Commonwealth Krigsgraver
Commonwealth War Graves
I abandoned what I was doing and went to investigate. In a corner of the well-kept graveyard I found five graves in a row. The stones were identical to those found in the cemeteries of northern France and Belgium. My initial thoughts were that they must have been killed in an airplane crash en route to bomb Germany. But none of the five men were in the RAF. The first grave was that of a signalman aged 19 attached to the Royal Corps of Signals. The next three were of privates in the Sherwood Foresters aged 22, 20 and 21. The final grave was for a 38-year-old sergeant from the same regiment.
Norway remained neutral during World War Two but that hadn't prevented the Nazis from invading anyway. The Norwegian government called upon the British for help in repelling the Germans and a brigade consisting of two Territorial Army battalions, the 8th Sherwood Foresters and the 5th Leicesters, was dispatched. The troops disembarked at Andalsnes, 170 km southwest of Trondheim, on 18 April 1940 on an 'ill-fated' mission. The merchant ship carrying their equipment had been torpedoed and sunk. This included their means of transport so the soldiers did the next best thing and caught the train south instead. First contact with the German forces was made near Lillehammer on 19 April but it seems likely that the soldiers in the graveyard at Venabygd were killed at the Battle of Tretten on 23 April. The remnants of the brigade retreated to the coast and were transported home to Britain.
Four of the five men buried in Venabygd were barely even 20 years old at the time of their death. They had all been born around 1920. The previous evening, whilst watching the sun slide down the mountainside, I had received a phone call from home. My step-grandmother had just died. She was 95 years old. She too had been born in 1920. Walter Summersgill, the 19-year-old royal signalman, came from Hunslet, Leeds. My step-grandmother had been brought up 10 miles down the road, in Rawdon. It seemed entirely possible that at some point during the 1920s or 1930s they had unknowingly walked past each other whilst out shopping in Leeds, had perhaps sat a few rows apart from each other in the Hyde Park Picture House or even swum together in the Roundhay Park Lido. Who knows? Walter was soon to die. Connie would live well beyond the end of the century. Life is fragile and can be cruelly unfair but it was somehow satisfying and poignant to have made a connection between two children of pre-war Leeds after all those years.
—
After another hour of toil, I had climbed to 1,000 m and the hard work of the day had been done. In terms of distance, however, there was much more cycling to be completed. It would be another 50 km before I crossed the sixty-second degree of latitude and 80 km before I stopped at the next campsite. The environment had now changed dramatically. Predominantly flat, it was a treeless plateau of low, hardy vegetation and rock. Some of the lower peaks were within a couple of kilometres of the road, but in the distance the larger mountains, dusted with snow, kept silent vigil over the high land I was crossing. This wasn't, however, a deserted place. Many people had chosen to either live here or at least have a summer house and grassy turf was being put to good use as insulation on the roofs.
Had the weather been poor, it would have been a hellish place across which to cycle, but it wasn't and high, wispy clouds drifted across the sky. The good conditions had attracted a few other adventurers on two wheels and a good number of campervans whose drivers had mastered the art of placing their stark white boxes in just the right place to ruin a good view. This was, alas, a feature of life that I would have to become accustomed to on my way to Nordkapp. For a few kilometres the road fell back into the valley before finding a comfort level of around 700 m, where it remained for the second half of the day. The physical high point had now passed and, I imagined, the visual high point too. I hadn't, however, counted on discovering the Sohlbergplassen.
THE TWENTY-SEVENTH DEGREE
62°–63° NORTH
2–4 July
Architects have become adept at hiding things so as not to detract from the beauty of their surroundings. Think of the recently constructed buildings I had seen at Waterloo and Møns Klint, where the infrastructure had, at least partially, been buried into the ground. Is it possible, however, not simply to minimise the impact that a construction may have, but to build it in such a way that it improves the visual quality of the surrounding area?
I think it is. And I cite as evidence the infrastructure that has been designed and built by the government of Norway to provide for the needs of those travelling along the 18 Nasjonale Turistveger, or National Tourist Routes. I knew nothing about them until I arrived at the Sohlbergplassen viewing platform next to Lake Atnsjøen.
In 1914, celebrated Norwegian painter Harald Sohlberg came to Lake Atnsjøen, looked up towards the sky and painted Winter Night in The Mountains, one of Norway's most famous pictures. I learned this from a woman who had brought her elderly mother to look at that same view. The reason why all three of us had stopped at an identical point along the route was courtesy of the location of the viewing platform.
Now, if, in your mind, you have an image of scaffolding and a few wooden planks, think again. If you have an image of a perfectly smart, functional platform with a railing at one end to stop you from falling into the water, think again. If, however, you have an image of a long walkway, whose sides have been beautifully crafted from thin pieces of vertical concrete curving gently around the slender pine trees of the surrounding forest and which, at its farthest point, opens wider and descends slightly to reveal one of the most stunning views in Norway… you are probably nearer to the reality.
The architect was a certain Carl-Viggo Holmebakk and the platform was built in 2006.
He constructed a concrete platform that virtually hovers in the air… The steel-lattice floor provides water and light to the soft forest floor covered in moss and lichen… By placing the foundations on slender pillars, the forest floor could be preserved in near-pristine condition, and only one single tree had to be felled during the construction project.
So said the information panel. It was stunning and I formally submit the construction as exhibit A in my argument as set out in the first paragraph of this chapter. As for the view itself, it was epic yet simple. Beyond a band of lakeside conifers next to the platform, a broad stretch of water snaked into the distance. The banks of the lake – carpeted without interruption by more trees – sloped gently away, but the eye was drawn magnetically towards the Rondslottet mountain in the distance. At nearly 2,200 m, it was Norway's third tallest peak. Six more peaks clustered around the Rondslottet, their summits all capped with snow. I stood and stared for quite some time.
I later looked up the Nasjonale Turistveger online and was delighted to discover that, as I continued my journey north, I could, potentially, be following five more of the routes: the Helgelandskysten, the Lofoten, the Andøya, the Senja and the Havøysund. If they were to deliver jaw-dropping spectacles half as good as the one I had seen earlier, I was going to be in for a treat. By the time I arrived in Nordkapp, I could have a clutch of exhibits with which to argue my case, or so I hoped.
Møns Klint, way back in Denmark, had been a turning point, literally. Shortly after leaving the high cliffs at the easternmost point of the kingdom, I had passed through the fifty-fifth degree of latitude. Since then, with my journey heading predominantly to the north, the subsequent lines of latitude were being crossed at an almost alarming rate. It had taken me only 15 cycling days to travel through the seven degrees since Møns Klint. By contrast, it had taken me 24 cycling days to cross the seven degrees prior to Møns Klint. Although I was now regularly putting in a cycling day in excess of my desired average of 75 km, I had geography to thank just as much as my own physical effort. From Paris to Møns Klint there had been ten degrees of eastward movement; from Møns Klint to the end of cycling day 71 there had been just two degrees of westward movement. However, my progress was about to slow. As soon as I arrived on the northwestern coast of Norway, I would again begin to move in an easterly di
rection; despite only eight degrees of latitude separating me from Nordkapp, I needed to cycle through 16 degrees of longitude. There were still several weeks of cycling to go.
From the Sohlbergplassen, a 30 km end-of-day cycle brought me to the four-star Grimsbu Turistsenter – or, between you and me, Grimsbu Camping. It was another oasis of lush green grass. Should SW19 ever be blighted by an aggressive form of fungal turf disease, the campsites of central Norway might be a good place to come and play tennis. Had the equipment been handy, I could have easily indulged in a bit of ball tossing over a net with my German neighbours.
Instead, I busied myself by writing my notes from the two previous days of cycling, while the Germans were, well… organising themselves. And what a good job they were doing! My Teutonic neighbours, cycling tourists themselves, had elevated organisation to an art form. On the surface of my two-wheeled life on the road, everything appeared to be serene. Open a pannier, however, and chaos was often exposed. My eyes started to pay less attention to my writing and more attention to them and their ordered lives.
I needed to investigate this spectacle of organisation in more detail so went over for a chat. They were a couple in their forties and each had a smart black bike. I learnt that they had been on the road for three weeks which, bearing in mind that all their clothes and equipment looked as though they had just been delivered from the shop, was decidedly alarming. How was it possible to be so clean and organised after over 20 days on the road? Our conversation turned towards routes and I sensed that Mr Organised found my self-deprecating 'it-will-turn-out-OK' attitude to such things somewhat tiresome. They were, however, heading in the same direction as me, towards Trondheim, so it seemed likely that we would encounter each other again. He might have to contend with more tongue-biting eye-raising moments the following day.
I decided to abandon temporarily cycling route 7, as it headed off to the west alongside my nemesis, the E6 road. I was left to fathom an 'it-will-turn-out-OK' route to the east. To avoid a longish detour to the south via a town called Alvdal, the directions suggested by Google took me off-road and along an unsurfaced track, where I encountered the following idiosyncratically formatted sign:
STRÅLSJØÅSVEIEN
Bomavgift:
motosykkel/moped 10,-
pers. bil, traktor 70,-
____ ‘ ____ m/henger 70,-
Bobil, campingv. 70,-
lastebil, buss 100,-
Sesongkort 1/5 -31/10
Lastebil / buss -kr. 700
Alle andre -kr. 450
STRAFFEGEBYR: kr. 450
Beside the sign was a tall red box with a metal lid to which a pen had been attached on a piece of string. Inside were small forms that presumably needed to be completed. Was this a challenge from The Crystal Maze? It was clearly a private road and the numbers referred to the toll that had to be paid by motorbikes, mopeds, tractors, campervans, buses and… I couldn't work out the rest. How about bicycles? Should I pay? What should I pay? Who should I pay? Where should I pay? Should I fill in the form? How could I do that when I didn't understand what was being asked? It was all very baffling.
After pondering the matter for a few moments, I decided to adopt the 'stupid foreigner' approach and ignore it. That would be my defence should the matter ever get to court which, bearing in mind the lack of witnesses, seemed unlikely. Aside from a very small flock of sheep, the only people at risk of being called by the prosecution were the Germans, who had paused along the track to take photographs of the pretty rural scenes surrounding us.
'No need to pay; it's free for cyclists,' explained Mr O., somewhat exasperated.
A few kilometres further along the track, we were to meet again as I doubled back, thinking I had taken a wrong turning; I hadn't.
'It's that way,' he informed me, eyes heading skyward. Perhaps I was being a stupid foreigner after all.
I turned around (again), let them pass and followed from a discreet distance. I admired how they seemingly had everything planned. How much of my time did I 'waste' poring over maps and scratching my head as to which way to turn next? How many wonderful campsites did I cycle near and then away from in ignorance of their existence? My approach did have its faults, but then again, I enjoyed the day-to-day uncertainty of not knowing what was around the corner. My German friends had their way of doing things and I had mine.
Shortly after the town of Tynset, I crossed the River Glomma and started travelling in a predominantly northerly direction again. My map suggested a couple of campsites near a place called Kvikne and it was towards them that I spent the second half of the day cycling. The effort required to climb 200 m in the early afternoon was rewarded later with a long, easy cycle along a pretty, alpinesque valley with a fast-flowing river. It was this that had, presumably, attracted the fishermen who made up the majority of the other campers at Kvikne Camping where I pitched my tent and heated up a now familiar meal of affordable fresh pasta and green pesto.
The ascents and descents of the previous day had only had the net effect of bringing me down from around 700 m in Grimsbu to 500 m in Kvikne. This was good news for cycling day 74, as I was aiming for the coast and could look forward to more gentle downhill cycling for much of the day. As I set off, the snow-capped mountains were still visible over my shoulder to the south, clearly defined against the predominantly blue sky, but it wasn't too long before they had disappeared and I was again travelling through attractive lowland farms and villages. It reminded me of the Norway to which I had become accustomed in the first few days after crossing the border from Sweden. That said, when the sun crept behind a cloud, there was a distinct chill in the air, which reminded me of my increasingly northern latitude and the proximity of the sea. How many people could say they had cycled from the Mediterranean to the Norwegian Sea? I would soon be able to.
It would be a long Saturday in the saddle – 120 km – but one not without its twists and turns. After just 20 km I was confronted with my old foe, the E6, and for a further 15 km could do little to avoid it. As it was the weekend, however, the traffic was somewhat lighter. At Berkåk it was nevertheless a relief to splinter away from the E6 and move along to the more tranquil route 700 that would hopefully guide me all the way to the coast.
I could quite easily have pulled on Reggie's brakes every few minutes to take another photograph of yet another gorgeous valley, picturesque river, quaint wooden farm building, cute cow… but I restricted my stops to once every 15 minutes or so, snapping this way and that. It seemed that more energy was being expended moving the forefinger of my right hand to release the shutter of the camera than in keeping the wheels of the bike moving downhill. Life on two wheels had rarely been better, or indeed easier.
THE TWENTY-EIGHTH DEGREE
63°–64° NORTH
4–8 July
It seemed that my day had come to a fortuitous end. After completing my requisite 75 km, I could see the first of several campsites on my map just to the east of Midtskogen, beside a lake. Perfect. What's more, since the town of Grindal – some 20 km earlier in the afternoon – I had again been following cycle route 7. It was all pointing towards a trouble-free Sunday of cycling before my planned day off in Norway's third city on Monday.
Cycle route 7 branched away from route 700 in the direction of the lakeside campsite and, after a short, sharp climb, I found what I was looking for. Or had I? The location was beautiful but the campsite was in dire need of a makeover. The reception hut was shut but I was informed by a decidedly disgruntled man, whom I assumed to be a long-term resident of the site, that I could pitch the tent next to the sanitary shed or beside the entrance. The former stunk; the latter was overrun by large black flying monsters that I suspected were eyeing me up for their next meal. I was reminded of cycling in Croatia two years previously, when I thought I had come across a great campsite on the island of Pag, similarly located by a lake, only to find a cesspit of an establishment. The following day I fell ill and was forced to find a hotel and trave
l no further than the toilet across the corridor from my room. Not wishing to repeat my adventures of 2013, I fled the scene.
The coastal town of Orkanger was at the northern end of route 700, about 30 km from Midtskogen, although by the time it reached the sea, it had upgraded itself to route 65. The first campsite didn't exist; the next was in a scruffy town. By then the pull of the ocean was increasingly strong so I kept on cycling to the site in Orkanger. Alas, it had closed. There was, however, one last option before I would have to resort to seeking out a hotel: a campsite 10 km along the coast near the town of Viggja. I arrived there just before 8 p.m. and it was, mercifully, perfect.
Although it was busy with families, there was one other lone cyclist on site. Her name was Jeanet and she was from the Netherlands. Somewhat more relaxed about life on the road than my German neighbours back in Grimsbu, she offered me a brownie in return for using my iPad to check her flight home. This brought a level of diversity to my diet that I hadn't experienced since crossing the border from Sweden.
My plan for Trondheim was to meet up with Steve, a cycling enthusiast from Liverpool who had lived in the city for many years with his Norwegian girlfriend Anita and their young daughter Annie. He had been offering advice and guidance for several weeks via email as I cycled through Scandinavia, and Nick – the young cyclist I had met in Sweden and who had stayed with Steve – had said he was 'very good company', smiling cryptically.
Spain to Norway on a Bike Called Reggie Page 23