In the distance standing in the corner of the room, a humming TV. Background music: Charlie Clouser – Hello Zepp. The reader wakes up tied to a chair with a laptop in front of him – on the screen a post from a bikepacking trip around Lofoten.
Reader: Woah! Wh-what the fuck is that?
Me: Hello. I want to play a game (in the voice of Jigsaw from Saw)
Imagine everything that has been written on this blog for the last dozen or so years being reversed. The youth would do it with a meme "evil hopcycling be like” and posted a photo from the trip in negative.
– Please tell me what this trip was like for you and what do you wish for the next ones?
– It was a wonderful trip, I will never forget it. And what do I wish for the next one? The same as on this one: I slept a lot, ate a lot, laughed a lot, rested a lot, I never once thought I would die, and I spent less than I expected.
The reader repeats: Woah! Wh-what the fuck is that? (link illustrating)
The Bravest Man in the World
There have been some very fearless people in the history of mankind. However, none of them can match my feat from June. Because imagine this situation: I am going on a company trip, a bike rally. I am sitting on a bus with Mariola. Completely unintentionally I mention that Sylwia and I are going to the Lofoten Islands in the coming month. Whether this was actually the case, I do not know to this day, although the word "Lofoten" seems to have been mentioned at some point in the house. As a surprisingly (to myself) sociable person, I make an offer to join us. "Let's play poker," I think. Mariola says that's cool, she joins. It was great, it went quickly - the first hand and I am almost bankrupt. In order to save myself, I add that it would be nice if there was also a +1, because it is hard in an odd group. Two days later Mariola lets us know that she has a +1 and her name is Katarzyna. And now please put yourself in my shoes: you go home and tell your fiancée: Hey, we're going on a romantic vacation, but with two friends, one of whom I don't know. That's how it was, I'm not lying. They're all still alive today.
Costs.
I looked at my past posts about Norway and I have to admit I'm surprised. It's fair to say we're doing pretty well catching up with the Norwegians. The total cost of the trip is less than PLN 6,500 per person., including everything. It's a lot, but we don't save much either. The price is mainly driven up by plane tickets, which we buy 2 weeks before departure, guided more by dates than price.
If you look at my post about the same bikepacking trip through Norway from 2018 (https://hopcycling.pl/norwegia-bikepacking-specialized-diverge/) – it amounted to less than PLN 3,000, but the flights themselves were PLN 2,000 cheaper.
The average price of accommodation per person is PLN 250. We either sleep in hotels with breakfast (which, with the right attitude, could be enough until the evening), or we rent entire, multi-room houses with a kitchen, where we can heat up food from the supermarkets (e.g. Carbonara for 25 PLN from Joker, some fish for the oven or just pizza).
FLIGHTS: PLN 2,600 (SAS+LOT with transfer in Oslo, departure Saturday early morning, return Saturday late evening.
6 NIGHTS: 1600 PLN
AVERAGE SHOP EXPENSES: 100-150 PLN/day, i.e. approximately 1000 PLN.
Ferries are generally free, we pay for one, seasonal, express, passenger only (Bodø -> Skutvik): 130 PLN
Fish & chips in a pub is 85 PLN.
Route.
Determining the route is surprisingly simple: there is one main road through Lofoten and:
- if it is possible to bypass it somewhere sideways, then it is avoided
– there are blind reflections going off of it and you have to judge for yourself whether it is worth seeing what is at the end of them
I have one assumption: I try to mark out a loop and not duplicate roads. It's hard to talk about distances covered, but I plan my days so that at least 10 hours pass from leaving the accommodation to reaching the door of the next one. It is fully passable on the road and I would probably recommend such a bike there (even though we do a few short gravel roads). We take tires from 38mm to 48mm, because it is more convenient with luggage.
Weather.
I can imagine a situation where for someone visiting Lofoten is one of their biggest dreams in life. I will say more, such a person can live anywhere in the world, because Norway is the TOP in the world. So they go there and spend a week watching the rain in the cold of June. Zero visibility, and when you can't see anything there - I don't know what to do. The advantage is that it is light 24/7, and you would have to be really unlucky for it to rain all the time. A few hours' trip to the mountains should be possible. An interesting fact is that the total rainfall in Lofoten in July is similar to that in Warsaw.
We get VERY nice weather. To the point of exaggeration. The weather is so nice that after taking a picture with your iPhone, you want to rinse your eyes of the colors. We go for a short time, we go to the beach and only on the last day do we see fog. That's good, thanks to that I can honestly say that I used every piece of clothing I had with me.
The weather is wonderful, because the heat there is somehow different – so fresh. One would like to catch this air in bottles and breathe it in Warsaw.
This the sea breeze is like getting under a cold blanket on a warm July night
Logistical difficulties.
The season in Lofoten lasts about 2-3 months. As you can imagine, it can be quite tight in key places. Accommodation is also not the best. As an example, I can give you a situation when we reach a place in Ramberg that we had miraculously booked a few hours earlier. A guy is standing next to me, asking about a place to pitch a tent. The lady smiles pleasantly, standing behind a sign saying "NO TENT PLACES" and explains that there is no chance, neither here nor in the nearby campsites - "try in towns 30-40 km away". How did it happen that we managed to get accommodation on Booking overnight? No one knows that except me. The answer is more or less the same as the question: "why did the sun shine for a week".
The biggest problem, as always, is buying a ticket for bikes on connecting flights in Star Alliance. When flying "there" - we have it paid for, but not for the return journey and there is no chance of doing so, despite spending almost an hour on the phone.
However, we are at 1:1 with the system. On the one hand, we manage not to pay for transporting bikes on the way back (so we have 4x hand luggage, 4x registered luggage, 4x bicycle) – despite our best efforts. On the other hand, during the transfer in Oslo we have to collect the bikes and check them in again, which turns out to be impossible. The same bikes taken on one ticket, bought on one website, can weigh 32kg in LOT, and 23kg in SAS – our suitcases weigh about 25kg. So we have a joyful shifting at the gates and stuffing them into the hand luggage ahead of us.
A short chapter, because apart from that, we didn't encounter any difficulties. There are no impassable tunnels, many ferries (mostly free), shops, in accommodation we have kitchens or breakfasts, no or very heavy car traffic (depending on the distance to the "Lofoten proper"), but from the safe ones. I would even say that for a true Pole, traffic is as annoying as in the UK. You see a line of campers behind you to the horizon and no one wants to overtake. As Mr. LUC sang:
In front of me tractor Tesla, follow me truck Camper
he's breathing down my neck like a pedophile
The only thing to watch out for is the lack of darkness. Almost every midnight we catch ourselves waiting for the night to come and watching funny animals together on YouTube instead of going to sleep. Here's an important note: just because it's not night doesn't mean there's no night.
It is night, only light, and that means that people sleep and close their houses.
It is also worth adding here that:
If logistics scare someone or they want to ride a light bike and in comfort, I recommend MJPro Tour trips: https://www.mjprotour.com/lofoty
There you also have a ready-made trip plan for fuck up borrowing. However, over time it turns out that it is really difficult to make a clearly different plan, because the roads do not provide many possibilities. We simply shorten it a bit in the context of cycling and extend it in the context of walking. I sincerely recommend trips to Norway that include carrying walking shoes.
I really like the fact that all the participants of the trip think that our next days are carefully planned and that the overnight stays are safe, the walks are pleasant and the shops are planned out.
Warsaw->Oslo->Bodo->Skutvik->Storjord
The day begins like any other vacation, which does not give any hope in terms of potential rest. Wake up at 3 a.m., straighten trees uprooted by the night storm, visit neighbors for things that the storm blew away, travel to Okęcie in a Skoda that bravely accommodated 2 people and 4 suitcases with bikes, flight to Oslo, 4-hour transfer, flight to Bodo, assemble bikes, bunker the suitcases, sprint to the ferry, 50 km bike ride, overnight. An ambitious plan for one day, especially considering that there are seven more after it.
My ideal plan ends around the time we land in Bodo. This airport is somewhere between a Ruch kiosk and a local vegetable stand in terms of useful services – at least when we land. The most difficult part of the trip is usually leaving our suitcases somewhere. Before leaving, I typed out about 10 emails to nearby hotels – the Rwandans were much better at communicating. We have two options: leave them in a paid luggage storage facility, which, according to the Internet, is located at the airport, or take them to the Radisson Blu Hotel, which was the only one to reply that it invites you to use its storage space for free. However, it replied in the style of “Just ask the receptionist tomorrow and he will show you the luggage room.” – I’ve seen memes based on Grey’s Shades and I’m afraid of the receptionist showing me his luggage room. So we decide on the first option, rich!
The option seems very good, if not for the fact that the airport is completely empty and consists of inactive stands. Only a lady from one, single shop shows us a hidden window under the stairs, on which we have to knock and keep our fingers crossed. The window opens and the nice head informs us that of course it is possible - the price is fixed per "piece of luggage". No matter how we produce, we do not manage to make one piece out of four suitcases - so we end up with two. So we pay twice 320 PLN for a week of storage.
Then, just folding the bikes and a trip to the Bodo-Skutvik ferry, which runs once a day, only in season, and doesn't take cars. We bravely bought tickets in advance on https://www.reisnordland.no/. Bravely, because the landing was scheduled for 3:30 p.m. and the ferry was at 6 p.m. To give you an idea of the size of Bodo and its airport, Google Maps says that cycling from the arrivals hall, through the city center, to the port takes… 5 minutes. We make it with plenty of time. All we can do is focus on not puking for the next two hours.
I really like to plan my trip from the comfort of my desk at home. Technically, there is complete time comfort. The ferry arrives at 8:00 p.m., check-in at the hotel ends at 10:00 p.m., and we have 50 km to cover. Some doubts arise when it turns out that before we leave the ferry it is already 8:18 p.m. and Katarzyna has half of her gears not working.
The biggest lie is the flat profile of the route,
because the things that appear completely flat in Komoot or Strava generate about 1000m of elevation gain for every 100km. It may not seem much, but these are the worst bikepacking hills – 10-30 meters. I wrote about it on the occasion Bilbao, the bike immediately loses speed and before you switch to riding uphill, you're riding downhill again. And then, unexpectedly, there's a 160-meter climb at the very end. Here comes the second lie: most hotels clearly state that check-in ends at 10 p.m., but then you get a message that it's actually 11 p.m. (maybe in the season). But even that shouldn't be a problem, because usually all you have to do is scribble a message and they'll leave the keys somewhere. You get to the hotel at 10:45 p.m. with a safe 15-minute reserve.
Tysfjord Hotel, for which we pay 234 PLN is excellent, because not only is it located next to the 24-hour Joker (a combination of a self-service Żabka-nano with a 7-Eleven offering a microwave, cutlery and tables), but there is also breakfast, which in my understanding of Norway should cost at least half the price of accommodation. I will only mention, for example, unlimited salmon. We go to bed. Well, we go, because Katarzyna struggles with the derailleur between midnight and 1:00. I decide to learn how to use a bike in the future, because for years she has been limited to the phone Velo Warsaw and a request for confirmation that "I will survive with such a defect". I am sure that one day Kamil will kill me for a message like "You, I am in the middle of nowhere in Africa, my drum is not turning, what should I do? Give it to me quickly, because there are lions and people with guns here".
If you’ve come here to read about cycling in Norway (I suspect there are better places for that), I’ll just say that it’s a beautiful day. From the views from the plane, to the views from the ferry (you’re always sailing along the mainland), to the bike route, to the location of the hotel, which, together with its surroundings, looks like it’s been taken straight from “Northern Exposure”. They may not be the impressive fjords we see in the following days, but the compensation is the awareness that there are no tourists in sight. Maybe it’s the time of day – never mind.
Storjord->Lødingen->Stokmarknes
We eat breakfast slowly, not sure how many shops await us that day. It's hard for me to get used to the fact that we don't have to hurry anywhere, because there's no such thing as day and night. At the 6th kilometer, we have a ferry crossing, about which we don't know much except that the ferries sail in two directions and we'd really like to get to the right one. The choice is made a bit easier by the fact that the ferry is downhill and when we appear at the top, we see that its hatch is starting to close and is getting ready to sail away. The staff notices us and reverses the closure. It would be stupid not to take advantage and we rush downhill straight onto the deck, with the exact time of departure to the minute.
This is THE ferry. To our surprise, no one wants tickets, because it turns out that during the entire trip, we will pay only once - for the first, seasonal, express. Even the 4-hour ferry from Bodo to Lofoten (Moskens) is free for cyclists. If you smell onions, I answer - yes, I imagine 2 ferry rides as a free night spent in warmth and relative comfort.
The temperature that day ranges from 27°C at noon to 17°C in the evening. To say it's nice is an understatement. I'll just mention that it's Sunday, so we can even see Norwegians sunbathing and swimming in the sea - I admit the possibility of my envy as I feel my nose getting redder and redder from the sun.
From the guidebook's interesting facts, we stop in Sortland, known as the bluest of Norwegian towns. If I hadn't read this, I probably wouldn't have noticed. We're more happy that we can stand in an open shop (which isn't necessarily easy on Sunday) and sit on a bench by the port. We also discover that all sweet drinks are sweeter than they should be, and from that day on we avoid them as effectively as liquorice jellies. By the way, I book an evening stay in: Vesterålen Kysthotell (290 PLN / person) – this is a classic, red fishing cottage: 100% atmosphere.
I will say this diplomatically: the day starts off very nicely, and then gets better with every kilometer. Towards the end, there is a small threat related to the lack of shops, and we resign ourselves to hunting for gas stations (just to survive until morning, when they will serve us breakfast). However, it turns out that right next to the hotel there is a ship that serves as restaurant. It's true that it's closed on Sundays (as well as on Mondays and Tuesdays, and only 18-22 on other days), but the World Cup finals are happening, and we arrive just as they're happening. The entire neighborhood rushes into the restaurant, about 10 people, 3 of whom are children looking at their phones. We pay about 100zł for a main course, and it's enough to fill you up. I'm satisfied.
In the evening I discover that this was Katarzyna's 3rd longest ride in her life. Then I also learn that she has never ridden with bags in her life, and she only recently learned to ride in SPDs. In my head I recall the multi-threaded pre-departure musings of people who dissect each trip into its individual parts and analyze exactly what bag they need to buy to survive.
Our travel form is generally very different - but it doesn't matter much, as always. That day, "movement time" is 6 hours, and "trip time" 10 hours. Assuming that the average difference between the fastest and slowest participant of the trip would be 5 km/h, which is a very serious result when traveling with luggage, it would still be a maximum of 90 minutes - on a daily scale: negligible, especially considering the total time of stops each day intended for looking into the distance.
Stokmarknes->Delpsaksla->Svolvær
This is a breakthrough day for several reasons. First, we start combining walks with bike rides. Second, we end in the city that technically begins Lofoten. Third, that day we discover that there are epic trips to observe orcas and other large mammals relatively nearby – one of the posters reminds us of this (and in terms of the number of animals we meet, Lofoten takes the honorable, last place on the blog). Only now, while writing the entry, did I read that this is a winter activity. After Thursday: that day they will start pulling their calves and they will not stop.
We start with a trip to the ferry – not very well timed, because when I set off, it turns out that we have well over 2 hours for 27 kilometres. But it’s a good thing, because on the way we turn off, somewhat by accident, to the beach. I haven’t seen many better beaches in my life, and there have been quite a few. We also have time for a leisurely shop in the town from which the ferry departs.
Next, we have to pass through Morfjord, Grunnførfjord and some other fjords, each of which is better and better. We decide to see the latter from the beginning, using a previously planned walking route. We attach our bikes to a nearby tree and start climbing from sea level to 426 meters, thanks to which the route profile resembles my trips from home to Góra Kalwaria. At the top, Catherine is eating a tomato.. The ascent is not technically difficult, but after the descent, some 150 minutes later, our knees move in more planes.
Then only 20 kilometers on completely magical roads and we end up on the main road leading through Lofoten: E10. Generally, the road network here looks like this: there is E10, and from it either small loops or dead ends. It is not hard to guess that all the campers in the world drive on it. This way and that. However you spell it.
It’s also the moment when I first start to doubt Lofoten – if that’s how it’s going to be, the views won’t matter. Even if the line of cars behind you isn’t particularly bothersome, the awareness of it takes away all the joy. But nothing can change my assessment of the day from “excellent.”
We are in Svolvær – a city considered the capital of Lofoten. Strong words for something inhabited by about 5,000 people, but in fact – I couldn’t find any larger cities. For an overnight stay in a very perfect basement (a large apartment with a separate entrance) with a beautiful name: Innholdsrik og koselig leilighet i Svolvær Lofoten we pay 295zł each. I book it spontaneously from the ferry starting the day. All we have left is until midnight (or maybe half a day or its turn) to watch people's misfortunes together on the internet accompanied by muscles that move by themselves after walking. It takes us over 10 hours to cover a total of 104 kilometers.
Svolvær->Djevelporten->Fløya->Stamsund
What is best for tired legs? Another effort – then it turns out that they didn't hurt at all before.
The city is dominated by 3 peaks, each about 600 meters high. They are close enough that we can set off on foot and leave our bikes attached to some metal plate in the garden. I drew a beautiful route – along all 3, but being a young, sensible person, I spontaneously shortened it to one when leaving in the morning. It seems like a pretty good idea in retrospect. Especially being enriched by knowledge that the less than 9 km walk took us almost 5 hours. Does it have something to do with the fact that I absolutely wanted to make a loop, and not go up and down stairs like almost all tourists? Maybe. Could the technical difficulties of the ascent have been suggested to us by the rope hanging from the forest, which started the “trail”? It is also possible. I will say this: it was steep and not necessarily easy. For most of the route I keep a safe distance from the girls. I am afraid of the headlines “Polish tourist found on the trail, stabbed to death with sticks”. At the top, Catherine is eating a tomato..
It doesn't matter, of course, the view from the top of Floya and the classic photo of Djevelporten, for which there was quite a queue, are worth it. Although when at 4 pm we were already sitting by the shop in the city and were about to start the cycling part, we probably weren't so sure about it. I book a place to sleep, in the optimal version, 110 km away and start calculating whether we'll make it to check-in, which is supposedly until 22:00. In normal conditions, 6 hours for 110 km doesn't sound like a challenge - even on a Brompton. But here it's different.
It's dramatically bad. Exactly as I predicted the previous day, but with more empty legs and a head exhausted from the sun. We alternate between the main road and the undulating bike path running alongside it. Around the 30th kilometer we turn off for Henningsvær. If you turn on the beautiful YouTube videos about Lofoten, these are the islands connected by bridges, with mountains in the background. I absolutely hate judging anything based on drone photos. Traffic, narrow road, incredible crowds and a town that looks decidedly worse than any I've encountered before. Even the blue one.
I can't help it, it's ugly and poor.
It's much worse than on Atlantic Road. Expectations were high, but it's only nice in pictures. At that moment I would have given it a rating of 2/10 - especially in the context of the whole trip. It reminds me of how pathological it would be for me to have a car vacation between the "Top 10 places you have to see in Lofoten"
When I plan to write off the cycling part of the day and we have cut even 30 kilometers from the total distance (because the shop next to the accommodation is open until 10 p.m., and they won't wait with it - we end the day with 84 kilometers done in over 5 hours). The views on Google Street View say that this is a mistake, but at the time it made no difference.
But this is Norway – it’s never bad in Norway (it can be wet and cold at best). At 46 km we leave the main road to Skifjord (yes, there is a slope there), the situation changes dramatically. Zero traffic, by the “end of the day” it’s already golden hour, perfect views. I dare say that despite the lack of impressive fjords, as a whole, this is the most pleasant road we’ve ever driven – for several dozen kilometres.
We sleep in a multi-room Live Lofoten Fishermen's Cabins for 230zł per head, which as the name suggests is a Lofoten fisherman's cottage - again. This time, however, a bit less fancy than the previous one, and more working-class – at least from the outside. There’s even a big freezer for fish and a bunk bed in one of the four rooms.
Stamsund->Ramberg
Let's just say that this is not the day with the best-designed route in the history of bikepacking. I am almost certain that the group only realizes that we are repeating some sections when we cover them for the third time. On the other hand, this is another of the slowest days in the world, because in over 10 hours of the trip we cover less than 130 km. This is a day with the potential for disaster, if I was riding in a group that does not like to say "this is probably not a good idea". But this is not that group, so there is no threat to life. The route is divided into excellent sections connected by the famous E10 through road, which is still as fun as riding from Jabłonna to Nowy Dwór.
It doesn't matter, we come across Hauklandstranda and Uttakleiv strand. If there was anything I hadn't imagined in Lofoten two weeks earlier, it was this. Lots of campers by the beach, sunbathers on the golden sand and people swimming in the sea. We break the short, road loop to sit on the beach and even go into the water. To make things more fun, Sylwia is caught by a crab and we don't really know what to do with it. It remains to wait whether it will get bored and leave, or whether her immobile leg will disappear into the sand that is sucking it in. An additional attraction are the sheep that come to take a shit in the middle of our small beach and then start sunbathing behind a screen made of rocks. Catherine eats a tomato.
The next stop is Unstad Arctic Surf – a surfing base that, together with its surroundings, resembles the themes of Portugal, California or Hawaii. It is also not necessarily a place I would expect to find above the Arctic Circle. Komoot and the banner by the road clearly state that the best cinnamon buns in the world are there, so we take a break. For 4 coffees and four of the best cinnamon buns in the world (including one even better – the best) we pay 273 PLN. A lot, but Instagram claims that this is currently the same price in Warsaw cafes that do not consider themselves the best in the world. Are cinnamon buns really the best? If this was the first pub in 16 hours and your stomach is already glued to your spine – probably yes. Otherwise, it is normal, imperceptibly better than in local grocers. What's more, instead of ordering the “world's best cinnamon bun” like a human, I order an improved version. The cinnamon bun is crushed and tossed in vanilla sauce and served in a glass. It tastes like dissolved cane sugar.
Further on, we are in for a slight disappointment, because trying to get around a small peninsula with a bike, it turns out that it is not necessarily feasible. Well, it is probably feasible, considering the old maxim "most of the trip must return home alive", but I have the impression that this time it does not apply. We have to go back, because the walking route may be there, but the fear of the bike falling into the sea with luggage still wins. So we stick to the version that this blind bounce is on purpose - so that in the future we can say that the best cinnamon roll in the world is not the best at all.
We end the day by driving further towards the end of Lofoten on the unfortunate E10 road. With each kilometre it gets a little better. Maybe it's because of the approaching evening, maybe because more campers are pulling into the parking lot. I booked accommodation the day before, sensing the potential for disaster - it's a good move. The campsites are packed to the ceiling. When I pick up the keys to Ramberg Gjestegård (our most expensive accommodation: 322 PLN/person), which borders the campsite, I see more people bouncing off the “no places” sign, with no hope for any alternatives. How it happened that we managed to score a 60-meter apartment with a view of the beach and the sea, I still don’t know.
Ramberg->Kvalvika->Reinebringen->Sørvågen
If you think we were moving slowly the previous days, look at this: less than 50 kilometers in over 9 hours. To also illustrate the condition of our legs, I will add that we leave the accommodation a few minutes before the end of the "hotel day", which lasted until 11:00. The plan is very simple: bike to the beach, bike again, take the stairs to see the view and bike to the end of Lofoten.
#define walk
The walk is 8 kilometers long and from that day on I am afraid to use that word. It turns out that not everyone understands "walking to the beach" as climbing rocks for over 3 hours. It would probably be a bit easier if we set off on the trail that all normal people go. The only problem is that they also return on the same trail, and we prefer the loop. I mean, now I am not sure if we would still prefer it. It reminds me of the walk in Svolvær.
Kvalvika Beach is a local obvious, so from the moment our trail (which later turns out not to be a trail) connects with the main one, there are clearly more people. It doesn't interfere in any way. Getting there and then leaving the beach is not trivial, and the beach itself is not significantly better than other beaches we've already seen. Of course, it doesn't change the fact that it's worth it. We leave our bikes, as usual, tied to a pole. Catherine eats a tomato.
We finish the “walk” (I’m still looking around for danger as I say this word) 4.5 hours after we started the trip and I’m a little afraid to mention that 20km further on we have a walk up the steps to the viewpoint.
The kilometer walk to Reinebringen is probably the most hackneyed place in Lofoten. A kilometer doesn't sound particularly bad for the legs either, although the situation is slightly changed by the fact that you have to climb 500 meters thanks to about 1,900 steps. In short, I'll say this: it's not necessarily very easy, or lonely, but it's worth it. Besides, I don't see any excuse for someone driving just a few meters from the start of this climb and deciding to ignore it. At the top, Catherine is eating a tomato..
The evening is another multi-room house, located by a tiny port for PLN 300 per person: Stations – Service Stations. He lacks absolutely nothing, and the shops are close by. Even though we go there with enough time, when we leave we meet the owner, who effectively tries to make it difficult with a story about his life. About a wonderful Pole who works for him and lives in this house, about going away to Gran Canaria for the entire winter, about having to buy an electric car so he could overtake campers, because he is always in a hurry everywhere (except for probably that one, only evening) - besides, when you live at the end of the world, in the largest town in the area (440 inhabitants), life is certainly very busy. He also tells us that he once managed to climb two nearby hills, including the one we are going to the next day. He probably does not sense the subtle absurdity of showing us the only place in the area that you can reach by foot for a beautiful walk and adding that he was there once.
Sørvågen->Munkebu->Bodø
The last full day of my stay. Around 8:20 I open my eyes for the first time, notice the rain outside the window and go back to sleep. When I wake up again, there is no trace of it, but there are also no nearby mountains. This does not bother us at all, because we have already seen what there was to see and all that is left is to climb to the Munken peak. The fact that it is not so vulgarly beautiful can be treated as an advantage with a bit of will. The trip, starting almost under the house, takes us almost 5.5 hours. The views are quite good, until the moment when everything disappears and we start the return. On the way there were some rocks, some lakes, a few chains to pull ourselves up and a large waterfall. We reach a cottage in the middle of nowhere, which, as it turns out, is available for rent on Booking. Catherine eats a tomato. I'm pretty sure that if it weren't for the GPS on our phone, we'd still be walking there today, fully convinced that we were going back the same way we came.
All that's left for us to do is drive a few kilometers to a town that may not have much, but has a funny name: Å. I think that being called Hop and living in Å would be pretty cool. We spend 4 evening hours on the free ferry to Bodø. We sleep in Zefyr Hotel for 246 PLN/head. The hotel bans perfumes, which suits us very well after a week of riding. I also like the surprise of the lady at the reception when I ask where to put the bikes – they will fit in the rooms on the second floor. Judging by the people walking in the corridor with empty boxes – we are not the only ones.
Bodo->Oslo->Warsaw
If you think that planning a day in Bodø for walking and shopping is a good idea, let me dissuade you. Because it is supposedly the European capital of culture in 2024, but it takes us about an hour to explore it thoroughly and we end up with nothing in terms of shopping. Well, maybe ice cream from the grocery store. In the afternoon, we retrieve our suitcases from the airport storage room, assemble our bikes and spend time sitting on a bench in front of the terminal. A beautiful thing.
Do I recommend it?
Well, I don't know. I have a feeling that Norway can offer much stronger cycling experiences. Just look at old posts, for example: this. The climbs are much bigger, the feeling of emptiness is much more serious, the mountains are much higher… and the potential for death is many times greater. It is simply more difficult in every way. Lofoten offers something different, something more connected with vacation and pleasure. I am new to this topic, but I think I will start to appreciate it too.
