{"id":5286,"date":"2023-08-31T17:57:40","date_gmt":"2023-08-31T16:57:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/?p=5286"},"modified":"2023-08-31T17:57:40","modified_gmt":"2023-08-31T16:57:40","slug":"june-27th-scary-hairpins-on-the-coast-rv44","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/biking\/june-27th-scary-hairpins-on-the-coast-rv44\/","title":{"rendered":"June 27th Scary hairpins on the coast: RV44"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tuesday 27th<\/sup> June. I\u2019m still staying in my cabin in Ogna Camping, on the coast, south of Stavanger, and the cabin is very nice to have. Last night it was blowing a gale. It seems very windy here by the coast and it was wet again. I sat here and I luxuriated because I wasn\u2019t in my little tent. I have paid for a second night here. This morning I thought I would take a short ride around here. There\u2019s a place called Tondstad<\/a>. Its about 50 or 60 miles from here and the road there is meant to be good to ride. I headed off, got some petrol, on route 42 up to Tonstad –\u00a0 its quite high up. About 20 minutes into the ride I could see I was riding towards really quite dark clouds and the road started to look as though it had been wet and there was a fine drizzle in the air. I did not bring my waterproofs for some crazy reason. Maybe I forgot that I was in Norway. I thought, in a slightly defeatist way, \u2018right, I\u2019m outta here if it starts raining\u2019 but it never did start raining. I got to Tonstad which is a pretty place and then I looked at the map and could see that route 42 carries on further. The question was, shall I go back the way I came or shall I take a slightly longer route? The GPS said that it would take 50 minutes to get to a place on the coast called Flekfjord and from there, it seemed there was a coast road back up to the campsite which is north of Egarsund. I did some spirited riding and there was not much other traffic. It was really enjoyable. I got to Flekfjord and then I was routed by the GPS onto the RV44 which is a road that hugs the coast. Its known as the North Sea Road. See this link on BestBiking Roads<\/a>. And that\u2019s when the excitement really started because it \u2013 well, I had no idea –\u00a0 it\u2019s a really twisty road full of steep hairpins going up, going down with lots of traffic, like caravans going both ways, though mainly going in the same direction as me which was good. It was the kind of route where you are asking \u2013 is this corner second gear, no, its first gear? Lets not go too wide coming out of it and there was just hairpin after hairpin. I would look ahead and see this line of caravans going up at some impossible angle, high above me but actually really close. The ride was on the borderline between exciting and really scary! And tiring because there was so much of it. Eventually the traffic came to a halt \u2013 on the flat \u2013 at some roadworks for five minutes or more. I turned off the engine and then realised that I did not have my helmet camera turned on so did not record any of that amazing riding. So you will just have to take my word for it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the light changed I headed off, still quite a long way back to the campsite but on a much easier road to ride. I got back here about 3.15 or so exhausted. And now I must confess my mind is on packing for the morning and getting down to the ferry terminal by about 1.30. This seems a good time even though they have delayed the ferry from 3pm till 5pm (I think) but check-in still starts at 1. I am sure we can get on the boat early. We could last time. In the afternoon the sun shines into this cabin. Its beautiful and I have the curtain open. And its lovely and warm and the little porch is great \u2013 but as soon as you step out further you are in the wind (recording now includes wind noise) and it takes the temperature down by lots of degrees. My bike is sitting there in the sunshine looking a bit sad. Its covered in mud and the tyres look a bit worn, and the dodgy GPS connection needs sorting. But it has done me well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tuesday 27th June. I\u2019m still staying in my cabin in Ogna Camping, on the coast, south of Stavanger, and the cabin is very nice to have. Last night it was blowing a gale. It seems very windy here by the coast and it was wet again. I sat here and I luxuriated because I wasn\u2019t…Read more June 27th Scary hairpins on the coast: RV44<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,27],"tags":[221,228],"class_list":["post-5286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biking","category-travel","tag-norway","tag-rv44"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5286"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5287,"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5286\/revisions\/5287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/obliquepanic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}