Underground and Over Water (Tromsø to Lofoten), Pt. 2: July 9th - July 13th, 2023
July 9th started off on Senja with a slow morning and a slow uphill. We happened to see Bent driving in (he is easy to spot in a conspicuous neon green zombie apocalypse SUV) as we slowly pedaled back up the tunnel. After the tunnel there was still more hill, we made it up a pretty long hill and at the top we talked to some other bike packers from Switzerland who were battling the same flies we'd fought the other day. They looked like they had been doing this for a while and were very friendly. There was a lovely ride downhill with views of Segla Mountain and then another tunnel.
This one had a button to push to make a sigh light up with "! sykelist en tunnelen". So I pulled over to hit the button and to turn on my rear view light, but I made the mistake of not downshifting out of my large front gear. So when I tried to get going again with all of the weight of my bike on that large gear and no momentum...rough, no matter just downshift - wrong choice! My bike went CRONCH! And my chain got horrible smashed in the front derailleur. OK! Time for some roadside bike mechanics! I remove all of the bags and get my bike flipped over. At this point the nice Swiss pedal by and I smile and wave pretending I know what I am doing. I am trying to just force it out of its trapped position and Ben convinces me to pop the master link which thankfully was not a part of the jam or in a gear. Finally a chance to use that tool I've been hauling! So I pop the master link, slide that chain on through and reattach. Feeling very proud of myself we reload the bike, and bike on. Success! Not long after Bent the climbing man drives by again. We had gone maybe 10K at this point...and he presumably had driven in, climbed something and driven out.
We kept going, passing beautiful beaches, rocky shores, pointy peaks, and amazing views. We stopped by a rest place with a nice bathroom and artsy benches to have some lunch, and a Norwegian lady saw us slicing our cheese with a spork and sarcastically asked whether we'd seen the great Norwegian invention for cutting cheese (did you know they invented the ostehøvel, AKA cheese slicer?). Apparently she'd played this game before.
This day had a giant hill and a tunnel and the goal was just to complete that and stop. The giant hill got started with switchbacks. It is always a bad sign when Norwegians build switchbacks. They don't do that for just any old incline. On the way up was a nice platform for a viewpoint. Good excuse for a rest. Someone has a lot of fun designing waypoints along their national scenic routes. We kept going up and finally reached a long tunnel through the mountains. The tunnel was still uphill but that's kind of nice because they're always cold. We popped out the other side and I actually beat Ben up that hill! I am getting stronger! Yay! Or I weighed him down with more food to haul. The lake at the end of the tunnel and the waterfall were quite the reward and we weren't feeling too wrecked so we decided to keep going farther than our planned distance for the day. Plus it was time for a downhill!
We sped down the hill and got back to the coast. We rolled along and figured we may as well get close to the next day's ferry so we can have an easier time catching it in the morning. We were getting tired and beginning to get anxious about camping when signs for a Trollparken appeared. Well we absolutely had to check that out! We slept in a Troll Park! Specifically we slept in a Trollhiet (troll hut) - good training since being trolls is our new calling. We were basically spending the night in an abandoned children's amusement park after all. It was guarded by two giant trolls, had three walls lined with benches, a table, and a roof. Perfect, let's just roll out our mats and sleeping bags and sleep! Then the mosquitoes came. The trolls did not protect us from the mosquitoes. I stubbornly try to stay asleep in my sleeping bag with my head buried and the buzz of their wings in my ears. Ben tried to engineer a makeshift tent for his head to protect him. It doesn't work. (Ben maintains it about 80% worked and he could have made it through the night.) Finally, I throw in the towel and admit we need to set up the tent. Tents are amazing. By the way the troll park is for sale, trolls and all! The mosquitoes come free.
The next morning we biked to Gryllefjord to catch the ferry to the island of Andøya. The bike ride was ok, the flies were bad, but thankfully we hit this stretch of meadow early in the day or they would have been much worse. Something about having a literal cloud of flies around your head makes you feel even sweatier and hotter and dirtier and troll-ier than you are. The next tunnel gave us sanctuary before we had to give into putting on bug spray. Ellie was joking about studying for the taxi license and how it always asks questions with the formula of "This weather is occurring and you are approaching a tunnel; what should you look out for?" And the answer is always “reindeer seeking shelter”. Well I think they should update it to include a question like "It is a hot and sunny summer day, what should you look out for as you approach a tunnel?" And the answer being "cyclists seeking sanctuary from the heat and the flies". Anyway we get through the nice tunnel (downhill, weee!), across a bridge, get attacked by flies for a little bit more before zooming downhill to the ferry terminal. Hey! There's the Swiss couple again! We chat a bit waiting for the ferry. He reveals that his kickstand is this perfect stick that he found at some point. Which is good info for us as it turns out Ben's kickstand from Tromsø only works 60% of the time so he was still in the market for a good kickstand. The Swiss man also pointed out that the stick is also perfect for fending off dogs in Turkey and we should consider having a pouch for small rocks when we get to Turkey or any country where dogs are a problem. Noted. They also told us we should travel via shipping container boats to other continents, and that the Italian ones have the best food. So if Ben could just not get seasick, we could gain some weight while getting to South America. Intriguing!
On the other side we needed to stop at a grocery store for more food. Always more food. So we lost the Swiss couple. We had easy biking to Bleik where we had indoor housing and a puffin safari waiting for us. We got to the indoor housing in time to shower before the safari so we quickly moved into the room and hopped in the showers. I put my wet hair into braids, waited anxiously for Ben and then we walked to the dock...and saw the boat leaving. Darn, we didn't actually have time for that shower. We called the company and rearranged for the next day. Which worked out because the Swiss couple were there again to get on the same puffin tour! Neat!
The day was very foggy so it wasn't the best viewing for puffins, but as the tour guide explained "If you don't see puffins there is something wrong with your eyes". We did see a lot of puffins. The tour guide also tried to teach us the names of some of the other birds and told some fun stories. Puffins are his favorite bird because they don't make any sounds, they have intelligence (they can read the name of the tour boat, and tell each other "Don't worry, it's only Laura coming!"), and when the child is grown up the parents just stop feeding it to get it to leave. Which he thinks is great parenting advice. He also told a tale of when they used to allow egg hunting on this island and how everyone in Bleik would go to collect eggs and of course you only wanted the freshest of eggs. According to him, there were many ways to know if it was fresh; some involved spit, some water, some salt. But the best way to know is that if you picked up a puffin to move him out of the way to get an egg and the puffin bit your finger then it was NOT fresh and to leave it be. But if the puffin seemed chill then the egg was fresh.
Due to the fog, and I assume a lack of people purchasing them, he presented us with a photo book to take home as a gift. Us bikers took the book with a bit of reluctance as now we need to haul this, but they are beautiful nature shots of a cool place and things we have seen...it IS a good souvenir. Ben offers to haul it. (Ha, more chances for me to beat him up hills!) I don't know if the Swiss couple took it or not. After the safari we are off again to the grocery store (and a cafe with delicious coffee, calzones, and caramel cake), and then finally on to continue the journey.
At one point we pull over for lunch and a nap. And again we see the Swiss! "Are you looking for a campsite too?" "Umm, no we just took a nap we are going to go another 10K or so." We ride together for a little bit, but they drop off at a good enough campsite. We ended up rolling into a large parking lot at the end of Forfjorden for fishing access and it has a picnic table, so pretty good place to stop for the night. It's at this campsite that I offer Ben a stick and he is very confused. Kickstand Ben, focus! It quickly snaps under the slightest of pressure from the bike. But Ben figures out we are hauling sticks already - we have trekking poles! He extends his and wedges the top under his saddle, and it holds up the load! Success!
We left Forfjorden that morning with me riding with the solar panel on the back of my bike as we needed to charge up our battery pack. I struggle up the smallest of hills, Ben leaving me in the dust. I am struggling and trying to stay out of my granny gear on downhills. Then...my bike breaks a little bit more. The gears are jumping around and I can't seem to shift on the front without the chain jamming up. I put away the solar panel, the slight head wind breeze was just making it into a sail and adding to the amount of force I was asking this bike to handle. I started moving better but I had to stay in low gear so I steadily got more and more behind Ben as I had to work hard on the flats and downhills to keep up with him. I paused for a moose near the road. I radio'd Ben to let him know I stopped and he should come back for a moose, he didn't respond and never came back. Huh how far ahead is he. At this point I'm a little grumpy as my bike is broken and he is gone. Whatever, I enjoy viewing the moose and then roll along and see Ben waiting for me. I grump at him a bit and we continue down the bike path that is paralleling the road at this point as we are approaching Sortland. There is a big bridge to get us into town. And the bike path of course disappears so, onto the road we go. Worst bridge ever. Very busy. Very windy. I was already panicking with the bike being broke and now with the wind on this bridge I have a bit of a panic attack and walk it to the top of the bridge. No one gets run over and we roll into town. Bike path appearing and disappearing at will.
We don't know it but we're about to spend 4 hours in Sortland. Starting by pedaling to a COOP MEGA! And we make a lot of bad (good) food decisions, like a bowl from the salad bar that's mostly filled with cheese, guacamole, and meat. We head out back from the mall to eat on a dock, then I spend a chunk of time cleaning and greasing my chain and gears hoping it will make everything work better. We also realize that there's a kink in the cable for my front derailleur so Ben helps me try to adjust the tension on that. Maybe that's the real problem?? Ben zips off and leaves me with all the bags so that he can hunt for loctite and better bolts for his front racks which keep wobbling loose (so the old bolts were getting stripped from constant tightening). He comes back from the hardware store with a couple that don't quite work, so quick run upstairs to the sports shop in the mall! They were really nice and let him rifle through a box of loose parts until he found a couple that seemed good. Success! They fit just right.
OK we eat a little bit more food and then finally head on to Stokmarknes. I pretty quickly realize that my fix was temporary and I am still without a front derailleur so I am stuck in low gear. It's gonna need a bike mechanic. We go over another giant bridge in which the wind and a passing truck do something such that I start flying down that bridge being pulled by the truck's wake. WEEEEEEEEE! We stop to make dinner at the rest stop on the other side of the bridge and I get my heart calmed down. A German guy with a big camper van tells us about how someone clipped one of his mirrors off coming the opposite way in a tunnel... and we think about how many tunnels we've gone through and how many more we have left on this trip. Yikes.
We continue on slower and slower on rolling hills, but it's late and off the main road so there's not much traffic and Ben and I get to enjoy riding side-by-side, until we get to the camping area near the climbing spot of Trollskåla. Some Spanish folks were playing reggaeton and having fun at one spot, so we went the other way and wheeled our bikes up to a quieter area with a picnic table and a German couple also bike touring (heading south to north though). The lady remarks how it's her first bike trip and at the start it was so hard to go even 60 km, but your body just "gets used to it" and now she can do a 90 km day no problem... yeah sure we had just done like maybe 71 km that day and felt pretty wrecked. Will you take one of our bags?
The camping was by a pleasant sandy beach and had a nice cooking shelter and an overused toilet, but no drinking water. Concerning, but we'd already done dinner and had enough to get going tomorrow. The next morning was our anniversary. So we started with a little bit of climbing. The crag had a lot of kind of funky looking routes and a bunch of routes that could be trad climbs but had bolts... very strange for Norway. Ben led up the 4+ "Sofa Route" and needed a couple takes... OK either this is a high-gravity day or just a hard crag. Another couple of climbers showed up and seemed really disappointed that it wasn't trad climbing (but whatever, no one is MAKING you use the bolts if you'd rather use gear), so they hop right on a 7- which is one of the few climbs without bolts. Then they have to bail from part way up.
We decided the sun was too powerful and climbing was too hard so then went to the cafe up the street. We got some very good coffee and nice pieces of rhubarb and peach cake served with ice cream. Decadent! We talked to the cafe owner who also was running a pottery studio, she was a lovely Estonian woman who made pottery with a lot of doily imprints. She was kind enough to refill our waters and we decided to head to the beach to jump in the ocean before going back to the climbing area. Even though it was so hot (it has to be *really* hot to convince Ben to go for a dip) the water was still far too cold to really swim in. More of a convince yourself to get in and keep getting in and try to remember how to breathe. After our dip we went back for a little more climbing. Ben led up a bolted dihedral which was a lot of fun! Then we moved the rope to a harder climb and neither of us could figure out the crux. Oh well it's a top-rope so just yard yourself up! Good anniversary.
That's so crazy about Trollparken - I was watching Lillehammer last night, and it was the episode with the abandoned troll park, haha! Lovely photos. I hope you get your bike fixed soon. Happy anniversary!!
ReplyDeleteThat pretty much describes the whole trip - living in an episode of Lillehammer :p. That's a funny coincidence though! Susan says we'll have to watch that one.
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