bicycle – Europe'16

A Road less travelled…

Posted on July 23, 2016 by Steven

the better. Once again, I woke to the soft sound of rain on my tent. Actually I woke several times during the night curtesy of drunk or snoring campers next to me.

I am now adept at packing up my tent from the inside so only the fly sheet looks like it just came out of the bathtub. The campsite kitchen was off limits til 8am, and I couldn’t be bothered cook outside in the rain so I headed off in search of a good bakery. 2 coffees, 2 chocolate fidled croissants and 2 almond swirls later I was on my way.

A Rain Dance – Aalborg

Today would have been another 100 plus day but, with the humidity and rain, I decided to take a more direct route to the coast. Now Denmark has really good bike paths and routes, but the direct ones are alongside the main roads so the trade off is that traffic is heavy and the scenery is wee bit monotonous.

Of course I could have hopped on board one of these but that would have been too easy…. Anyway the rain had stopped.

Tomorrow it’s back to Norway via ferry…

The Ups and Downs

Posted on July 22, 2016 by Steven

Every trip has its down moments and with bicycling, it generally is due to a combo of physical and mental fatigue. Today was that day. Having said that I really shouldn’t have had coffee at 9pm last night so a lack of sleep might just have played a part. Luckily my ride today was following a converted rail track just about the entire way to Aalborg, which meant it was flat. Perversely flat can be harder than hills, maybe the unchanged rhythm without the curse of a hill followed by the joy of a downhill. – whatever.

Once again, the friendship of bicycling prevailed as a guy who teaches history at the University of Aalborg guided me thru the bike paths toward the campgrounds.

As I go, I associate each country with mascots, sounds or sights. For Norway it is the mole, as they are forever tunnelling, Finland it was rain and wind ( sorry Finland), for Sweden ,it is potatoes- where else would you see programmes and ads ( that I couldn’t understand) devoted to potatoes but also the moose as I actually saw them on bike trails. For Denmark it is that particular metallic sound of a beer can tab being pulled. At this campground it is like the 1812 overture with beer can tabs instead of cannon.

The view from my tent – not much space here!

A final day in Sweden

Posted on July 20, 2016 by Steven

Note to self – avoid Coastal Areas of Sweden during month of July. In all my time I’ve never seen so many motor homes and caravans. I was going to ride up the coast toward Gotenberg, but by the time I reached Varburg, it was a no more of this! The bike trails I followed, for the most part were alongside busy roads or on them. And, whenever there was a beach, it was crowded with shapes of alsorts.

Varburg Castle was best seen from a distance as, close up, it was surrounded with booths, games for kids etc.

So I’ve decided to catch the ferry to Denmark and see if it’s any better there. But on the plus side the weather was sunny, warm without much wind. From talking to locals, the summer so far has been bad, with wind, cold temperatures and rain so I’ve been quite lucky.

I’m knackered but have a new fav city

Posted on July 19, 2016 by Steven

It was going to be a reasonable distance day. It was a calm foggy morning as I left Atvesta.

Happy Cows

I think the highest I reached in crossing Sweden was 210 metres above sea level and today it felt like over half of my day was following converted railways like this, nice and flat.

trail

Which was fine, just like the weather, except that I reached my intended destination by 2pm, so, being not too smart, I pushed on toward the coast and ended up doing 160 kms ( or about 40ks more than I’d recommend.

however ther’s always a light at the end of the tunnel as I discovered my new favourite city – Halmstad.

Halmstad

Maybe I get a photo or two tomorrow, but there’s about 30 rowers from here coming to the World Masters in New Zealand next year. Yes I managed to find the local boat club.

Along the Way

Posted on July 18, 2016 by Steven

Going slow and on country roads affords the opportunity to find pleasant surprises like this seemingly nondescript bank just outside of Gemla.

I noticed a small sign so stopped to check it out. Turned out to be a early or late Bronze Age burial chamber surrounded by a cairn of stones. Originally it was 11 metres in length and about 7 metres high but it was damaged when they broadened the highway a few centuries later. Below is the burial chamber (at least what is left of it). I’ve highlighted it for more easy viewing.

Burial chamber

Apparently there’s some 90 of these around here and I often wondered whether the piles of stones as I rode along were from a farmer clearing a field or cairns.

Another pleasure is the bountiful supply of raspberries beside the road.

There’s interesting difference between the countryside and city. On the whole I find modern Swedish towns rather stark in architecture. Below is the town of Alvesta on a Monday afternoon.

While the country has a more pleasant architecture, below is an old country bridge beside a mill.

Just another day

Posted on July 17, 2016 by Steven

The middle bit of southern Sweden is flat and boring. It must be where IKEA design their furniture. However a giant or troll spent time wiggling their toes here as the road was a roller coaster of short ups and downs. There was the occasional visual relief from the pine trees.

I even stopped for the ritual drying of the tent.

Although this is still a more comfortable place to dry the tent out 🙂

I know that summers are short up here in Scandinavia, but it felt like autumn had arrived today what with the cool wind and grey skies. The feeling was further emphasised by the deserted streets of Vaxjo on a Sunday afternoon.

Kalmar

Posted on July 16, 2016 by Steven

So it’s goodbye to islands, at least for awhile. I would have liked to bike the bridge from Öland – it is one of the longest in Europe at 6 km, but bikes ain’t allowed and so I had to take the bike ferry to Kalmar.

Somewhere I read that Kalmar is Swedens favourite vacation place. Last time I was here I won’t have agreed, but that was probably my mood at the time. The 17th century town is quite lovely. Check out the Cathedral – not your normal looking one.

On a slightly different and smaller scale, there was a couple of kittens looking out at the big wide world from the safety of their den.

The rest of the day ended up being a bit of a long one as I experienced miles upon miles of forest so just kept going.

Of course, having just pitched my tent. I expect it to start raining!

I am curious

Posted on July 15, 2016 by Steven

I’m truely intrigued as to why, like lemmings, Swedes go en mass to Öland and Gotland so they can pack themselves into caravan puarks like sardines, then visit the same “attractions” en mass, whike ignoring much of the countryside around. The main road on Öland was a long traffic queue yet I was cycling empty roads a short distance away.

On the side road, one has the chance to meet with fellow slow travellers,

And discover ancient history like this pile of rocks which could be

A pile of rocks
Where I lost the key to my bicycle lock
A convenient rest stop

The answer is of course – some of the above (I found my key) but also it’s a Bronze Age Burial Mound circa 1000-1800bc. All I can say is they must have hated the guy to have piled some many rocks on him.

I almost met the Adams family, at least, I think this was their summer house.

Öland – we all make mistakes

Posted on July 14, 2016 by Steven

One of the things Öland is famous for, is its limestone, and, for a while,it seemed that the north west coast was a discarded quarry, ironically quite a scenic cycle ride that was interspersed with shaded wooded areas.

There was even a camel farm along the way to entertain the kids.

However all good things must come to an end. Having spent the day in calm forests and with seas views, I decided to head toward Borgholm where there were at least 5 campgrounds. After all Borgholm touts its Baroque (ruined) Castle as must see and the King and Queen are in town for some event today.

Well, this is what 300 kroner (NZ $51) buys you at a campground here. A patch of grass next to the main road, oh, and it’s started to rain and the camp wifi doen’t work…. And you pay extra for a shower.

At least I get to share this with enough motor homes to solve Auckland’s housing crisis for years to come.

Circling Gotland

Posted on July 12, 2016 by Steven

I’m not one for churches, or temples etc, but Gotland has so many you can’t avoid going into some of them. This was my church of choice, somewhere in the north of the island.

It was the inside rather than the outside that I liked as it had the original , faded, medieval wall decorations.

As ever the wind was hovering around 35 km so I was either gleefully freewheeling or grinding slowly along.

tomorrow evening I’m going back to the mainland as Gotland at the peak of the tourist season is not really my cup of tea.

Keeping the options open

Posted on July 11, 2016 by Steven

With the weather not looking too good. I thought I might catch a train south to Nynashamn for the ferry, and also decided to go early and thus have time to cycle if I changed my mind. It turned out that was just as well.

First up, when I got to the Central Station, I was kindly informed by the first rude Scandinavian (I’d met so far on this trip) that bikes weren’t allowed in the Central Station – her tone and words were slightly different. Oh, and I then discovered that buses had replaced the train for much of the journey.

However in the world of ying and yang, another person saw that I was a somewhat perplexed individual trying to figure my way south out of the city and rode with me for 5k just to see me through the tangle of streets. So I ended up cycling to the coast with only a few showers on the way.

This dog has its own personal chauffeur

Unlike the ferry ride from Åland, the ferry to Gotland had plenty of cyclists, my favourite being the one above.

Visby was quite crowded with holiday makers, yet, for some reason, they all seemed to disappear shortly after 6:30 as if there was a curfew that I didn’t know about.

Slow Travel

Posted on July 8, 2016 by Steven

The wind has quietened to a zephyr, probably because it knows I’m getting the 00:45 boat to Stockholm. It’s a beautiful warm late afternoon. I’m sitting in a wood typing this with just the sound of seagulls. For the last three days I’ve been doing the cycling version of slow food. Not travelling far but stopping frequently and sampling the local fair, be it museums, food and attractions or whatever.

My lunch spot

There was a delightful little museum displaying the paintings of a artists colony from the early to mid 1900s – it reminded me of the paintings in Mogs flat!

Art Colony Museum

Then I spend the better part of 2 hours at a small café run called Lumparby Ollas by Peter. By my reckoning it was out of the way, by his reckoning it was close to town, of course he had a car. It was only open in the summer and in the winter, he runs his sled dogs as a hobby. Apparently when the sea freezes, you can get to to the Finnish mainland in about 8 hours by dog sled.

Lumparby Ollas Cafe

The harbour where I catch the boat is Långnas. It’s about 30 kilometres from Mariehamn and only used because of Alcohol. To explain, the EU banned duty free between member countries. This slashed the revenue that the ferry companies made. But because Åland is a self governing body it was declared an exception so all ferries stop there and people travelling between Sweden and Finland or Estonia can load up on Booze.

My teachers at School didn’t tell everything

Posted on July 6, 2016 by Steven

Not content with the 9 hour coach ride and a 14 hour train ride, I tacked on a 5½ hour ferry ride to get to the Åland archipelago that runs between Sweden and Finland.

Such a change, it is flat, relatively speaking and has forests! I also did my bit of remedial learning. I’d always been taught that the Crimean War took place in, as you might think, in Crimea. But I’m camped next to the ruins of a Russian fort that was the scene of a major battle and where the first ever Victoria Cross was awarded – along with two other ones a few months later.

Basically Russians had built the insides of the fort but were rather tardy in putting up the outer defences. Unsportingly the Brits and French bombarded the place and captured it. But the Russians got their own back by bombarding the fort after the French had taken it and scoring a direct hit on the munitions magazine – could be they had some inside knowledge of the place. My teachers at school have some explaining to do.

Last Leg to Tromso

Posted on July 3, 2016 by Steven

Well, today was going to be either great or grating. The winds were still stronger on the south (the route mostly east) and there was rain looming. But there there was also a couple of relaxing ferry rides……

Turned out to be a great day despite the early rain, the views, as ever magnificent.

The final run into Tromso was a breeze, I was free wheeling on the flats – I just felt sorry for those going the other way – not really.

So after 540 kilometres of riding from NordKapp, I’ve completed a circle of the top of Norway.

Two Unusal Highlights

Posted on July 2, 2016 by Steven

Now you’d expect the highlights to be the views, fjords, etc etc of Norway but today it was first, finishing the days ride (‘cos I was knackered) and secondly a Thai Penang Curry with Reindeer Meat – spicy and with no pasta, no cream no potatoes.

Last night I camped north of Burfjord and about 2-3 kilometres away along the fjord, the local camping ground was having their annual music festival, starting at 10pm and going to 3am. Hearing Proud Mary sung with a heavily Norwegian accent at 2 in the morning will have to be one of my more humorous moments.

Tomorrow I cycle to Tromso.