Dutch and German.

There were a couple of guys from England who told me what they had achieved (which immediately made me feel that I did not do enough, was not adventurous enough): they did some off-road riding, they wild camped, they rode the famous Trollstigen Pass, none of which I had done. They went up to the arctic circle too. They were nice guys. It was the sort of conversation you have where very quickly you realise that somebody is a talker and not a listener, so you just settle into listening and they talk – which is fine (and they had had an interesting time). There was lots of luggage. Lots of people have lots of luggage on these large touring and ‘adventure’ bikes – metal panniers PLUS rolltop bags. Much more luggage than I have been carrying. In fact much more than I used to take when I had a large bike and metal panniers (I still have them and must sell them). There were a couple of KTM 1090 Adventures looking very nice. One had nice black metal panniers. (I was tempted to think about getting metal panniers for my bike for a future tour on road (not offroad where they would be a liability.)

After a couple of instalments we got onto the boat – and I have already described the rest.

I’m now going to head off to the buffet early before things run out (you can see my German heritage at work here) and afterwards read more of Ubik by Philip K Dick (Wikipedia says: The story is set in a future 1992 where psychic powers are utilized in corporate espionage, while cryonic technology allows recently deceased people to be maintained in a lengthy state of hibernation.).

Tomorrow morning at 10.15 we get into Emden. I was looking at my map of the Netherlands thinking that I will ride straight down south on a German autobahn by the border and then turn right into the Netherlands because the motorways are much faster in Germany. I know I will get to the Hook of Holland early but its not too bad a building. You can sit inside and get a coffee from a machine. I would sooner do that than what I did on the way over which was such a drawn out and laborious ride. I will be happy to sit and read until it is time to board….

Its now 7 minutes past 7 in the evening on 28^th June, on the ship and in my new cabin 8814 as opposed to 8141. A couple of observations: I have just enjoyed a pleasant hour or just less, sitting in the buffet eating salad, then fish, then more salad then some deserts and maybe three glasses of anonymous white wine. I was sitting there people watching – as usual. I was watching all the people that chose salad mainly and have come to the obvious conclusion that during the life-course people change their shape. That’s observation number 1. Observation number 2: after eating I strolled out on to the sundeck where the singer had been singing earlier when I got into my first cabin. It was two minutes past 7 when I arrived there and it was completely deserted. There was no singer, no audience and nobody making any noise at all. That whole event goes into the category of – well two things – possibly being hasty (in asking to move cabin) but the real category that my request to move goes into is into the mental category of ‘regretting choices’ which is an entirely useless category. It was the right thing to do – to move. The music could have gone on for hours – and I remember the employee on the information desk mentioning to me that the entertainment lasts until 11pm.

There is no network here in the cabins which is nice, in some ways. Its very early, only 7pm but I will get to bed in a couple of hours. As I wrote before, we dock at 10.15, I ride down through Germany and the Netherlands and repeat this experience on the ferry to Harwich. The ride from Harwich into London will be the bleakest part (the A12 is no fun) but arriving home will be great.

Capitalism and campsites; thoughts at Ogna Camping

Stardate 27^th June 2323 Captain’s Log Supplemental. There are two other observations that I’d like to make about this camp site. The first is its orientation which is to the west, south west. The first night that I was here after having got wet in the rain and arrived on a completely cloudy heavily overcast day, the evening was still thick cloud and wind. It also rained again later, so in other words it was a really horrible evening. This evening is very different. There is some little cloud but basically it’s a clear sky so you can see the way that the sun, as it goes down (its not terribly low, even now at 9.15) is so beautiful. All the buildings here, all the plots are orientated towards the west where there are grassy dunes and then the sea. So the sun shines into every plot and every building and suddenly the orientation makes sense. I sat on the plastic chair that they left in the porch of this cabin, sheltered from the wind but with the beautiful warm evening sun on my face. When I walked down to the washblock just now I could see that lots of other people here are doing the same.

OK, other observations, actually two. One is that there is a grassy space, a lovely flat and lush space here where a couple of cyclists have put up a tent with their bikes, and their clothes drying in the sun. Its good to see proper travellers. The other thing I noticed when I looked up the hill, because this is a terraced site, from where the washroom is at the bottom, I realised how huge this site is. There is just line after line of these newly built cabins which are much more high spec than where I am staying each at Kr1000 per night. There are lots of them and although everybody is facing the sun, and I could see half a dozen or so groups of people in their huts enjoying the evening sun, they are all separate from each other with little fences between the cabins that give everybody privacy. I have to say that it is not one of those friendly, informal camp sites. There is something atomised about it. It seems that that is what you get. You have this drive for profit to replace this kind of old school hut that I am staying in that’s cheap with these more lavish, expensive offers.

You get people who come to enjoy them and get the most out of them but there’s no sense of that communal mucking in together, chatting, that kind of down to earth feeling that you get – certainly in some English campsites. (Because it’s a cheap and cheerful option, often for families with small children who are used to having to make contact with those around them and have to be informal because of dealing with small kids in public places). As I was washing up in this soulless space on my own, a German woman came in with her own washing up. We said a few words. I said ‘I am nearly finished’ and she just stood there next to me while I laboriously washed up my saucepans and plates. She just waited her turn to use the facilities that she had paid for. It felt very odd. I know there was a language barrier and I could have made more effort. There isn’t much – in fact there is no greeting of people as you walk by them. In some sites there definitely is and that feels very nice. Here, it feels as though people have paid their money to get themselves a good experience and that is what they are here for. Also, on the topic of money, there are lots of really nice looking mobile homes, converted vans, two or three of those, very high spec. There was one huge mobile home that was literally the same size as a coach (that could carry 100 people perhaps from A to B) and there just seemed to be a late middle-aged German couple in it. I don’t know how they would have coped on the hairpin route that I came back on this afternoon. That vehicle probably would not be able to make it. It seemed greedy for space.

So, these two thoughts: this is a beautiful campsite and the orientation is amazing but the way it is going up market, like my previous site where they have a ‘vision’ to make a smarter card-operated offer, is losing something about what campsites can be at their best – in my view. I wonder whether this is a feature of sites that are close to the capital here where relatively wealthy people can easily travel to whereas the places much further north attract a very different clientele.

Stavanger in the rain to Ogna

Monday 26^th June. (Warning – this is transcribed from a rambling voice recording) I’m so relieved. I’m in – a cabin again. This one has two rooms: a kitchen without a sink this time unfortunately and a bedroom with four bunks. Its old school on this campsite in Ogna which is on the coast up between Egersund and the coastline going up towards Stavanger.

Rainy riding condensed

So that’s where it is and where I am. So what about the day? I woke up at 5am and I tried to get back to sleep but of course I couldn’t because it was broad daylight and I was also worried about getting off before this forecast ‘torrential’ rain with thunder and lightning. I eventually got out of the sleeping bag at 6am and did all the normal things you have to do to get going and made a coffee, had a super-sweet cereal bar and was on the bike leaving at 8am. Now, the forecast was 9am for when the thunder and lightning would start. By 9am I was boarding the next ferry going south on the E39 and it was still pleasant but as I rode down through the eastern side of Stavanger the sky started to look grey and I pulled over to get into rain gear behind the first garage that I stopped at. And headed off, but about 10 minutes later it started to rain heavily though there was no promised thunder and lightning so I pulled off the main road again and found another garage. It was one of the self-service garages (i.e. no bossy staff to tell you to move on) which had a canopy over it. It was nicely out of the way. So I put the bike under the canopy next to a pump, got off and stayed there, looking at the rain feeling quite miserable maybe for an hour. After that time I thought the rain looked as though it was easing slightly. I rode another 20 minutes or so but it started to rain heavily again. Luckily I saw a lay by, a truck stop with a toilet and another building. I pulled off there and used the facilities all the while the rain came down even more heavily. I sat under the porch of a disused café (with a for sale sign taped inside the window) and watched a few people come and go. Throughout the whole time one big truck was parked there. I think I was there, again, for an hour. (see youtube vid) I was trying to fight off a spiral of negative thoughts and I worked hard on imagining the rain just slowly stopping, bit by bit, and the sky brightening, maybe a little bit of sun coming out. I imagined, pictured this. And after about ten minutes I noticed a little bit of lighter sky over there. The rain almost kind of stopped. I thought ‘fantastic’. I went back over to the bike (I was worried that it wouldn’t start having been in the rain for so long – but it was fine of course) and started off again down the road toward Egersund toward a campsite with the almost unpronounceable name of Steinsnes which seemed to have lots of good reviews and recommendations and they have lots of huts – so I thought OK! I got there and parked just inside the entrance but it was busy busy with some guys using power tools to fix things. The place was noisy and busy and the people running it looked in a book and said unfortunately we don’t have cabins but you can camp which surprised me. I asked whether there was somewhere else and they said yes there is. Its 15 miles down the coast road, the road that I would have spent some time going up and down to explore. The rain had stopped by then. There was no rain at all but the skies were still heavy. They said why don’t you find an Air bnb or rent an apartment in town because cabins can be just as expensive? That was not what I wanted to do. So, I climbed back on the bike and I rode up to this place in a little town called Ogna with its own camping and caravan site. The site is off the main road – the 426 route I think -. I got here and the woman working on the reception desk said that they had just two cabins left. One is a nice cabin for four people – and that will cost you Kr1000 a night about £100 similar though slightly cheaper than a hotel. And we have another one which is not quite ready yet. It does not have a sink or running water but you can have that for Kr500. So I eagerly said I’d love that cabin. I waited a while, chatted to a French guy who lives now in Norway and then got in. It’s a sweet place. Its like the inside of a sauna with a tall ceiling upto the pitch which reminds me of the place I built in my back garden in Cambridge.

The only thing it does not have is a sink and water but there is a large water container here which I have filled up. The washing up and shower block is quite a long walk away, at the other side of the campsite, taking about 3 or 4 minutes to walk down there. Nevertheless I am really pleased to have it so I unloaded the bike, took all the wet stuff off it, plugged in all my electronics to get charged up. I got on the bike and again and rode one or so miles down the road to a Co-Op where I stocked up on some food, some more chocolate, some beers. That felt really good – and organised. It was slightly drizzly. I got back and fell asleep on the bed. I did some laundry down in the washing block and tried to dry some of my clothes under the hand dryer. There are some little electric radiators in here with signs that say ‘do not cover’ but I have covered them with my wet clothes. And now its started raining really nastily again. My bike is sitting outside by the window and thankfully I have the cover on it (definitely a must to take travelling) strapped underneath securely as its blowing and buffeting and the rain is falling on it and being thrown off. Its horrible weather and I think of the huge difference between sitting at this table in this hut and sitting in a tent when its blowing and raining hard. Its just miserable in a little tent but this is just absolutely fine (people say rather tritely that without the lows or hardships there can’t be the highs or at least a real appreciation of the highs or of certain states). I have decided to stay one more night. And depending on the weather – my best plan is to ride to one or two particularly nice roads which I want to spend time on but really the priority is keeping dry and relaxing. So, I will see what the weather is like tomorrow. I have plenty to do here. I have food, something good to read. I am so pleased to be in this cabin when it is raining like it is outside and it is blowing a gale and the sky is just grey. I am so pleased.

I have one more full day tomorrow and Wednesday, I think it is three hours from here to the ferry port at Kristiansand. You can stay here until 11am and I think the earliest you are meant to arrive at the port is 2pm. The timing should work out well and it will be good to get on the boat. These last couple of days have felt a bit awkward because – it is partly the weather, definitely, but also that sense of not wanting to be too far from the ferry on the night before I leave. It’s a juggle because I end up doing little bits of travelling instead of long days which do bring their own kind of satisfaction. Its been good. Getting to the Arctic Circle feels like a real achievement. I wonder whether I would ever come back to Norway and go to Nordkap? It means retracing a lot of the same ground. Do I want to do it? Its still there, something that could be done (perhaps via Sweden or back via Sweden or Finland – a thought from August).

Norway: 24th June Saturday Alesund and Bergen

24^th June Saturday

Last night, I stayed in a campsite in Alesund. Its probably the worst place I have stayed in so far on this trip. And that’s because, for a start, it was really crowded. It was urban and it was really noisy. There was a group of people partying really loudly. I’m not sure what time they finished maybe after 11.30 (which is late in a campsite because people tend to hit the sack quite early). Added to that, people arrived late at night, after I’d gone to sleep (or rather while I was trying to sleep) and a couple of groups put up tents next to mine.

On the other hand, some of the campers were very friendly. I remember talking to a Dutch man who with his wife was touring using a beautiful tepee type tent on the same small field as me and a couple of young French cyclists who were cycling all around Europe. There was another single woman on a bicycle with a super-light Nemo tent which I had seen on the internet (that make of tent – not her). It was a small group of guys on motorcycles who made the noise. I wasn’t that close to them, mercifully, but they must have disturbed the whole site. I remember I said hello to one of them when they parked their bikes next to mine. I got one response but the other one just scowled awkwardly at me. The people that run the site (young slightly fed up with the punters’ questions) didn’t seem to consider it worth their intervention. So, I have decided that urban campsites are definitely to be avoided in the future. I camped in my little tent which on this occasion was fine because it was dry.

So, today, Saturday: I set off south on the route to Bergen which I put into the GPS. It was seven hours, a big journey. I’ve been riding down the E39 and am probably about 100k from Bergen, still north of the city. I crossed with two ferries today, I think. Maybe it was three. I can’t remember. I will have to look it up! It was fun.

It is super easy.

For the last ferry I remember riding really fast after a car that was clearly in a hurry. I thought I’m going to keep up with them as a challenge (I usually ride in an unhurried way). I thought that maybe they are heading for the same ferry as me only they know when it leaves. But actually they weren’t and when I got to the ferry terminal, the boat had just left. But the next one was in about ten minutes. I stopped in another beautiful lay-by and had something to eat. It was so nice to have a break as last night, as you can imagine, I did not sleep well.

So I wanted a definitely rural setting to camp again and I wanted a cabin. (For the reasons I’ve already set out – more than once…). I kept riding down the E39 and found a campsite called Botnen, not far from Oppedal by a small harbour. The site is on terraces that slope down toward a fjord. Its on lots of levels and there’s a variety of accommodation. I really like it. The slightly fusty couple running it don’t speak much English, if any. And when I asked if they sell beer in their little shop they had no idea what I was asking about – or at least they made out that they didn’t. (its as if Norway becomes some old-fashioned religious country when it comes to drinking alcohol or going shopping on a Sunday) Anyway, I am in my cabin now and if I look down I can see the fjord. It’s a beautiful evening, a long evening as all evenings are here of course. Interestingly, there’s a bit of accommodation down there by the water with four motorbikes parked outside with Swedish plates. So, thinking about last night’s campsite I’m wondering ‘are these going to be four guys making a lot of noise late into the night?’

I am so pleased to have got here. It was a long day riding. I got here after 6 and I had set off at about 10am. It was a big day of riding without much stopping. Now, I must relate a story about petrol. I got really worried about running out of petrol. (I had thought that the KTM790 can do 200 miles on a tank – but actually it is quite a lot more but exactly how much more I have never tested.) Of course I needn’t have. I found a rather shabby looking couple of pumps, certainly not a large brightly lit chain like Shell. And there is no one working there of course. I just could not get the petrol pumps to work. I moved my bike from one side of the pump to the other then back again. Then I discovered, of course, that there is a little machine that you put your credit card in. I’ve been doing that from day 1, but for some reason I had been so wound up about running out of petrol that I didn’t see it. Then when I did, the machine said that there was an error – which had never happened before. The error was in Norwegian of course. And there was a hand written sign taped up to one side of the pump that I could not understand, of course. When I looked at my bank app on my phone I saw that it had been charged 110 pounds or Euros for absolutely no petrol and then I repeated the process and I did manage to get petrol and then another £110 seemed to be charged to my card plus the cost of the petrol separately. Hopefully that just disappears after a short while (it did).

I was frazzled but I unwound as I rode. The weather was beautiful, ideal, 23 degrees, hazy sun, bright sun sometimes, lovely road, a bit of traffic but really lovely riding. What I did not do was find a supermarket open to stock up on beers and other things because tomorrow is the dreaded Sunday which shows that I have been here for one week. Supermarkets are not open on Sunday so it is harder to buy food and drink but I think I have enough to get by… I hope I have. So, I am feeling huge relief, tired but very pleased to be in this cabin and looking forward to getting a proper night’s sleep tonight.

testing Waymark map

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Testing Waymark - coming home from Norway

Later that same day: on Holland Norway Line

17th of June again Saturday: I spent the day on Dutch motorways which are really tedious. I remember at Harwich asking a guy who was Scottish but had lived and is living in Holland is there some interesting place to stop by on the way to Emden and he said no. Another man said he was going to take a coastal route around the North Coast of Holland across what looked like a long bridge in the water which is actually a dyke which is a key part of their key water defence sea defences that this structure he said stops Holland from going underwater. I rode the length across that structure which is quite interesting. The side towards the land was this big expanse of water but the other side had a tall bank so you couldn’t see the sea on that side so it didn’t feel like you were actually riding in the middle of the of the ocean which I thought it might but then once over that actually it was a really tedious – really, really tedious motorway journey from there through Groningen to Emden. Not only was it tedious but all of the landscape was industrial. You see the odd field of cows but really most of the landscape was ugly, ugly industrial. I stopped just across the border at a service station in Germany. Its the kind of automatic petrol station deserted food trucks so I stopped and had some water to drink and some old peanuts and cleaned my visor and then headed off the last 50 kilometres to get to the port.

The Holland Norway line is interesting. It feels like it’s a start-up but it must have lots of backing because it must be a huge enterprise to start up something like this. When I got to their part of the port there were lots of motorbikes, a great big group of Dutch motorbikers and we queued up. The ferry company does all their operations with maybe half a dozen people in big white tents that they’ve put up in the middle of a car park and they got us through very quickly. Alongside all the Dutch, there were three German guys (I think). One of them with a really nicely updated old BMW R80 I think. He put new wheels on it, new suspension had the engine bored out; really nice and very tempting to copy that. So we go down into the ship which is always fun and just as I was parking the bike up on the deck car deck the guy who owned the BMW told me I had dropped my sunglasses, my expensive prescription bifocal sunglasses, on the on the ramp as I rode on, so I ran back through the bikes coming in and they were still there and picked them up—thank goodness—before a hoard of cars would come along and surely have crushed them so that was the second thing I dropped on this trip. It could have been a £400 accident and annoyance for riding without them so it was pretty nice of that person to tell me.

The ship the MS Romantika is a big cruise ship but its tired. The carpets are tired and the shower cubicles in the cabins are tired but it’s nice enough. I walked around and watched this ship pulling out from its birth and leaving the harbour. This is always an interesting experience as, after all passengers are safely aboard, the officials – the customs people, the police and the ferry employees leave one by one so that a scene that was bustling and crowded an hour ago is now completely deserted. I went to the Bistro bar to find some dinner. You pay €39.99, maybe £32 to get in and then once you’re in everything is free so you could eat as much as you want from all these different counters and tucked away in a corner just when I was starting to think you can’t get a drink here was a little kiosk with a few small machines where you could pour yourself white wine, red wine or beer all on tap. I’m glad I’m here early because the white wine maybe all of it will run out and sure enough it did but not before I had enough white wine and then when they did run out had a red wine to go with my final bits of cheese that I finished but I walked out feeling completely sober and just wonder how strong this wine really was. I sat on the deck facing toward the sun which is beautiful watching the sun on the on the water. Its 8:15 in the evening now and people it’s the pets section of the deck so people walk in their beautiful dogs.

I have started reading Neuromancer now I’m back in the cabin. Reading: it’s always suprising the way the atmosphere just creeps up on you.

We are getting in to Kristiansand at 10 in the morning. You can get breakfast from half six and then I start the trip properly but if I’m going to make these miles and want to get up towards Lillehammer then it’s another morning or maybe all day on what looked like an dual carriageway. It’s really hard to get away from them but I think by the time I turn off to Honnefoss it should be much more beautiful roads so I’ve just got to get the balance of getting to the Arctic Circle and not just thundering along on the main roads and enjoying the riding and not drop any more things.

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