Ride trip
Here's the first few days of our trip. A bit word and photo heavy.
Sorry
Still, this might work if you are an insomniac
Bike Trip Around Sweden and Norway 2-17 June 2013.
Sunday 2nd June, 2013.
Well, I rose early and with bike packed the previous night, headed off onto the A14 to catch my Harwich to Hook ferry which was due to sail at 10:00 and arrive at the Hook at 18:00 (local).
The day before I had a kit crisis moment. I checked the weather for Norway and Sweden and it was saying 27 C at Narvik and 30 at Trondheim. With that in mind I removed a fleece and spare trousers from my panniers. Oh how the gods must have laughed !!! More of this later ………
Whilst waiting for the ferry, a guy on a sports bike pulled up behind me. I waved at him and he rolled forwards and we proceeded to chat about this and that as have countless bikers before and yet to come.
He was a Brit, living in the States and who was over for a trip home to the UK but borrowing his brothers’s bike and clothing in order to visit a Brit living in Arnhem whom he hadn’t seen for 8 years. Very nice bloke. He lives in Northern Cal and pilots a helicopter for an emergency response company and covers Yellowstone National Park for his sins. Been in the States for 15 years, he went to get his pilot’s licence and stayed – eventually marrying a Yanks and having a daughter out there. They were due to head over the following week. If any Essex Tossers knew of Mansley’s Motorcycles, Richard was one of the sons who ran it- at least until he left for the States that 15 years earlier. I think he said his brother had recently sold the business but that it was still operating with new owners. We spent the entire crossing having a chinwag. Good company. As we were both heading to Arnhem and I had a SatNav, he said he would follow me til we left the Hook behind. Had he or I known of the Gremlins in the Zumo, he would have had sense to have left me angry and bewildered at the quayside !!
It was certainly hot and sunny when we left Blighty.
Exiting the ferry, I selected route #1 on the Zumo and expected it to point me in the general direction that everyone else was going ……….. oh, no. Sent us down a small side street and then left twice down residential streets to join up with others we had seen on the ferry behind us !!
We both stopped for fuel and then wished each other a safe journey and made our ways separately.
My SatNav (Zumo 550) which is normally a reliable as a very reliable thing and which I used to more or less good effect when touring France, Italy and Switzerland a couple of years ago decided to play ‘Random roads’ with me. It kept trying to send me back to the ferry in order to take a different route to Arnhem. No ‘re-calculating’. In the end I thought that if I kept heading east then eventually I would see a sign for Arnhem. And I did. I then selected find nearest campground and it proceeded to send me all over the place through lanes that ended with barriers or telling me I was there when there was patently no campground to be found. I checked my MAP and headed to where it indicated a campground should be and ‘Lo’, there was one. My SatNav then proceeded to tell me I had arrived at a campground AFTER I’d arrived. Bollox !!
The campground I sued (sorry, USED ) is called
http://www.campingwarnsborn.nl/en/index.lp It is 10 minutes from the Oesterbeek museum at the Hartenstein Hotel and I planned to visit there the following morning. It’s a great little campground with good amenities, friendly, English speaking staff and a small shop. The showers were good (you need 0.6 euro shower tokens (1 is sufficient for a reasonable shower and I have a spare token if you need one). Had a good kitchenette (outside but covered).
I set the tent for the first time and chilled out and ate the pack-up I had bought with me.
Mileage for the day 272
Monday 3rd June, 2013
The following morning I asked for directions to the museum and was told to turn right then left. This done, I found myself in the middle of Arnhem at Monday rush hour. What the guy should have said was right, straight over the traffic lit crossroads and then at the next main T junction, turn left til you see the hotel on your left hand side. What he should have said, I didn’t know at that time. So, in heavy traffic I turned left and headed out of Arnhem whilst I decided if I really wanted to find the museum that badly.
After a quick check of the time to get to my RV just north of Hamburg and seeing that it was a good 6 hours, I decided I’d save the museum for another day (maybe my return) and headed north with the thought that I didn’t want to get there too late as I knew we were going to have some long days ahead and my mate was getting the overnight train from southern Germany to Hamburg and would be fresher than I was going to be.
The SatNav continued to play up ; sending me to junctions that didn’t in reality exist to connect with roads that were nowhere to be seen. If I’d had a pound for every time I saw ‘re-calculating’ on that display ……. In the end I decided that if I headed to Osnabruck then up to Bremen that that would get me there if not the quickest route, then at least one I knew would work.
Here’s a shot of a VERY pi55ed off me at some service station somewhere. I say somewhere as I had switched off my roaming and so the photos taken don’t have the whole where you took them thing.
In high winds and with generally heavy traffic, that journey was a real bitch. There was the odd bit of rain and ominous looking clouds which didn’t help my mood. This was not helping me to get in the whole holiday groove.
The scenery could have been anywhere in central Europe from the UK to Germany and beyond. Nothing to grab the attention. One saving grace as I neared Hamburg (after realizing that the SatNav had sent me down the A7 south rather than north and losing another half an hour…) was that the skies brightened and it started to feel warm-ish. Hamburg looked like what it is and how many British ports used to look – busy and industrial. The tunnel under the river bought me out in semi surburbia. The SatNav was all for sending me northwards but I realized from having studied Google Earth for the planning that Schnelson was were I ought to get off the motorway and as I got to the end of the slip road, I saw a sign for a campground which lead me to exactly the one I had hoped to find. They’d had rain but the sun was out so humidity climbed as I set my camp. Had a shower and used my hobo stove to brew some water in order to eat the first of the Brit Army rations I had bought with me for the trip in order to save money. Chicken madras. Very tasty too. So tasty that I had a second one. I remember the rations in my day bound you like cement. I found out that modern rations don’t. I didn’t find that out til I’d left the campground and was fully dressed and on the bike and on the road ……. I had a near miss with that !!
For those of you not sure of what a hobo stove is; think IKEA kitchen utensil pot. The one I have has a square cut out of the side of it. I use this two ways. First is with a couple of firelighters in the bottom and then add small branches . The pot sits either on top of the sotve (if it is a bigger one) or inside the stove at a depth in it that is set by pushing tent pegs through the holes to make a base. Second method is to put a Trangia style meths burner in the bottom and pot as first scenario. If you have a por just smaller than the hobo stove, you can nest it in there with the tent pegs for minimum space .
Here’s a photo of the camp and one of the stove in action. No pics of the near miss.
Anyway, the campground was fairly empty – just the usual caravans that seem to either be permanently berthed or seasonally berthed to campgrounds, plus a few Dutch and German RV’s.
I’d made sure I pitched the tent in the shade and settled down to an early night. Slept well and there were no rumblings to indicate the need later for an emergency dump stop.
Following morning I broke camp and let the tent hang over the bike and a hedge to dry it out from the heavy dew there had been earlier.
I was due to meet ‘The German’ (henceforth referred to as TG) at what I thought was 08:40. The RV was a service area 4kms north of where I was staying – Holmoor Ost. What I hadn’t realized was that 08:40 was the time the train was supposed to arrive in Hamburg and not our RV time. I headed out and arrived at 08:00. I then parked up as you first enter the area and waited. And waited. And waited. 9-o’ clock came and went. I was getting desperate to have a dump to the point of thinking I may not get my jacket off in time, let alone braces off and boots off (so that I can get the overtrousers down low enough to have a clear field of fire. I then got a text message from TG saying his train was an hour late and wouldn’t be pulling into the station until 09:40 at best. His ETA shifted to nearer 11. Thank Christ for that ! I ‘ran’ like a poof with my thighs firmly together and JUST made the necessary disrobing in time. The devil is in the details !!
Suitably evacuated, I waited til TG showed up. This be he ……
He hugged and back slapped and then said we ought to get a few miles under our belts before stopping for lunch and having the first of many chinwags. I was only too happy to get away from somewhere people had seen 2 grown men hugging !
We headed up hwy 7 and stopped at the last service station before the Danish border in order to fill up and have a currywurst and chips. Delicious !!
It was now early afternoon and the wind had really picked up. We headed on further north and when we got to Kolding we turned east and towards Odense and then the Copenhagen bridge/tunnel. That was when we really got blown about !! A really strong north easterly that had the bike leaning over and me straining my neck.
You will have to take my word for it that the bridges were impressive. There was no stopping permitted and anyways, it was all I could do to keep upright. Google would probably do the bridges better justice than I ever could anyway.
Over the bridge and into Sweden. No customs of course. We continued on dual carriageway around Malmo and north onto Halmstad. Windy and boring and somewhat tiring riding. At Halmstad we turned north on the single carriageway 26 with our plan being to make it to Tiveden by this evening. We were already feeling that that would be too far and agreed to ride until 8pm and then look for a campground.
The road from Halmstad was lovely. Sweeping bends, clear roads and a nice mix of open pasture with lots of trees. This perfectly suited riding at 55-65 mph and chilling and enjoying the relaxed pace and lack of buffeting we had had for most of the day. In fact, every time we stopped for a chat (roughly every hour), it felt like my whole body was getting an electric shock such was the muscle tension dealing with the wind !
By 8pm we found ourselves going through Smalandsstenar. We saw a sign to a campground and headed to it. Just a few hundred metres from the ‘main’ road we found a lovely, tranquil campground with no tents visible and a dozen or so small wooden huts. The place looked immaculate . We went to the reception to see if it was open – it was that quiet – and happily it was. So we set up out tents and got some rations on the go.
The facilities were very good. Though all we both needed was a shower really. There were a few mossies about but not kamikaze ones. When we arrived we could hear a crowd enjoying themselves and saw we were next to the local football ground where a home match was being played. This made me feel uneasy as not only might it remain noisy into the night, a few fans might think it fun to mess with the visitors in the tents ……… Being as this is Sweden, I shouldn’t have worried. Shortly after we had eaten, the match was over and people disappeared off and we had a nice quiet remainder of the evening.
I slept well on my Thermarest Luxury Map large (note product placement here …). In the morning I went to have a shower and was talked to by some young blond haired lad who was washing a caravan down with a broom. I said to him in English that I didn’t speak Swedish , only English. He then replied that he was Irish and was speaking English !! Turned out he and his dad go to Sweden every summer to tarmac and block pave drives. Imagine finding Irish pykies in Sweden !! I did struggle to understand what the lad from Wexford said – think Brad Pitt in ‘Snatch here – but he seemd a decent enough lad and was impressed with the bikes and said he preferred the yellow and black one so he couldn’t be all bad if he had such impeccable taste !
So, showered and packed (I won that daily race ), we headed out onto the road again and headed northwards, past Gislaved and through a beautifully surfaced and gently sweeping road up to where the 26 met the 40 and turned right towards Jankoping. TG’s stomach got the better of him and he said he wanted to find somewhere for breakfast so we turned of the rather busy 40 into Jankoping and found a MacDonalds where we had some grub.
Then onwards towards Karlsborg. Again as we skirted at a distance a large lake, we rode through pastures and woods reminiscent of parts of Germany. The weather was comfortably warm and dry with bright sunshine as you can see below;
At Karlsborg we halted for a bridge to be raised and lowered and then pulled off the road just past it at a parking area next to the river that empties into the lake. When I had looked at Karlsborg on google earth street view, the photo had been taken in early spring I think as the place looked rather unkempt and drab. Today however, it looked beautiful. Flowers everywhere. People in shirt sleeves and blue skies and shimmering water. We stopped for half an hour to enjoy the view. You have to take time to smell the daisies.
From Karlsborg we headed north, past where we had originally intended to spend our first night. We were looking like we must be at least 8 hours behind our schedule if we wanted to make Nordkapp in 4 days……….
I (as navigator) made the executive decision to head north to Mora on the SatNavs fastest route rather than head north westwards to hit the E45 as southerly as possible. This lead us to travel on main and relatively busy roads. We grabbed some lunch at some retail park and then cracked on.Through Orebro and Koppaberg (the cider maker) . It was getting hot. I was starting to cook inside my Barbour suit (product placement ad’ again) Ventilation was one thing the Barbour lacked . Later I would find that after 2 hours in heavy rain it also lacked waterproofedness !!
We arrived in Mora around 7pm and headed to the municipal campground on the far side of the town to where we entered. It was a large campground as befitted a large (by Swedish standards) campsite. There were a few tents, lots of campervans and a corner of huts of various sizes and all looking like they were vintage huts that had been moved to the site and perched precariously on strategically placed boulders for foundations. We decided a hut might be a laugh and got a 4 berth one for the 2 of us as we were told that was all that was left available. Apart from a few German bikers across the way, we never saw anyone else near the huts …………..
This is our hut
Again the facilities were great. Other than the clothing washing section where some BIG lady had done her washing and left her big knickers right where I had to stand at the sink to wash my skivvies. Not being a knicker sniffer, I made sure no-one was looking and moved them away from me. I resisted the temptation to wipe my arse with them and leave her wondering how she’s got skid marks on her newly washed knickers. That took a lot of self control !!
TG saw when we checked in that there was a lake and you could buy a 24 hour licence to fish it. As he’d bought a fly rod with him he decided to head off to the lake to catch dinner. I wandered over after half an hour to the unsurprised of him having caught nothing. He tried to teach me how to cast but realized that teaching someone to do something they have no interest in is a losing battle and so I left him fishing and got some rations ready for our dinner.
I prepared our food in the kitchen area. We had it to ourselves as most were in campervans I suppose and just needed to wash up rather than cook in the building. I think we had the chicken curry and very nice it was too. Just the one each this time though !! That, along with some rat pack desserts and some smoked Spanish ham, we were well stuffed.
Later on in the evening and in response to TG’s asking me how far behind we were, I totaled up our mileages for each day along with average speeds in order to see how we could make up time. It became quickly obvious that we were never going to catch up . Nor was it likely we could manage to get to Nordkapp and make time up after. Not without turning the trip into a ride-a-thon. We were supposed to ride 1000 for each of the next 2 days. Our best day so far had been 600 ! We decided to head north as planned to Storuman and see how things looked from there. We weren’t even sure we could make that place based on a daily overall average of 40kph. 60 kph was our moving average but with breaks it soon drops down. Still, we were enjoying ourselves !
Daily mileage 351
Av speed ?
Av mpg ?
Up and packed first again in the morning. It became apparent why too. TG had bought a LOT of kit. Because there was so much, there was something he needed every evening in each pannier, the top box plus the 3 other bags he had crammed full of ‘stuff’. He also lacked my confidence that what was left in the panniers on my bike would still be there in the morning. Happily I was proved right on that score
Heading off and mindful of being behind schedule, we didn’t have much of a look around Mora. It seemed rather like a French town; an odd mix of residential, leisure and industrial that seemed mixed with no logic. Perhaps I’m being harsh.
The E45 turned out to be a revelation. Within 15kms of leaving Mora, the road became a rather small but beautifully surfaced road that dipped and rose, twisted and turned and took us initially onto high ground and then down again to run through small villages and clusters of houses along lakes that were remote enough from larger centres as to make you wonder what these folk did for a living. Does everyone in Sweden write ?
Here is a typical lake and adjoining rest area. We brewed up some tea and lounged around a bit.
As evening drew in, we stopped and agreed that we wouldn’t make Storuman tonight and that we would stop at the next decent looking campground.
This turned out to be at Lovberg. A lovely small and ok facilitied campground that was open for the first day this season. This place overlooked a large lake which had very dark brown brackish water and a ‘beach’ area where the meltwaters had receeded and left a brown silt.
Looking back to the camping area:
TG decided to have another go at catching dinner. I prepared the rations ! After a couple of hours, TG returned – empty handed – to find dinner already on the go.
We now found ourselves if not in the land of the midnight sun just yet, then in the land of constant daylight.
The view from my tent:
We had free firewood and kept the fire going late – despite it being warm weather – as it kept the mossies down and jus t because we could
We made the decision that Nordkapp wasn’t an option. We should have been up past Gallivare by now and we were not making the distances we’ve each made on other tours elsewhere in Europe. You really do need 3-4 weeks to go all the way up and still have an enjoyable trip by our definition of having a good time.
Daily mileage 295 miles
Av speed 51 mph
Av mpg 57
We plumped on heading to Storuman, heading from their over to Mo-I-Rana and up north of the Arctic Circle for a bit and then back down through the Norwegian coastal roads.
I promise the best and most eventful is yet to come. I just need to find a way of telling the story in fewer words.
I see it as paying back for the pleasure i've had reading other people's trip reports. Where I've enjoyed them i have said so and where i haven't i have kept schtum .
I'll have to finish it now just because of your comment 
