Well we’ve stopped for the night so I might as well expand a little on what the hell we’ve done since we left home for the second time last Sunday evening.
Monday morning saw us at the Hook again but it was considerably cooler and we had to put up with intermittent rain all day after deciding to just go for it and get to where we could book the catch a ferry to Norway on Tuesday morning. We played my normal game of minimal stops but stick to below 80mph and get there without too much drama. I still hate the traffic in the roadworks around Hamburg but we found a relatively cheap place to stop for the night midway between Frederikshavn and Hirtshals where we could decide what to do the next day. That was the end of the rain
We decided that Hirtshals to Larvik was a good idea so got there after last check in at 8am but we weren’t the last ones so no drama
We set our sights on Hamar and once past Oslo we stopped and booked a hotel which was actually ideal for the less concerned biker mate on tour and we simply dumped the bikes in a car par 100 yards away and forgot about them. We had our pants pulled down on the price of beers but the hotel was really nice so who cares in the greater scheme of things?
Wednesday we set off north and took the R3 rather than the E6 because it’s marginally quieter and just rode all day with the only stops being for fuel rather than to take photos. Once past Trondheim we pulled over, picked a hotel and it was job done. Secure parking was forgotten and we yet again abandoned the bikes out the front trusting the Norwegian public not to give a shit about two British bikes. They didn’t though the town seemed to be full of shite old cars being carted around roundabouts at speed, quad bikes doing doughnuts and bikes with riders who seemed to have forgotten their crash helmets tearing up and down the road outside our restaurant of choice. I like that kind of thing
Thursday was yet another sunny day but we had to suffer long roadworks all the way to Mosjøen and it seems that neither Norwegian nor German drivers like bikes filtering to the front of a 2 mile queue where it went to single direction traffic control,Ed by someone with a radio and a flag.tough shit kids
We decided to stop in Mo i Rana but went past it to check out the local race circuit and found there’s a meeting this weekend. Bonus! The hotel was ok at best with the room being a bit small but we actually parked on the owners drive out of the way a bit. Dinner was possibly the worst Indian food either of us have ever had so we went on a bit of a beer binge and got to bed after 1am
Friday we rode to the Arctic Circle centre, took a couple of photos, had a coffee and turned back south to watch bike racing. Well we’d missed out on the German MotoGP so we were owed one. Crash helmets and jackets were dumped on the bikes because it appeared that’s what everyone else was doing and shock/horror, they were there when we got back.
There’s a small museum consisting of shite old bikes and WWII memorabilia on the E6 opposite where you turn off for the circuit so we had a wander round there and grabbed a free coffee while we were at it.
Friday night we decided to try the local Chinese restaurant in Mo i Rana and while a marked improvement on the Indian it wasn’t what I’d describe as good but it was a dinner and we retired about midnight after more beer consumption.
Today, well we decided to go through Sweden to miss the roadworks then cut back about 100 miles north of Trondheim. Oh dear, the KTM had a bit of a lie down after I decided I needed to stop to do my jacket up properly due to low cloud making it a bit damp & cold. Basically I stopped on a loose surface facing downhill, put my left foot on the floor, right foot on the brake and as I started to zip my jacket up my left foot slipped and I stepped off. The broken clutch lever is a nuisance but I filed the sharp edges off, wrapped some self amalgamating tape over the end and threw the broken hand guard in a bin
We’ve now stopped in the same hotel we used on the way north and that’s it for the day. The plan had been to stop and take photos along the way today but it was a lot cooler so we sacked that idea and rode 300 miles instead.
We’re probably going to visit the Troll Wall tomorrow then take a bit of a view regarding weather and either stay west and loop round the coast or head east and then south through Sweden, catch the short ferry crossing from Helsingborg then take a steady ride down through Denmark & Germany aiming to be at Chimay for the races next weekend.
I’ll use Tapatalk to post photos at some point