Thursday, 13 May 2010 00:00 Last Updated on Monday, 07 June 2010 10:22 Written by Billy van Graan

On the morning after we reached Nordkapp we had to start our long ride back to Amsterdam from where we will fly out of Europe. Since my visa is nearly expiring and we still need to sell Yuki we have to get there as quickly as possible. We decided we would do 1100km the first day from Nordkapp all the way back to Umea in Sweden because we can just stay with our previous hosts again. We woke up at 4am to be on the road by 5am, and discovered all the wonderful weather we had the past couple of days which allowed us to make it all the way north had disappeared. It was cold, windy and very cloudy.  The first 100km was ok but then it started snowing during the second 100km stretch. It was VERY cold on the bike and when we reached Alta we stopped at a garage and had a coffee inside the shop and waited till we stopped shivering uncontrollably.

The drive south from here over the tundra type landscape into the forests of Finland didn’t get any better. It was snowing and raining on and off and the visibility wasn’t great most of the time. In Finland we stopped at the 1 euro for a doughnut and coffee shop again to warm up.  Luckily from here it was only a little bit of rain and then it stopped. We were making good progress and just kept going. When we reached Lulea in Sweden all the clouds disappeared behind us to the north but the wind was blowing very hard and it was actually more unpleasant than riding around in the rain. From Lulea it is also more of a highway type road so you don’t have that much protection from the wind as that you do in the forests to the north. The last 200km in the wind was very uncomfortable since our bodies was not used to sitting on a bike for that kind of distance in one day. When we reached our hosts that made us pizza (we own them big time) and I could hardly keep my eyes open.

The next day we were lucky because the weather was still looking very good.  It was an uneventful ride through a lot of rain forests. We decided to stay in a hostel in Stockholm but when we arrived we found that the hostel only opens during the summer months so we ended up camping on the outskirts.

From Stockholm to Denmark was very wet. It rained hard for the first part of the day and our shoes were soaked in only minutes. Luckily we organized with our previous host in Copenhagen, Tune, to stay over for the night. We also forgot our one towel there the last time. We met him at another flat in Copenhagen where he was with a study group to pick up the keys. Denmark has really changed in the couple of weeks we where away. When we left it was a bit dull and colorless. But now it is completely changed. It is so green and beautiful it is amazing. Tomorrow we will ride the last 800km to Amsterdam through the south of Denmark then through Germany.

 

Tags
Biking  Cape 2 Cape  Norway  Sweden