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Looks nice. Anyone been? How are the logistics? How bad are the mozzies?
It is. Not far north but toured Norway many times. Distances are big but not as big as the distorted projection of an Atlas would have you believe. Getting around is easy as roads are great, traffic light, and speed limits strictly enforced @ 50 so you never get cars going too fast or too slow. Tolls can all be sorted in advance via ANPR. fuel is no more expensive than the UK (or it wasn't last time I went). Mozzies can be bad at some times of year, think Scotland but worse 🙂
Or are you thinking of cycle touring rather than motorised?
did a 2 week tour from Tromso. was bloody amazing.
flew from manchester via SAS. you dont even need to box your bike
flew manchester-oslo then oslo -tromso
toured the length of the Lofoten islands right down to Reine ( A )
then ferry back to Bodo.
the bodo-oslo oslo-manchester.
went 1st 2 weeks in june. no mozzies at all. 2 weeks of sunshine, but were told all the trip that we could have had 2 weeks riding into a grey wall.
beer and food eating out is mega dear. supermarkets were ok. we bought a lot of stuff to eat straight from the packaging.
we are going back once travel is easier regardless of the price. there a 3 touring routes down through lofoten using different islands and small ferries and tunnels and bridges.
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Have a look at the Matthew Norway YouTube channel - he has done loads of videos on various tours /routes
Some decent information on this channel (even if there's not much useful info for you it's bloody inspiring):
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCglGlEAlo8XpGlh58E5K2lw/featured
Edit: beaten to it by dawson
Or are you thinking of cycle touring rather than motorised?
This is the bike forum :). Definitely cycling.
How's the off-road/gravel?
Many years ago I spent a few weeks up in Hardangervidda in the summer hiking. Coming from Scotland we thought we could handle the mozzies - no f’in chance, they’d bite you through clothing despite covering every inch of flesh. I also used to go there on business and glad I was on expenses - there’s a reason why many hotel rooms there have a small kitchen. If you can afford to go, there are some beautiful places.
I rode Bergen to Geirangerfjord to Nordfjord and boat back to Bergen over about 3 weeks when I was a student.
Great trip. Mainly camped, some campsites and some wild. Camping at roadside picnic places is no problem and lots have toilets and taps so used them a couple of times.
Some road tunnels still had old lanes of variable quality bypassing them (this was over 25 years ago may be gone now although some were marked as bike routes).
Don't remember big midge problems. I had a lucky 3 weeks of mainly dry weather in September. Some of the hills are big, roads were mainly fairly quiet.
Also see link below for inspiration:
https://bikepacking.com/plog/lost-captures-film/
Check on where the wolves live. One may have to pedal at 15mph for a long while to shake them if they're hungry.
I also remember my mate and I deciding after a few days that rather than take the hiking trail over the mountain, we’d take the road. We hadn’t realised there was a section of road tunnel, we didn’t have a torch and there was a big drainage channel down each side - we walked down with a tent-pole in hand dragging it along the wall and then had to jump into the channel when a car came down horn blasting!
An amazing part of the world. Ton's pictures look great, but summer can be pretty dull and miserable weather too. You got really lucky with a couple of weeks of that. Midges/mosquitos aren't generally terrible along the coast but if you go inland from (say) Alta to Kautokeino or similar it can get pretty biblical. Also tends to get worse moving up in height a little away from the coast. Given the topography, most obvious transport routes skirt the narrow gap between the sea and mountains or head through to Finland/Sweden crossing more "tundra" areas. Ferries/hitching lifts on boats is handy. Not been in the summer for nearly 20 years though so specifics for biking are hazy.
Logistics are fairly straightforward - ride when the weather is good (day or night), camp pretty much wherever (plenty of rocky pitches) when the midges are bearable/weather is unbearable, eat/drink as little as possible (unless you have a trust fund). Take something to catch fish with. Allow the locals to take pity on you. If you're flying then Alta, Tromso, Narvik and Bodo are all obvious potential start/end points. Narvik also served by a (long) sleeper train from Sweden if that makes it easier. Not easy to get there from the UK without flying really though. Some of the DNT hytte might be useful for you, and generally their site might give you some inspiration on routes a bit off the main traffic areas. Oh, and not being daft, but Hardanger and Gerainger areas are probably as close to northern Norway in a straight line as London is to Madrid. Norway is a long old country.
I've been up there a couple of times - once rock climbing and another time cycle touring. Here's a few thoughts:
- If you have the time to take the Oslo-Bodo train I'd definitely reccommend it rather than flying.
- I ddin't have an awful experience with mozzies but they are BIG up there and can bite you through a suit of armour.
- I'm glad we took a bigget tent cos there were times when we had to spend a lot of time in it.
- the Vesteralen are less dramatic than Lofoten but still super cool.
- We ended up taking the Hurtigruten for part of our route. We basically paid comuter ferry price to spend all day on the sun deck of a cruise ship. There was a hot tub.
- Even with the cost and the weather I'll probably go back again.
I've been to Norway before on trains, so I've experienced the food price shock. We'd taken some dried food with us and the only things we found to buy that weren't stupidly expensive were bread and for some reason real butter. So we ate a lot of that. That was a long time ago though.
I've also spent a lot of time in Finland where rather than midges it was full sized mosquitoes that would bite you through your clothes and leave big extremely itchy and/or painful bites the size of a Euro, and you'd get a dozen or so from a bike ride if you went through certain parts of the forest. Worse than Scotland? Difficult to say, really - definitely longer lasting effects.
The above tip about staying near the coast is useful though, as I'd be quite happy with that given the pictures.
summer can be pretty dull and miserable weather too
I live in Wales, I'm accustomed to that 🙂
Some old links I’ve got saved
https://www.cycletourer.co.uk/cycletouring/norway.shtml
https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/bikepacking-in-norway
Hmm did have a few more but they’re that old they’re now non-existent