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.

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.

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.