With my Travel Bike in Norway

After a quite challenging and busy summer term in university it was time to leave everyday life to experience another adventure. At least that was what i was thinking and  since i have not had planned anything until the end of July i needed to be spontaneous. My list with travel destinations was still full, but most of them are far away. That was a conflict since i recently bought a travel bike (Specialized AWOL), which definitely should be become part of the trip. Thus a far away destination did not make sense. But how are you able to experience an adventure if you are not going far away? … some people need to be part of expeditions, climb summits in alpine style and others just need to be in a foreign country. But for me an adventure is already beginning if i do not know what will happen the next day and luckily i slipped into this situation on the second day of my journey, even before i reached the border of my travel country. I was forced to change my plans, let me tell you what happened! 😉

But let me start with the beginning. Since my exchange semester in Sweden i always wanted to visit Norway. But back during that time i had deadlines in school which did not make it possible for me to go there. That was back in 2013. Since then i have seen the area around Tromsø in winter time but never had the chance to see the southern part. I took a chance and booked a train to the northern coast of Denmark. Unfortunately i realized that comfortable connections with a bicycle are not possible if you are as spontaneous as i am :D. My trip started three days after booking and consisted of 10 different regional trains, one Intercity and four hours of waiting in the beautiful main station of Bremen (be careful: sarcasm) and took 23 hours.

Since this connection was quite interesting, i decided to not book the ferry to Songesand, Norway yet. The chances of missing a connecting train were to high. But against all expectations all trains were on time and i arrived to Hirtshals on schedule. I met Mona and Markus in the last train who were also going to Norway with their bicycles. They had the same worries of missing the ferry and did also decide not to book ferry tickets yet. We cycles to the ferry office and wanted to by ticket which now costed 60€ more than online. That was not an option for me. Luckily we could use the Wifi of the office and decided to take a night ferry to Stavanger instead of going to Songesand. For 30€ per person that was alright. This changed my plan completely since i wanted to cycle from Songesand to Kjeragbolten and now ended up in Stavanger. The adventure was already on its way!

Arriving at Stavanger we took another small ferry and went to Lysebotn, were we started the hike to Kjeragbolten the same day. Finally my bicycle ride started there and ended 5 days later in Bergen. You can find the ride summarized in statistics in the following table.

You can see that beautiful Norway is quite mountainous. Every hill your are climbing is sending you down the entire way right after being on top. It can be really frustrating but on the other hand you have a nice and long (and fast) downhill section after every climb which of course is a lot of fun. The stated elevation is just about uphills and the moving time is the real riding time without any breaks. I was surprised that these numbers are quite big. It did not feel like it, because i had the flow feeling pretty much every day.

Close to the Kjeragbolten i met highliners, who had set up a really impressive highline. That was a perfect chance for shooting pictures and since these guys have been so nice, i was also able to give it a try. Thanks for renting me a climbing belt and thanks for the opportunity, Patrick, Lisa, Florian and all others! Unfortunately i was not able to stand up. My psyche was to much influenced by the exposure 1000 meters above the Lysefjord. Have a look at I believe I can Fly of the Flying Frenchies in order to get a feeling for it.

During my travel i met Shirin. She made a low-cost bicycle trip starting at the North Cape, the most northern point of Norway. Her bicycle was standing in front of a Café and i was stopping by. She told me her story about her trip. That was really inspiring and showed me that you basically do not need much for travelling except for a good portion of motivation. Have a look at Shirin’s Blog or Facebook! The waiter in the restaurant was asking me whether i want to eat something but i told him that i did not have the money for it. At that moment another couple left the restaurant with leftovers on their plates and i was asking him whether i could eat the rest. At first he was surprised but he said yes. Some moments later he came with a plate of three pizza slices sat down at our table and said: „Here, that’s for you, but now you’ve to tell me your stories.“ Grace of charity at its best … from a guy who came from Eritrea. Thanks, man! Shirin was talking about her trip but he did not know the North Cape, until we showed him on the map. He flipped out and could not believe it. A really funny moment!

I met a whole bunch of other nice people but writing down every story would be too much for this blog post. But anyway: thanks to Mona and Markus for the great fun, thanks to Patrick, Lisa and Florian for the highline session, thanks to Wir and Niels for the lift down the mountain, thanks to the German family from Berlin for sharing barbecue with me, thanks to Eléna and Tom for sharing tea time with me, thanks to Tonette and Paul for the place on the couch, the shower and the really tasty dinner and thanks for all the small encounters along the way. Now, let’s start with some pictures! Your René.

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