Spain to Norway on a Bike Called Reggie

by Andrew P. Sykes

  Steve had offered to host me for a couple of nights and so, as I set off on the short 35 km ride to the centre of the city, I could jettison all worries about finding somewhere to stay. The cycle was a pretty one, split roughly into two parts: initially along a corniche road with sublime views across the Norwegian Sea and then inland, heading north, over an unexpectedly steep 100 m high hill before finally descending back to sea level through the suburbs to the city centre itself.

  Trondheim had been very much on my mind throughout the months of 'planning' leading up to departure from Tarifa. It was the finishing line of the EuroVelo 3, the pilgrims' route, and although no pilgrim myself, I had read about the Nidaros Domkirke – the cathedral – dedicated to St Olaf and the traditional end point for those travelling from Oslo in the south. I had followed, more or less, the route of the pilgrims and encountered many on my way north. Like their counterparts in northern Spain, the vast majority had been on foot but, unlike those travelling along the Camino de Santiago, they were not walking in their hundreds. As pilgrimages went, it must surely have been an altogether quieter and more contemplative one.

  That said, as I approached the impressive Gothic façade of the cathedral, a good number of walkers could be seen celebrating the completion of their 640 km hikes with relieved smiles on their faces. There was one other cyclist. He introduced himself as JeanPhilippe from Switzerland and, as it was for me, Trondheim was for him merely a pause along the way. He recounted a sad tale about his sick daughter and how, by cycling from his home in Basel to Nordkapp, he hoped to raise money for research into her condition. Then Jeanet, the brownie-trading Dutch cyclist pulled up and we continued our chat, sharing anecdotes and plans. None of us were true pilgrims but St Olaf, patron saint of Norway and, curiously, 'difficult marriage' had brought us together to have a good old natter. Perhaps that was the way he helped with marital issues too.

  I had arranged to meet Steve at 5 p.m. at his house in the suburbs so, as it was still only early afternoon, I decided to find Trondheim's claim to bicycling fame, the Trampe CycloCable®. Never heard of it? Well, let me explain…

  Back in the early 1990s, Jarle Wanvik was an enthusiastic cycling commuter in Trondheim but was becoming increasingly fed up with arriving at work a little hot and sweaty. Now, you and I might consider asking our bosses to install a shower, but not Jarle. His mind was working at an altogether different level of creativity and he conceived the idea of a bicycle lift to aid him in his desire to arrive perspiration-free at his desk every morning. He proposed his idea to the local public roads administration and, on 18 August 1993, the system was inaugurated in an opening ceremony attended by some 2,000 people. Clearly, Jarle wasn't the only person who'd had enough of sweating up the hill to the University of Trondheim.

  I found the lift at the bottom of the Brubakken hill, close to the River Nidelva, and next to some signs assuring all potential users that the system was 'safe to use'. Along a single track sunk into the kerb, small metal plates could glide from the bottom to the top of the hill. I watched carefully as several people queued to position their right foot against one of the plates and then push a button. After a few moments the plate, cyclist and bicycle were all moved up the hill effortlessly. Simple, brilliant and not a drop of sweat was expended.

  In the first 15 years of operation, 220,000 journeys had been made on the sykkelheis with no accidents having been recorded. However, with Reggie still fully laden with four panniers and the tent, I suspected that the combined weight of cyclist, bike and luggage might be a test too far for the Trampe CycloCable®. I had no wish to go down in history as the first person in nearly a quarter of a million to have fallen off and rolled back down the hill in pain. I was happy to watch others having fun using the cycle lift that was now just as much a tourist attraction as it was a utilitarian piece of the local public transport network.

  —

  Steve's house was located a few kilometres to the south of Trondheim. He had told me to look out for a silver VW campervan and I found the small red house quite easily, tucked away along a quiet road on a hill overlooking the narrow valley through which I had just cycled.

  There was something of Alexei Sayle to Steve: well-built, bald, white beard and an unmistakable Liverpool accent. In fact there was much of Alexei Sayle about Steve and over the course of the next 36 hours I wondered on more than one occasion whether the Scouse comedian hadn't upped sticks and moved to Norway under an assumed identity. Even Steve's expletive-embellished antiestablishment politics ('The road tolls are ******* extortionate… as are the ******* taxes… why don't they invest more of the ******* sovereign wealth fund?') seemed to be along the lines of those that Alexei might have expressed.

  The numerous bottles of Lagerbier Hell that were consumed during the evening induced a quality of sleep that I hadn't experienced for quite some time. When I woke, it was (mercifully) rest day 14. How many more of those would I have the chance to take before I arrived at Nordkapp? Could this be the final one? Steve proposed that we absorb ourselves in Norwegian culture for the day and this involved visiting the family hytte, or hut. I had noticed many of these hytter as I cycled across the mountains of southern Norway and, according to Steve, most families had one tucked away somewhere in remote countryside. Many were 'off grid' and this was certainly the case when we arrived at Anita's family's hytte about an hour's drive from Trondheim. No electricity, no landline, no mobile signal, a few minutes' walk away from the rough track... How well did I know these people?

  Any anxieties as to whether I was being escorted to a shallow grave in the woods were assuaged somewhat when Anita started lighting candles and laying out lunch. In the meantime, Steve decided to go for a short row on the adjacent lake in what turned out to be a forlorn attempt to catch some fish. It seemed a strange precursor to being murdered so I cast aside my negative thoughts and set about enjoying myself. As huts go, it was a spacious and comfortable one with chairs, tables, a small kitchen, green checked curtains and enough candles to keep a large Dickensian house illuminated 24/7.

  The primary activity of life at the hytte appeared to be doing nothing and I was certainly up for a bit of that. Alas, the heavy rain meant that doing nothing had to be an activity undertaken either inside the wooden hut or on the small veranda but over the course of the next couple of hours, we seemed to manage fine, chatting about life in Norway from the perspective of a local and an expatriate.

  I never really got to the bottom of what Steve did in Norway. He wasn't employed by anyone and he mentioned various business activities that he had been involved in over the years. If physically he had many of the attributes of Alexei Sayle, his CV resembled that of Eddie Grundy in The Archers, moving from one odd job to the next, earning a little here and a little there, with the occasional suggestion of the rules of society being bent to make ends meet. In a world where we often define people by their chosen profession, he certainly couldn't be and that was nice.

  Later in the day, back at Steve's house, as my dirty clothes tumbled around the washing machine and my electrical items recharged in sockets dotted around the building, I pondered the remaining 2,000 km of the trip.

  Cycling along the busy E6 road was no longer an option. This, as you might imagine, filled me with joy. Even if I had fancied spending several weeks pedalling alongside fast-moving cars, buses and lorries, the tunnels forbidden to cyclists made the E6 impassable to me. Instead, cycle route 1 made use of the fjordhopping coastal roads. I envisaged this involved a good number of ferries in addition to some spectacular bridges. The Arctic Circle would be crossed at some point south of Bodø, from where a longer ferry crossing would take me onto the Lofoten islands to continue my journey north via Tromsø and Alta to Nordkapp. At least that was the plan.

  Having said my goodbyes to Steve and his family early the following morning, I returned to sit opposite the façade of the cathedral in the centre of Trondheim. It was a much quieter place than it had been at the weekend and there were no identif
iable pilgrims, walking or cycling, with whom I could pass the time of day. I looked up at the uninspiring grey sky that hovered over the three rows of religious luminaries immortalised in stone above the main door of the cathedral. It was a colour that seemed to guarantee heavy rain at some point in the next few hours. I hadn't experienced a Mercedes day (remember them?) in quite some time but everything about Tuesday 7 July was pointing in that direction. I was cold, my throat was sore, the weather was crap and, despite having a pannier full of clean clothes and fully charged gear, my own physical batteries were low. Too much of that beer from hell? Perhaps.

  At least for the first half-hour of the cycling day I could sit and feel sorry for myself on a ferry across the 15 km wide Trondheimsfjord to a small town called Vanvikan. Upon arrival, it had indeed started to rain so I pulled on my waterproofs, stocked up on snacks at the Coop and set off north.

  Perhaps what I needed to soothe my Tuesday-morning blues was a nice bit of easy, flat riding to get the adrenaline flowing and the endorphins running around my brain in a morale-boosting frenzy. What I didn't need – but I got – was an immediate steep climb from sea level to 250 m.

  The remainder of the day was a struggle, up and down over hills that I wished hadn't existed and through roadworks that I wished hadn't been started. The second half of the 80 km cycled drew a line on my GPS tracker as straight as a spoke and in a direction that was almost precisely due north. In these respects, I reasoned, my pain had not been prolonged. As I zipped up the door of the tent to keep the midges at bay on a campsite near Åfjord, I could only hope that the following morning would bring respite from the rain, the sniffles, the roadworks and my own personal melancholy.

  THE TWENTY-NINTH DEGREE

  64°–65° NORTH

  8–11 July

  Solace can often be found in food, so, after packing away the tent in the rain, I cycled the short distance to the local supermarket cafeteria. The conversation with the woman behind the counter went along the following lines:

  Me: 'Hei, hei! [Which, even after nearly two weeks in Norway, still sounded far too familiar for an opening line.] Do you speak English?'

  Assistant: 'Yes, a little.' [I took this to mean: 'Yes, probably more fluently than many of your fellow Brits.']

  Me: 'Can I have a coffee and two of these?' [I pointed at a pastry that was described on the label as a 'kanel bolle' but which I couldn't bring myself to mispronounce as 'cannonball'.]

  Assistant: 'Here you go. That's fifty kroner.'

  Me: 'If they [the cannonballs] are good, I may come back for another. My plan is to wait here until the rain stops.'

  Assistant: 'That could be September.'

  Never let it be said that the Norwegians lack a sense of humour. I smiled and went to eat the first of the kanel bolle whilst sitting on a high stool at a long bench by the window. From my elevated position I had a wonderful view of not only Reggie, whom I had left outside, untethered, but also the puddles and the rain creating them. I sat, watched and waited.

  Should I have been surprised by the grim weather outside? Along with the bear situation, it was one of the few aspects of cycling in Norway that I had looked into prior to setting off. I had compared the key average July meteorological statistics for Bodø – roughly halfway between Trondheim and Nordkapp – with those for London. Average temperatures in London varied between a low of 14°C and a high of 24°C. In Bodø the figures were 12°C and 16°C. As far as the chances of getting wet were concerned, in London it could be expected to rain, on average, for eight days in the month and deliver 45 mm of water. In Bodø I should be prepared for it to rain on ten days but deliver 92 mm of water. So, not much colder – just colder for more of the time – and when it rained, it did so more heavily or for a longer period. My money was on the latter.

  I much preferred the days when I had a destination in mind. I reached for my penultimate map – Norway North – and followed route 715 along the coast, adding up the distances marked on it in my head as my finger did the moving: 7 km, 14, 21, 25, 34, 41, 51, 54. There was a campsite at a place called Osen. After Osen, cycle route 1 continued to follow the 715 but the next site was 50 km further on. That was, if the sites existed. I triple-checked in my booklet of Norwegian campsites and did a quick online search: the site at Osen definitely existed and it looked like the kind of place I'd been dreaming about ever since I came up with the crazy idea of cycling from Tarifa to Nordkapp.

  I glanced again out of the window. The puddles were still there, as was Reggie. But what was that I could see above me? Could it really be a patch of blue sky? What about the rain? A puddle was now reflecting perfectly the red-and-blue sign of the rival supermarket across the street. Had I really been sitting there all through August?

  'It's stopped raining,' I called out to the woman at the counter.

  'Well, it must be September then,' she replied, smiling.

  In the real world, I had been sitting in the cafeteria for nearly two hours so, with a delayed departure, a cycle of just 54 km to Osen was the best option; admittedly, it was also the only option.

  There was nothing spectacular about cycling day 77 and the weather was such that had I been on a beach holiday in Ibiza, I would have been writing to the tour operator demanding a return of my money. But I wasn't on a Mediterranean island; I was about 250 km from the Arctic Circle and at least it was no longer raining. That small but significant novelty made the cycling a joy. Yes, it was cold. Yes, the sky was grey. Yes, there were steep hills. But not a drop more rain fell.

  To cap off a day that had seen a remarkable turnaround in my fortunes as well as my mood, the campsite was just as good as the photographs had suggested. The cheery bearded guy on reception invited me to pitch the tent wherever I liked and I did so in a secluded spot only a few metres from the narrow pebbly beach of the fjord. I heated some baked beans and positioned myself in the camping chair to eat them whilst watching the water retreat from the bay and the sun make its first and final appearance of the day as it edged towards a distant bridge on the horizon.

  The following morning I found myself chatting to the chap in the reception hut again.

  'Do you see many cyclists who are heading to Nordkapp?' I asked.

  'A few, but I can't remember anyone who started their journey in Spain,' he replied, chuckling at the perceived insanity of what I was attempting. 'Here, take this.'

  I thought it might be a self-help guide for those wishing to wean themselves off long-distance cycling, but no, it was of far more practical use: a small booklet entitled Kystriksveien: The World's Most Beautiful Journey.

  The Kystriksveien was the coastal road and, over the course of the journey north to Bodø, that booklet would become my travel bible. It listed the places, the accommodation, the ferries and their timetables, and pointed out all the attractions along the way. 'Allow yourself to travel slow and explore!' it exalted in its introductory passage. Having chosen to cycle, there was no alternative than to travel slow but the reminder to explore was pertinent. Yes, after three months on the road I was eager to finish, but not at the expense of ignoring my surroundings and all they had to offer. It was wise, and timely, advice.

  Namsos, some 80 km along the coastal road that was also cycle route 1, was described by my new travel guide as 'a rock and roll city with long-standing traditions in the timber industry'. I couldn't ever remember visiting a place that headlined itself in those terms so, with Namsos Camping also getting a prominent mention, I set my sights and front tyre in its direction and started pedalling.

  Despite the joyous lack of rain, water could still have been the theme for the day, gathered as it was in the numerous lakes I passed and flowing along the River Luna beside which I was climbing. Every few kilometres I would stop or, at the very least, slow down to gaze at the powerful current thundering over rocky outcrops. With the traffic on the road being so slight, the waterfalls were not only the sight of the day but also the invigorating sound. I chuckled upon realising that the very s
ame aspect of nature – water – that had my mood sinking so low only two days previously was now the icing on the cake.

  The long descent over the final two-thirds of the day allowed me to pick up speed and I was able to cover a 78 km cycle in just four hours. Alas, the final hour or so was under increasingly heavy rain and the irony of seeing the wood in the large timber yards on the outskirts of Namsos being sprayed to keep it from drying out didn't escape me. The rain was also dousing my enthusiasm for a night in the tent.

  But what about the rock 'n' roll? All would shortly be revealed, but not before I had discovered a rather smart, dry and surprisingly modestly priced Scandic hotel. Scandic is to Scandinavia what the Parador chain of hotels is to Spain, albeit located within your traditional, more modern hotel buildings rather than old castles and monasteries. They seemed to be a cut above the competition and for this reason I had never considered them a possibility. Arriving somewhat drenched in Namsos and noting that the name of the local Scandic hotel was the Scandic Rock City, all in the name of research, I reconsidered, paid up and booked in.