Author Archives: todd

David and I left for the Øvre Pasvik National Park. We cycled along the Pasvik river, close to the Russian border. At one point we could see the fuming industrial exhausts of the Russian town of Никель (Nikel) on the far side of the river.

We rode about 92km to the village of Vaggetem, and then took a forest road for 10km. At its end the track to Finland starts.  Unfortunately, there was no way to take the bikes on that track; it would have taken ages. Plan B: Hike the track to the Finnish border without bikes, then go back.

We walked only the first 4.4km to the Ellenkoia cabin, an ‘open wilderness hut’ at the Ellenvann (Ellen is the short Sámi form of Elias, so Ellenvann means Elias Lake). A Norwegian couple and their beautiful Alaskan Malamute Aiki were there already. David decided to sleep in the hut, I pitched my tent a few meters away.

Nikel

Ellenkoia

On the way to Ellenkoia

Another lazy day in Kirkenes. We met a French couple in the kitchen who are travelling by car in Northern Norway, as well as a German girl who’d just arrived here by plane and now wants to cycle back home. Without tent, sleeping bag, mattress, air pump, and all the other useless stuff. That’s quite … brave. :) The most useless thing that’s left in her luggage are speakers for her ipod that can be attached to the bike.

Lukoil's Icebreaker Varandey

Checked with the travel agency, and the visa should be ready on Friday. Not much else to report.

Nice!

I went to Kirkenes to find out whether it’s possible to get a visa for Russia. There’s a Russian consulate here, but I went to see the two local travel agencies to ease and speed up the process.

One of the agents told me quite daunting stories about the (lack of) freedom one enjoys when traveling in Russia. It would be necessary to stay at hotels as opposed to camping or staying at private places. And cycling in Russia – oh me goodness – that’s absolutely impossible. That contradicted some of the info I’d read previously, and the image the other agent painted was more friendly (not exactly great, though). Apparently it is still necessary to stay at hotels every now and then to have a track record of one’s journey, or to get such a (fake) record by other means. In any way, I applied for a 2-week-visa to go to Мурманск, the world’s biggest city north of the Arctic Circle.

Tried to find road maps of Western Russia or the Kola peninsula in the local bookshops, to no avail. Went to the library and the friendly librarian dug out a map of the region right next to the Norwegian/Finish border. It turned out to be Cold War material: a “Joint Operations Graphic (Ground)”, compiled by the U.S. Army Topographic Command in 1969 “from best available sources”. There were several white or whitish spots on the map where the sources weren’t all that good, apparently.

David and I were thinking about going to the Øvre Pasvik National Park while the consulate is processing the visa application. The park is said to have a lot of bears, and also hosts the point where the borders of Norway, Finland, and Russia meet. The idea is to cross into Finland with bikes, which may be difficult, and cycle back to Kirkenes to pick up my passport, hopefully containing the visa.

Map from Cold War times

Boarded the M/S Trollfjord, one of their newest boats, around 1am. Paid about 780 Norwegian Crowns for the passage to Kirkenes, including a cabin and breakfast. That’s less than I paid for the hotel in Vardø AND it carried me across the Barents Sea for several hours!

Arrived in Kirkenes around 10am. Lots of Russian fishing trawlers in the harbour. The town seemed almost deserted, very few people out and about. Streets, hotels, and public buildings have their name written using Latin characters and underneath again using Cyrillic ones. E.g. library: библиотека. The Russian border is at most 12km away. Found a campsite a few kilometers outside town.

The French guy I’d met near Vadsø, David, is staying here, too, as well as yet another Swiss cyclist, Cyrill. We had a long chat over dinner and beyond, about our previous trips and experiences, as well as ideas for future tours and adventures. We’ve all done more than 4000km on our current journeys.

We also listed the most useless things we’re carrying around on the current trip. David is carrying a spatula, Cyrill’s got a second mobile and rubber boots (even though he thinks they might be useful at some point), and me, I’ve got two tents in my luggage as well as pills against sea sickness.

The weather was awesome today. Warm and sunny. Forecasts are not that good for the coming days, unfortunately.

Far away from everywhere!

Fishing trawler

Definitely found my limits on this trip. Getting up at 3am to catch a feery at 4am is one of them.

So I had breakfast at the hotel. I had only 2 main options now: stay another night in Vardø and attempt to catch the next boat to Kirkenes again at 4am, or take a boat to Båtsfjord or even Berlevåg and hop on the ferry bound for Kirkenes already in the late evening. I chose the latter option and boarded the M/S Nordstjernen, built in 1956 and one of the older Hurtigruten boats still in service, at 4pm, and arrived in Båtsfjord around 8pm. Had dinner on a bench near the harbour, and waited for the Kirkenes-bound boat.

Leaving Vardø

Russian fishing trawler in Båtsfjord at night

Left around 8am and arrived in Vardø around noon. No campsite available and I’m gonna catch the Hurtigruten boat to Kirkenes tomorrow morning at 4am, so I checked into a hotel. Freaking expensive for what’s on offer, even after a discount, but I’m used to that by now.

After exactly 10 weeks of traveling and 5500km of cycling I’d arrived at the easternmost point of Norway as well as my trip.

Update: Murmasnk is even further to the east, but at that time I didn’t know I’d go there.

Some hut at the road side

Abandoned house in Vardø

Vardø's harbour

The day promised to be beautiful, not a single clound in the sky, and a cooling and strong tail wind blowing.

Crossed the Tana and rode further to the east, towards Vadsø, the capital of the Finnmark fylke (county), along the northern shore of the Varangerfjord. Stopped at a museum showing Sámi art and which is built close to an ancient Sámi settlement and burial site.

Camping wasn’t possible in Vadsø, especially the island of Vadsøya, so I cycled on eastward. Right outside the town I met a frenchman pushing his bicycle. He had cycled here from France, approx. 6500km, and now had a flat tyre and flat spare tubes. He didn’t want any help as he was heading to Vadsø anyway to catch the Hurtigruten ship to Kirkenes in the morning.

After 90km I stopped on the peninsula of Ekkerøy and camped near a nature reserve.

Varangerfjord

Old fisherman's hut

Sami religious site

Sami house, rebuilt

Sea urchin shell

Campsite on Ekkerøy

Rode east from Ifjord. Crossed the Ifjordfjellet, which was amazing. Watched Sámi people drive reindeers in the village of Skadjájávri. At the river Tana the road turned south, towards the town of Tana bru, which I reached after 91km of cycling.

Quick break

Amazing

Some fjord

My – somewhat outdated – weather forecast didn’t predict any better weather for today than that of yesterday, and I decided to leave first thing in the morning and head south – home. The rain stopped and I packed my stuff and left at 5.30am. It was quite cold and a strong headwind blew. I fought with hills and wind, and after 4 hours I had only done 36km! Otherwise the weather turned out to be almost fine – the sun shone every now and then, the sky was blue, and there was almost no rain and no fog. I felt a bit betrayed by the weather gods. I made peace with it, though, and will come back to conquer Kinnarodden on another trip. Reached Ifjord after 105km.

Beautiful Norway

Beautiful Norway

It started to rain during the night and didn’t stop pretty much all day. I wanted to do the hike to Kinnarodden, the truly northernmost point of mainland Europe, but not under these conditions. Stayed in the tent and continued reading T.C. Boyle’s ‘Riven Rock’.

I boarded the M/S Nordkapp, one of the Hurtigruten boats, in Honningsvåg in the afternoon, and it dropped me off in Kjøllefjord two hours later. From there I cycled the 43km to Mehamn through a cold evening. Both Kjøllefjord and Mehamn are at sea level, but the road crosses a fell so the ride involved a nice climb. The landscape is slightly less green than on Magerøya, the Nordkapp island; there is more scree here, and it’s less hilly on top of the plateau. The picture shows Kjøllefjord (the M/S Nordkapp had just left the fjord towards Mehamn).

Pitched my tent next to Mehamn’s small airport, right at the official start of the hiking track to Kinnarodden.

Kjøllefjord

Andrea, Philip, and Torsten left in the late afternoon to go sleep in the Hurtigruten waiting room. Their boat to Tromsø/Bergen leaves tomorrow around 6am from Honningsvåg. It was a fun time riding with them.

Temperatures are now well below 10°C during the day, and around 5°C at night.

Generally, the North Cape is considered the northernmost point of Europe. Unfortunately, that’s not quite correct. First it is not on the European mainland, but situated on the island of Magerøya, and second, a place called Knivskjellodden reaches about 1.5km further to the north and into the Barents Sea. The northernmost point of mainland Europe is Kinnarodden. More about that later.

We got up pretty late and left in the early afternoon. Like pretty much everywhere else in Norway, the road to the North Cape is in very good condition. There are quite some climbs, though. It was cold and foggy and we didn’t see much of the surrounding countryside. Lots of busses passed by, full of passengers of the Hurtigruten and other cruise ships.

We passed by the car park where the hiking track to Knivskjellodden starts. There was no further info on the track there and we continued to the North Cape for now.

All of a sudden a sign popped up in the fog saying the entry to the North Cape was 500m up ahead and the entrance fee would be 215 NOK/person (almost 25 Euros). Quite a steep price for a natural landmark. The gate itself wasn’t visible through the fog yet and we discussed whether we should try and sneak through the fog. However, the fog lifted and we tried to just ride through the gate – and got caught. So we had to pay a reduced fee (for cyclists) of 140 NOK. Even that fee is ridiculous for what’s on offer, however since we knew from the start that entry wouldn’t be free we accepted it.

We rested in the visitors’ hall and took some posing pictures at the globus, at 71°10″21’N, with and without bikes.

Later we rode back to the car park near the Knivskjellodden track. It took us 2h10m to the northernmost point of the Magerøya Island, the Knivskjellodden, at 71°11″21’N. We had a break there and signed the guestbook, then walked back. There were a lot of reindeer grazing; the track is well-trodden and quite muddy at times, however almost always there are some stones available to step on. One has a nice view at the North Cape from Knivskjellodden.

Today I reached the northernmost point of this journey after exactly 9 weeks of travelling and a little over 5000km of cycling.

The happy gang

On top of the world!

View at Nordkapp from Knivskjellodden

We took a day off due to pouring rain and postponed the visit to North Cape and Knivskjellodden. Instead, rode the 18km back to Honningsvåg to do some shopping and stayed in the warmth of the kitchen at the camp site. Not much to see in Honningsvåg.

Met three Italian cyclists, though, who’d cycled here from Milan via the Baltic States, Russia, and Finland.