Forgot to mention that before I arrived in Kristiansund, I cycled the 80 km from Bud over the causeway between the islands.
The weather was perfect for this yesterday - sunshine, no breeze, perfect black tarmac in immaculate condition, hardly any traffic, and stupendous views over the sparkling blue waves.
My decision to wait out the rain in the camspsite at Bud was right for once.
The road is truly movingly beautiful when seen on a fine day out of the main tourist season.
But the bad news is that when I arrived in Bremsnes I discovered they are building ANOTHER TUNNEL about 5.2 km long to link Bremsnes with Kristiansund, which will open in December 2009, probably destroying the remoteness of the road across the islands forever.
So for goodness' sake book your trip now before the route becomes bumper-to-bumper with bobils and Avis rental cars on a day circuit of the route. Because that will surely happen when the pain of waiting for ferries is removed.
Saturday, 14 June 2008
Trollfjord not ideal for slumming
I made it onto the M/S Trollfjord at 01:45 this morning after hanging around in a seafront bar in Kristiansund until closing time to take advantage of the patio heaters (quite cold outside otherwise).
Not sure this is the best ship for slumming it on, it is the pride of the fleet and ALL the cabins are taken. I'm booked for TWO DAYS to Stamsund in the Lofoten Islands. Since it is the best the company can offer, most of the deck space is reserved for private suites at the rear of the vessel, and the sundeck is where I ended up sleeping from 02:45 to 04:50, wrapped in my 1000g sleeping bag and stretched uncomfortably over two deck chairs. The ship is immaculate - there was a man carefully painting the one remaining slightly rust-stained stanchion on the sun deck while I dozed nearby, presumably all maintentance staff have to hide during daylight hours, like me. There's space to stretch out on a shelf in the left baggage room, which passengers can open with their pass key - but everywhere else is very public! So I had a 02:00 Commando Shower in the Gentlemen's Toilets on Deck 8 followed by a doze on the deck chair, and then a bit more of a sleep in the Panoramic Lounge once the temperature in there had dropped back to 25° - being glassed in, the temperature soars when they turn the air conditioning off when everyone else has gone to bed.
A free frokost in the main salon this morning was a good compensation, and the ship is currently docked in Trondheim, so I have spent the last hour pounding the streets to the Cathedral, which is a beautiful soapstone building dating mostly from the 13th century, well worth a visit (although much restored after 35 fires inside the building during its history!)
I'm writing this standing up at an internet terminal at Trondheim public library, so I'll keep things brief because I'm dizzy with fatigue (the floor seems to be rocking!). The city is now my top choice of location were I to choose to live in Norway - many fine squares and public buildings, with plentiful trees and a sophisticated air missing from Kristiansund and the other smaller coastal towns I have visited.
Anyway, wish me luck and the discovery of a passkey to the broomcupboard or a loose lifeboat cover for when I get back on board!
Not sure this is the best ship for slumming it on, it is the pride of the fleet and ALL the cabins are taken. I'm booked for TWO DAYS to Stamsund in the Lofoten Islands. Since it is the best the company can offer, most of the deck space is reserved for private suites at the rear of the vessel, and the sundeck is where I ended up sleeping from 02:45 to 04:50, wrapped in my 1000g sleeping bag and stretched uncomfortably over two deck chairs. The ship is immaculate - there was a man carefully painting the one remaining slightly rust-stained stanchion on the sun deck while I dozed nearby, presumably all maintentance staff have to hide during daylight hours, like me. There's space to stretch out on a shelf in the left baggage room, which passengers can open with their pass key - but everywhere else is very public! So I had a 02:00 Commando Shower in the Gentlemen's Toilets on Deck 8 followed by a doze on the deck chair, and then a bit more of a sleep in the Panoramic Lounge once the temperature in there had dropped back to 25° - being glassed in, the temperature soars when they turn the air conditioning off when everyone else has gone to bed.
A free frokost in the main salon this morning was a good compensation, and the ship is currently docked in Trondheim, so I have spent the last hour pounding the streets to the Cathedral, which is a beautiful soapstone building dating mostly from the 13th century, well worth a visit (although much restored after 35 fires inside the building during its history!)
I'm writing this standing up at an internet terminal at Trondheim public library, so I'll keep things brief because I'm dizzy with fatigue (the floor seems to be rocking!). The city is now my top choice of location were I to choose to live in Norway - many fine squares and public buildings, with plentiful trees and a sophisticated air missing from Kristiansund and the other smaller coastal towns I have visited.
Anyway, wish me luck and the discovery of a passkey to the broomcupboard or a loose lifeboat cover for when I get back on board!
Thursday, 12 June 2008
New pictures on flickr
I've managed to upload thumbnails from the camera to http://www.flickr.com/webbje, after a voyage of discovery with the linux tools at my disposal this afternoon in the cabin. Marianne, who owns the site, explained breezily that people just expected wireless internet access in their cabins these days while my jaw dropped...
The photos are only the raw .CR2 files, converted to JPG format and scaled down to a size that I can send quickly to the Flickr servers. The much larger and prettier originals are now backed up on the iPod.
So don't get your hopes up too much for the quality of the postcard-sized pictures :-)
The photos are only the raw .CR2 files, converted to JPG format and scaled down to a size that I can send quickly to the Flickr servers. The much larger and prettier originals are now backed up on the iPod.
So don't get your hopes up too much for the quality of the postcard-sized pictures :-)
I need that boat!
I was on the phone to Janet just now when the Hurtigrute hove into view, steaming rapidly past the campsite here at Bud. I need that boat to take me north tomorrow, hopefully out of this wet weather and into a sunnier climate up at Stamsund or Svolvær in the Lofoten Islands.
Today I've been mostly holed up in a nice warm comfortable cabin at the rather excellent Bud Camping, experimenting with Flickr and making myself pancakes with strawberry jam. It is a welcome break from cycling into the rain, which was particularly heavy this morning. So much so that I decided that I'd trust the forecast, which says that tomorrow will be less windy and quite sunny in the afternoon, hopefully in time for my dash across the bridged island section of the route to Kristiansund, now only 60-70 km away.
Tips #2 - Commando Shower Option
This assumes that you have no shower polet, and that no-one is going to turn up today to sell you one for 10 Kr (6 minutes) of hot shower.
You will need:-
You will need:-
- A raincoat (it is raining)
- Hytte key
- Gilet/fleecy top - gilet preferred
- Ronhill Tracksters
- Bar of soap
- Small towel (hand-towel size or smaller)
- Cycling shoes
- Nothing else. Remove all other clothing before leaving hytte.
- Enter washblock
- Test hot water availability at standpipe
- Grin
- Drop trousers, scrub up
- Raise trousers, remove gilet, scrub up
- Remove excess soap and moisture with small hand towel
- Try to choose a time when the German fraus from the bobils are not using the washblock
- Always use Ronhill Tracksters, they will be dry by the time you have recrossed the field to the hytte
- Remember to hoard the polet you bought last time for the really cold, wet evening when you've just cycled 80 km and you badly need a shower.
Tips #1 - Basic Hytte Instructions
Your basic hut costs kr. 350 to kr. 400 per night. You will be renting a solidly built wooden hytte assembled about 10-15 years ago, with a small porch, lockable door, clothesline, and double glazed windows (2). Inside you will find two bunk beds, a table, four chairs, and a cupboard with a two-plate electric cooker on it. There's also a small electric heater under the larger window.
Take off your shoes before you enter the hytte. No self-respecting Norwegian wears shoes indoors.
Make sure the heater works before you choose this type of hytte. They have a history of abuse, and are often rusted out (too many wet clothes).
You will find a small plastic jerrycan with the dustpan and basic cleaning materials in the cupboard under the hotplate. This is for you to use to ferry water to your hytte for cooking purposes.
If you arrived when the office was closed, you'll find the key for your hytte in the door.
You may want a polet for the shower in the wash block. If the office is going to be closed for some time, you can use a spare polet hoarded from your last campsite, or take the Commando Shower Option.
You will need to bring your own bedding, cutlery, cooking pots, dishcloth, pillow, and entertainment to this hytte type. A tablecloth is provided, however.
Take off your shoes before you enter the hytte. No self-respecting Norwegian wears shoes indoors.
Make sure the heater works before you choose this type of hytte. They have a history of abuse, and are often rusted out (too many wet clothes).
You will find a small plastic jerrycan with the dustpan and basic cleaning materials in the cupboard under the hotplate. This is for you to use to ferry water to your hytte for cooking purposes.
If you arrived when the office was closed, you'll find the key for your hytte in the door.
You may want a polet for the shower in the wash block. If the office is going to be closed for some time, you can use a spare polet hoarded from your last campsite, or take the Commando Shower Option.
You will need to bring your own bedding, cutlery, cooking pots, dishcloth, pillow, and entertainment to this hytte type. A tablecloth is provided, however.
Wednesday, 11 June 2008
Gales and rain with the odd sunny spell this week
It's turning into an exciting tour - I feel like I'm a long long way from home, riding between very small coastal hamlets on a road just wide enough for one car, with steady rain (and gales at times) in scenery that reminds me of the West Coast of Ireland in the 1970's. The people are friendly and welcoming, no-one locks their doors, but the number of people living here has obviously dropped a great deal in the last couple of decades as people move to an easier lifestyle in the bigger cities. Many shuttered houses for summer use only. And summer seems to be due sometime in July, so I'm seeing about only four or five cars a day on the small roads I'm on.
The route I'm following is broadly described in the Statens Kartverk cycling guide "Øyhopping i Møre & Romsdal" - quite gentle, lots of buttercups and wildflowers, cuckoos calling in the dry spells, and broken crab shells on the roads (dropped by seagulls I imagine).
I'm writing this in a very small rural community center/library in Aukra (try "Aukra Molde" in Google Maps), where the librarian has hung my dripping coat up and given me a seat at her best internet terminal.
I've spent the last two nights riding out a storm on the tiny island of Ona, one of Norway's most famous lighthouse rocks with about fifty people living on it. I arrived courtesy of the small ambulance boat with two or three others because the car ferry that usually calls twice a day is out of service at the moment. Ona is very pretty, little wooden houses huddled beneath the red lighthouse, and the whole perched about forty minutes out to sea on a notorious skerry of low-lying islands battered by the Atlantic. The locals have been very forebearing with my Norwegian and helpfully pointed out the track to Ellebjørn Bjørnerem's house. She then pointed me up a steep grass track to the hut nestling against the rock above us - a two-room affair with a good Jøtul stove and trapdoor attic room with built-in beds just long enough to stretch out in.
I decided to move on today from the cosy wooden hut I was in because the wind and rain battering the hut was starting to get me down and I only have enough cash for another day or two - so far the weather has been bad enough for me to have used the lavvo just once and huts for the other nights.
The night before that I slept in the loft of an open boathouse when I couldn't find anywhere more sheltered to sleep. I think it belongs to a local fishing club, it was at the end of a big lake - biscuits for supper and clothes-drying by candle after getting off the ferry at the wrong stop and finding myself on an island with a road back to Ålesund at the end of it.
Thursday, 5 June 2008
Woo-hoo! Back at the Skansen Pensjonat!
I'm in the cafe at the Bergen library, free internet access! It's the big building close to the train station and shopping center, and the staff smile briefly at you and log you in, allowing you an hour at one of the eight PC's as long as you turn your mobile phone off.
Do you remember the emotional high you felt when you last got to to somewhere you'd been looking forward to after months of planning and checklists? I feel that same way now, I was quite choked up for a minute or two when Jannicke welcomed me back to the beautiful Skansen Pensjonat at 11:40 last night after I'd finally disembarked from the Newcastle-Bergen ferry and raced down Bryggen to Vetrlidsallmenningen with my fully loaded bike (wobble wobble).
The crossing turned out to be fine - flat as a mill pond, and increasingly hot and sunny as we got nearer to the Norwegian coast. I spent some time talking to Dutch couple I met yesterday who are riding from Bergen up the coast for three weeks on a Vittorio tandem they've had built. We spent an hour together sheltering from the rain under the small bike shelter at the Newcastle ferry terminal, which is the only concession to cyclists (we were smartly escorted back out of the terminal building when we tried to get out of the rain for a hotdog and a cup of coffee on arrival).
The contrast between Newcastle and Bergen couldn't be more pronounced - I spent nearly the whole day in heavy rain under leaden skies riding down the NCN 72 along the Tyne from the National car rental office at the Tyne Bridge to the ferry terminal. The worst part was struggling with the heavily loaded bike and the steep escalator down to the drain-like foot tunnel under the river, which involved several ferrying trips with bags and the bike and the ever-present worry that some part of the gear would be missing when I got back to the pile I'd left at the top. The lift on the Jesmond side was out of order, the lift on the other side was working but left me a little apprehensive since it's a small graffiti-covered steel box at the bottom of a deep shaft - I could see myself being trapped in it half an hour before the ferry sailed off to Norway.
Astonishingly, here in Bergen it is 28 degrees, they've had a month of sunshine (unbroken record dating back to 1951!) - so my carefully prepared wardrobe of wet weather gear and woolies is completely inappropriate, and still damp from the Newcastle soaking. I'm now down to shorts and my one clean shirt.
I've got a day to look around before catching another ferry tonight to Molde so I've left the bike at the Pensjonat with my 30 kilos of luggage. Annike got me off to a good start - she promised me last night that she'd feign ignorance of English today, so that I have to say everything in Norwegian, so my resolve is strengthening!
Do you remember the emotional high you felt when you last got to to somewhere you'd been looking forward to after months of planning and checklists? I feel that same way now, I was quite choked up for a minute or two when Jannicke welcomed me back to the beautiful Skansen Pensjonat at 11:40 last night after I'd finally disembarked from the Newcastle-Bergen ferry and raced down Bryggen to Vetrlidsallmenningen with my fully loaded bike (wobble wobble).
The crossing turned out to be fine - flat as a mill pond, and increasingly hot and sunny as we got nearer to the Norwegian coast. I spent some time talking to Dutch couple I met yesterday who are riding from Bergen up the coast for three weeks on a Vittorio tandem they've had built. We spent an hour together sheltering from the rain under the small bike shelter at the Newcastle ferry terminal, which is the only concession to cyclists (we were smartly escorted back out of the terminal building when we tried to get out of the rain for a hotdog and a cup of coffee on arrival).
The contrast between Newcastle and Bergen couldn't be more pronounced - I spent nearly the whole day in heavy rain under leaden skies riding down the NCN 72 along the Tyne from the National car rental office at the Tyne Bridge to the ferry terminal. The worst part was struggling with the heavily loaded bike and the steep escalator down to the drain-like foot tunnel under the river, which involved several ferrying trips with bags and the bike and the ever-present worry that some part of the gear would be missing when I got back to the pile I'd left at the top. The lift on the Jesmond side was out of order, the lift on the other side was working but left me a little apprehensive since it's a small graffiti-covered steel box at the bottom of a deep shaft - I could see myself being trapped in it half an hour before the ferry sailed off to Norway.
Astonishingly, here in Bergen it is 28 degrees, they've had a month of sunshine (unbroken record dating back to 1951!) - so my carefully prepared wardrobe of wet weather gear and woolies is completely inappropriate, and still damp from the Newcastle soaking. I'm now down to shorts and my one clean shirt.
I've got a day to look around before catching another ferry tonight to Molde so I've left the bike at the Pensjonat with my 30 kilos of luggage. Annike got me off to a good start - she promised me last night that she'd feign ignorance of English today, so that I have to say everything in Norwegian, so my resolve is strengthening!
Monday, 2 June 2008
Ready, steady, hhhhrnnnnnggg!!!
(This image above from the second week of the tour added 12/06/2008)I'm writing this at the Seascape Hotel in Whitley Bay near Newcastle, on my last night in the UK.
I waved goodbye to family and friends yesterday at two in the afternoon. Everything fits on the bike, but the weight is currently higher than it was planned to be at about 38 kilos - and that's without the precious tripod for the camera, ditched in the final hour when it was clear that more cuts had to be made.
I'm driving a hire car to get to the ferry swiftly - a large estate rented from National Car Rentals in Coventry and due to be dropped off at their Newcastle outlet tomorrow morning, £33 for the day rate plus £40 drop-off fee.
Last night was spent just off the A1 in the Yorkshire Dales town of Masham, at the very pleasant Bay Horse Inn on Silver Street, which does a good B&B for £35. Masham turned out to be a good choice for an overnight stop - quiet, dominated by fine old stone buildings around the square and churchyard, and of course by the Theakston Brewery, which I visited this morning before driving in a circular route through the Dales and back to the A1 and the road to Newcastle.
Newcastle itself is a bit too big to get my bearings in, which is why I'm staying outside the city, about fifteen minutes away from the ferry terminal. I visited the latter on arrival to scope things out, it looks like I should be able to follow the NCN 72 route from the Tyne bridge to the ferry terminal after dropping the car off tomorrow morning.
The acid test comes tomorrow when I drop the car off and ride down the Tyne to the ferry terminal - more of a test than the twenty minutes of riding with the bike fully loaded that I've done already to test the weight distribution.
Wednesday, 28 May 2008
Ferry to Bergen axed - last voyage 01 Sept 2008
Top story on the UK BBC website today concerns the closure by DFDS of my route back to the UK, just a week or so after I was planning to use it to get home. This is going to be a disaster for people wanting to make a similar trip in the future, particularly since the Shetland-Faroe-Bergen route closed last autumn, and the UK-Gothenburg route closed in the spring of 2007.
This basically seems to make the journey to Norway with my bike this summer a swansong, unless I can find a way next year to get from Holland to Norway by public transport, or by Smart car with the bike strapped to the back.
What a disaster!
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