Norway June 2016

Its the gunmetal grey GT model.....that was my cunning disguise

And the hardest time I got both ways was at the UK/French border

 

Hopefully those reading might find this amusing/entertaining. More to follow over time as Adam plays with the on bike clips and a joint pile of about 450 photos and assorted phone videos to put together more episodes in between his real job as a shift working paramedic

 

Part 2 ..... Tourist climb up Priekstolen to Pulpit Rock followed by some hairpins, mountains, sheep herding on bikes and even more hairpins

 

Part 3 ...... i get my passport back to get me back into the UK after blagging it the whole way to Norway. We ride some amazing roads and i pop my gravel cherry on some damp hard packed slippy looking gravel

 

Part 4 ..... probably my favourite part of the trip as i finally get the hang of gravel and after switching to enduro mode and spinning the bike up actually enjoy riding the Multistrada off road on the Ausjorvegen pass

 

Part 5....More hairpins, more gravel including freshly lain and graded new stuff which is like riding in toffee with 2 flat tyres..... you can even see me looking down at the wheels to make sure i have air in them

We have reached the latitude of midnight sunshine so its time for more gravel to ensue but i think i am managing it better as we record 82mph on some open stretches

 

6th segment of the venture

We started off the day and as we turned up off one of the tarmac roads Adam stopped and said words to the effect of "I've seen this on the net and really wanted to ride it but it might get too rocky near the top, but fuck it we'll find out when we get there and sack it if it gets silly"

If he was thinking that you can guess what was going through my head at that point

Ladies and Gents i give you Blaho mountain and the ride up to the Jetta transmitter .... one of the hardest things i have done on a bike and another i would have thought twice about tackling on a dirt bike before this trip. The start i did my usual mistake of starting in Sport mode, losing drive then fucking about with the menus to change the set up of the bike to Enduro by which time Adam had disappeared in a plume of dust and flying stones.

I knew i cant keep near him on this type of terrain so knuckled down and made my way up the climb which seemed easy to start and got rockier and rockier the higher we went. I almost stopped just before the final section after hitting a rock that dislodged by the front wheel but carried on. Chuffed to bits when i got to the top but was already worrying about the trip back down as decents on loose are not my strong point.

At 21 mins into the vid you can see he stopped to wait for me and showing the difference in my riding from 10 days before said "Thats the rocks done so you are back in your comfort zone of loose gravel"

I might not have "enjoyed" the ride, but by fuck it was an achievement for an off road novice

 

Part 7, this is a rain free passage (i know, i was amazed myself when i looked back over it)

Lots of tarmac for a change, lots of lovely high passes over the plateaus and wide open landscapes with noting for miles and miles ....oh yeah, some stonking snow drifts the road is cut through

 

Part 8 ..... last bit i promise

Its getting to the end of the trip and working our way back down through Norway towards the low countries and eventually back to the UK. The weather wasnt the best so the camera footage was reduced rather than get them soaked but we did manage to get some footage including some amazing tunnels on the Rv50 and later THE coolest roundabout on the planet

The last contribution from Norway was the climb up to Osa reservoir along a dead end road/goat track. In all honesty i could have done without it having dropped the Multistrada on a similar wet hairpin descent earlier in the day (no damage to me or the bike just some mud and grass where i slid off the track into a banking) but hey ho, on we go. The views at the top were excellent. despite the comments, but when Adam then started up another narrow track with sheer drops off the side that was enough for me and my height aversion so i waited to take some pics of him climbing and descending, but he never got far as the track was blocked

last day had little footage as it was pissing down till we got to the camp site where the sun blazed down for our last night in Norway. the following day was boring motorways although the Oversund bridge still impressed me immensely on our 2nd trip over and under it arriving evantually at the German Danish border.

From there it all went a bit weird as we had discussed a twisty route back to avoid the boredom of motorways but the sat nav gave a complicated route adding hours to the trip so we agreed to the boredom instead. Unfortunately Adams sat nav decided on the twist route and took us into the town of Flensburg and a few turns later it was sacked from its duties and we headed eventually back onto the Autobahn with me following signs till we hit A7 ......As we came down the slip road Adam shot past and thats the last i saw of him for 100km or so till i caught up at Hamburg in heavy traffic. As we left Hamburg he again shot off and as a result of me being blocked by a van that pulled out in front of me i missed his change of motorway when it split from 4 lanes to 2 each way and only saw him after the last minute as i was committed to the wrong route(my sat nav had packed up charging earlier in the trip so he had the only functioning one). I sent a couple of texts and stopped at a couple of rest areas to try and find him but decided i was wasting time so sent a final text saying i was heading for Calais as best i could and see him there at the camp site we planned to stay at which i got a reply to of "Ok mate"

I navigated by my iphone through Germany, Holland, Belgium and France which was interesting, esecially in Antwerp at rush hour and finally made it to Calais and ignored the tunnel turn off as i knew the road to Wissant along which the camp site was having ridden it a few times before on previous French trips. I then thought to check my phone as i arrived at the camp site to find a text saying he had managed to get on a train a day early and was heading home. If i had made the turn off and known he had already sacked the camp site we would have probably made the same train but i managed to get on one about half an hour later and back in the UK by 8pm local time and blatted for home arriving in the door just over 2 hours later after about 750 ish miles riding and the last 2 hours at a surprising average according to my trip computer.

Trip of a lifetime and lots of things i didnt expect to be doing were achieved ....hope you enjoyed the footage and were not too bored

If you get the chance go visit the place, its amazing , every view is a postcard and all the photos really dont do it any justice at all

 

Hope you didnt get too bored but if anyone has read the thread and has anything they think we can help with for their future trips to Norway let me know and we'll see if one of us can answer it ..... itsan amazing country to ride in, very bike friendly and you dont get glared at for walking into a petrol station soaking wet to buy lunch