Spain to Norway on a Bike Called Reggie

by Andrew P. Sykes

  Most of us were taught at school that the equator is the point on Earth where the sun is directly overhead at noon. Well, not quite. In 2015 the sun was directly overhead at the vernal and autumnal equinoxes on 20 March and 22 September respectively. But let's not quibble; it wasn't far off on the other 363 days as well. The sun is directly overhead at the Tropic of Cancer on 21 June and the Tropic of Capricorn on 21 December.

  The imaginary line on the Earth that we refer to as the Arctic Circle is marked out on maps at 66°34' north of the equator. The Tropic of Capricorn is about 23°26' south of the equator. If you add 66°34' and 23°26' together, you get exactly 90°, or a right angle. This means that when the sun is directly overhead at the Tropic of Capricorn on 21 December, it is not visible from the Arctic Circle. There is a period of 24 hours during which the sun never appears above the horizon.

  South of the Arctic Circle, providing it's not cloudy, you are always guaranteed to see at least a bit of sun on every day of the year. North of the Circle, the period of darkness is increasingly long until you arrive at the North Pole, where there is a period of six months of 'darkness' kicking off on 25 September. It's not total darkness, as for most of those six months, the sun isn't far below the horizon and lights the sky. Total darkness at the Pole lasts 'just' 11 weeks, from mid-November to late January.

  The reverse is true during the summer, of course, when there is continuous daylight for increasingly long periods north of the Arctic Circle. If I were to see the midnight sun at my final destination, I would need to arrive there on or before 28 July. Shortly after leaving the campsite opposite the Seven Sisters on the island of Alsta, I would cross the sixty-sixth degree of latitude. There were slightly over five degrees between me and my destination at 71°10', and just 15 days before my last chance of seeing the midnight sun at Nordkapp. It was entirely possible that I might witness the midnight sun before I arrived in Nordkapp but it would be a fitting end to the journey if I could also do so at the Continent's most northerly point.

  When I examined my route north of Alsta, it continued to twist and turn around the fragmented coastline just as it had been doing to an increasing extent since leaving Trondheim. There were plenty of fjords to cycle along, bridges to cross and ferries to catch. One of these ferries would be from Kilboghamn to Jetvik. I was enjoying the opportunity afforded by the ferries of taking a break from moving under my own steam, and what was special about the Kilboghamn– Jetvik ferry was that it crossed the point 66°34' north of the equator. It looked as though I wouldn't be cycling across the Arctic Circle; I would be sailing across it. But not until the following day. Instead, I set my sights on cycling to within a short ride away of Kilboghamn, with a view to catching the ferry at some point on the morning of cycling day 83.

  Having pitched the tent on a slight incline, I woke repeatedly during the night, each time with a different dream still fresh in my mind. Perhaps it was the long-distance nature of the trip but quite why Michael Palin was chasing the diminutive Miriam Margolyes around that large house remains a mystery to this day. In the real world, I had my own chasing to do, along and across a series of fjords.

  The Helgeland Bridge spanning the Leirfjord was as impressive as it was long. I paused along the causeway that linked its southern end to the island to take in its slender lines. The two towers were a masterclass in how to construct something so elegant out of concrete. From a distance they resembled the eyes of two needles, the road being the cotton threaded delicately through the openings. 'In a mountainous country cut apart by deep fjords, bridge building is a virtue of necessity,' explained our friends at the Norwegian Public Roads Administration who are responsible for over 18,000 bridges spanning gaps amounting to nearly 450 km. The tunnels might get you to Dundee but add in the bridges and your drive from London will see you all the way to John O'Groats.

  In many other countries, where such infrastructure would be expected to carry a constant stream of traffic to justify the expense, the kilometre-long Helgeland Bridge would never have been built in the first place. After pedalling through the two heavy-duty needles, I turned to appreciate the bridge's beauty, silhouetted against the cloudless sky, for one last time. It was empty. Just Reggie and me.

  On such quiet roads, it was difficult to miss the sudden passage of perhaps 20 cars, vans, lorries and buses. It was a sign that a ferry ahead had just arrived and all the vehicles had disembarked. Would I make it to the dock before the ferry once again set off? Alas, no. I pulled up to see the boat slowly edge away from the shore.

  There could be far worse places to spend an hour than sitting beside a Norwegian fjord in the sunshine. When I arrived at Nesna on the other side of the fjord, nearly two hours had passed and my body was entering a state of repose. Should I abandon the day there and then? But I'd only cycled and ferried 50 odd kilometres. No, I would continue. I may have been feeling lethargic but it had been easy cycling for days and why waste the opportunity of riding in the sun?

  Within the hour, I was being reminded just how long and steep some Norwegian roads could be. Geography was giving me a sharp kick up the backside by forcing me to climb some 300 metres. Mother Nature was also in on the act, sending down squadrons of large black flies in their hundreds. Such were their numbers that any attempt at swatting them away was comically futile, as it merely sufficed to stir the swarm. Dragging my Buff over my head and pulling down the sleeves of my shirt were the only solutions to keep them from landing on my skin and biting, scratching, sniffing and crapping. Surely the nearby cows would have been far better prey?

  I exchanged notes and food with a German cyclist from Hamburg at the top of the hill. Travelling south, he was as delighted as me to be informed that a rapid descent was imminent. As we attempted to catch our breath at the high viewpoint, the magnificent vista snatched it away. The climb had been worth every rapid beat of the heart, as we both feasted our eyes upon a deep, iconic Norwegian coastal valley.

  The mouth of the Sørfjord that we were looking down upon was just 2 km wide. However, with no obliging ferry or bridge to make life easy, travelling from one lip to the other required a 40 km detour along the length of the fjord and then back again. Six of these kilometres would be through tunnels – initially a modest 400 m but then 2,780 m and 2,870 m through the Sjona and Sila tunnels respectively. Their lengths alone made them a foreboding prospect but they were also darker and colder, as well as appearing narrower than the ones through which I had cycled so far. It was also almost inevitable that I would meet traffic.

  Taking the same precautions as I had done previously, I set off through the first and it wasn't long before a vehicle could be heard in the distance. The sound reverberated around the stone tube to such an extent that it was all but impossible to determine what it was, how far away it was or even the direction in which it was moving. Seeing no lights ahead of me, I assumed it was behind but the level of sound continued to increase until… BEEEEP – a loud blast on the horn by the driver of a… I still wasn't sure. Then it thundered past, exposing my eardrums to levels of noise that they hadn't experienced since the day I had run over the Japanese tourist in Paris. It was a lorry and it had been a frightening experience.

  As to why the driver had thought it wise to use his horn, I had no definitive answer. Did he think I hadn't noticed him? Was he being friendly? Or was he ticking me off for being in the tunnel in the first place? I suspected the latter but he had no reason to be doing so. Cycle route 1 continued to be regularly signposted along the road and there had been no signs banning bicycles from the tunnel. Whatever his motivation, he had only succeeded in making an already unpleasant experience even worse.

  The long day ended after nearly 130 km, at a campsite opposite the small island of Aldra that didn't offer much to write home about, so I'll spare you most of the details. It was, at least, quiet. I escaped the rough patch of ground behind the 'Mote & amping' (the sign was as neglected as the rest of the establishment) early the following morning in the knowledge that t
his would be the day I crossed the Arctic Circle. How many people could say that?

  On the 9 a.m. boat from Kilboghamn, not many at all. It was another ferry that had pretensions of being an aircraft carrier in style, if not necessarily in size. There was ample space remaining on the runway/deck after I had boarded and joined just three motorised vehicles: two cars and a tractor. The hour-long sailing trip to Jetvik was the longest yet of the journey but, at only £4.50, certainly not the most expensive. Tourist information was thrown in for free.

  'Look!' announced rather suddenly the man selling tickets. Two men from one of the cars were, like me, poised with their cameras, waiting to capture the moment we passed through the invisible line. 'Can you see the white globe?'

  I could, just. It was several hundred metres away on shore and marked, presumably, 66°34' north. With only one identifiable point on the line, however, it would be impossible to say when the ferry entered the circle. Clarification came a few moments later in the form of a loud blast from the ship's whistle. Ouch. My eardrums hadn't yet recovered from the lorry incident in the tunnel.

  There had been nothing much to see at Trafalgar, nor Waterloo, nor that famous cycling street in Münster. It was the same here on the Arctic Circle. Had there been no kind ferryman pointing out the relevant distant object, or his equally diligent colleague pulling his hooter upstairs on the bridge, I would have been scrambling for a GPS signal on the phone. I could have been left guessing as to when I had passed through the Arctic Circle but would it have mattered if I'd been out by a few metres? Of course not. It was once again the human mind imposing significance upon a particular place for what it represented. I liked that.

  The roads were getting busier, but not so much with anything four-wheeled. I had been surprised as to how few cyclists I'd seen as I travelled across Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and southern and central Norway. Here in Nordland, however, they were increasingly common and welcome sights. Some even appeared to be collaborating.

  POLSKI's!

  I took the ferry at 16.45!

  I'm gonna camp about 5 km after the ferry!

  If we don't meet tonight, we can meet at the next ferry at Ågskardet tomorrow between 10 and 11 a.m.! Otherwise maybe 12!

  DAVID!

  So read the large handwritten note below the sign for cycle route 1 near the dock in Jetvik. I could only assume that David did a lot of shouting. Or perhaps he was American.

  I never knowingly met David, but a Dutch cyclist heading south recommended the campsite at Furøy. 'It's a good place to relax,' she explained, and so it was. After another long tunnel – at 3.2 km the longest yet – and a second ferry, Furøy Camping was only five minutes from the dock. As a place to rest, recuperate, wash and dry my clothes, and recharge all the batteries, it was perfect.

  It was at Furøy that I first encountered Hans and Veronika. The weather had now taken a turn for the worse and I noticed two cyclists arrive quite late in the evening. He had a greying beard and was in his late fifties. She was in her twenties. I assumed that they were father and daughter, and wondered in which direction they were travelling. Once their tent had been erected, they sensibly hid from the rain and we never spoke. In the morning, their tent had disappeared but my curiosity remained.

  When the rain abated, I packed my stuff away and fell into conversation with a Scottish family who were travelling in a burgundy Range Rover. All three of their children were being given instructions as to what to pack where; given that the oldest was probably no more than 12 years old, they had been well trained.

  'We caught the Newcastle to Amsterdam ferry,' said the man. I was curious because, with only a couple of weeks of my own trip remaining, I had yet to make any plans to travel back home from Nordkapp.

  'It's such a pity that the Newcastle–Bergen route no longer operates,' I noted.

  'Yes, but it is, apparently, possible to travel on a cargo freighter from Bergen to Immingham,' he explained.

  That would be an adventure in itself. I put it down in the column of 'possibles'. I really wanted to avoid the hassle of taking the bike on a plane.

  For the first time in many days, the cycle route deviated from the number 17 coastal road north of Furøy. The 'coastal' FV17 was replaced with the 'even-more-coastal' FV452. The downside of not being on a main road was that ferries from Vassdalsvik to Ørnes were far less frequent. Having missed the boat at 10.50 a.m., when I arrived at the dock at lunchtime, I still had over two hours to wait for the next one at 2.25 p.m. Time wouldn't be wasted, however. The two cyclists I'd seen at the campsite were also waiting and we got chatting.

  'I'm Hans, and this is my daughter Veronika,' explained the man, 'and we're cycling to Nordkapp.'

  'Perhaps,' interjected Veronika.

  Did I detect tension? There couldn't be many women her age who would relish a cycle-camping holiday with their father in northern Norway.

  After about half an hour we were joined by a familiar face: Jean-Philippe, the Swiss cyclist I had met outside the cathedral in Trondheim who was also en route to Nordkapp. A little later two German women in their early thirties arrived. They too were cycling to Nordkapp. This was turning into quite a convention of like-minded travellers. I quickly got out my notebook, formally opened the session and started taking minutes. There was much to discuss.

  THE THIRTY-SECOND DEGREE

  67°–68° NORTH

  16–17 July

  After a night spent in a half-built campsite, I was within a day's cycle of Bodø, the town from where I could catch a ferry to the Lofoten islands. The sun had disappeared from the sky, and the low cloud and drizzle that replaced it gave a slightly eerie edge to the morning. Isolated houses were dotted along the shores of the fjords, fishing boats sat motionless in the water, mist hung low on the cliffs and the bridges began to take on an almost contorted nature, bending and angling themselves in ways that common sense would dictate they shouldn't. I had become accustomed to roads that swept around mountainsides with curving artistic beauty but to see bridges doing similar things was verging on the disconcerting.

  Although the route never climbed higher than 200 m above the sea, the up-and-down nature of the day was sapping. It came as no surprise to discover later that, over the course of the day, my cumulative ascent was nearly 1,000 m. Even the steep bridges were a challenge, none more so than the achingly beautiful structure at Saltstraumen. It arched itself over and across a narrow stretch of water, which, at a casual glance, was just another pretty gap between two outcrops of land. Looking more carefully, however, I noticed that strange forces were at work: the maelstroms of Saltstraumen.

  Every six hours, 400 million cubic metres of water flowed through the narrow channel below the bridge. That's one very large cube of water measuring about 750 metres on each side. Four times a day, the direction of the tide changed, but with very large volumes of water moving in and out of such a narrow channel, incoming and outgoing currents interacted in a way that created large whirlpools. I poked my head over the side of the bridge but guessed it wasn't tide changeover time. The only whirlpools to be seen were modest in size. I was left to imagine just how foreboding they could be when the water started flowing in the opposite direction or when the combined efforts of the sun and the moon came together to have their greatest impact upon the tides.

  I went to ponder over nature's maelstroms whilst eating a vegetable tart at a nearby swish café called Magic. The panoramic windows offered a cracking view, and I watched as people walked over the hump of the bridge and stared into the waters below, just as I had done a few minutes earlier. There were even two cyclists, an older man and a younger woman… Hang on. Those were Hans and Veronika. They continued across the bridge, spotted the café and came in to take shelter from the cool, damp conditions outside. I greeted them with a smile and we got chatting.

  'Veronika is my middle daughter,' explained Hans. 'The other two are not interested but we've always cycled together. Last year we cycled from Bergen to Trondheim and this
year we're completing the trip by cycling from Trondheim to Nordkapp.'

  Hans worked as the research boss at a manufacturer of silicon in southern Germany and Veronika was a student of psychology in Austria. They had flown out to Trondheim via Oslo but I was curious as to how they were planning on returning home.

  'There's an airport at Alta. Once we've arrived at Nordkapp, we'll cycle back there to catch a plane south again,' explained Veronika.

  'I haven't made any plans to travel home yet,' I admitted, going on to detail my complete lack of preparation in that area. I mentioned the cargo ship to Immingham and Hans smiled.

  'Good luck with that.'

  It was obvious that he thought such a plan might require more than just turning up at the dock in Bergen and thumbing a lift. Even if it were a possibility, I would still be required to travel south to Bergen in the first place. There were no trains north of Bodø that connected with southern Norway and although coaches did link Nordkapp with the rest of the country, did I really want to end this epic trip by spending days travelling back south on a cramped bus?