Arctic Circle
I was heading north, very north. A thousand or so kilometres into the Arctic Circle, as far as you can get without toppling into the Barents Sea. Just up the icepack from Murmansk in Russia.
I was riding an Aprilia Tuono motorbike to Nordkapp (72 ° N) because everybody else I knew had gone there on a big fat BMW adventure bike. I like being different, plus it was more of a challenge on a road bike.
I had ridden from Calais up to Östersund in Sweden, to visit my mates Carl’s brother. From there I was headed west, into Norway, and then north until I hit Nordkapp, the Arctic Ocean and an iceberg on the horizon if I was lucky.
The main road to Norway, the E14, turned out to be a bit of a yawn, so I turned off on a minor road — the 332 — which was going conveniently in my direction.
Wow, what a road; my snack-stop notes said it was “the best ever”. It was, until the tarmac ran out, the mountains loomed over, the clouds swirled in and the surface turned to super-slimy glacier-fed volcanic rubble.
I hadn’t seen a vehicle in nearly an hour, there was no phone signal and my road bike tyres (where was that adventure bike when I needed it?) had negligible grip even at walking pace. It was so cold I couldn’t read my GPS properly. The wind whistled pitilessly through endless fir trees. I swore equally violently at the remoteness, my poor decision making, the potential for being eaten by a wolf or bear, and what my family would say at the funeral.
A pickup came slowly into view. I waved frantically and it stopped. “The road is good in about ten minutes,” nodded the driver. I cruised down crisp new tarmac into suddenly-sunny Norway.
The road to the north in Norway (there really is only one — look at Google Maps) is the E6, and if I thought the Swedish 332 was the best, I was mistaken. This is a road which everybody should ride once on a bike. Incredible scenery, sinuously twisty, fantastic surface, no traffic. It was just crying out for a bike like the Tuono. I piled on the gas.
At a petrol stop, a helpful biker mentioned the speed limit was 80kph, rigidly applied and ferociously fined if exceeded. He told of bikers who hitched home after their bikes were confiscated for speeding. I slowed down. A lot.
The other reason I slowed down was because my back tyre was becoming very worn. That volcanic gravel slime from the 332 had worked like sandpaper and much of the rubber had disappeared, with a couple of patches of carcass poking through. The bike’s handling had deteriorated worryingly too — not what you need for Arctic touring.
I asked at several petrol stops if there was a motorbike or tyre shop around. Most people laughed, and shook their heads. A couple of bikers I met suggested the best option was to make a detour into Tromsø, the biggest city in north Norway, where there were rumoured to be a couple of motorbike shops. I headed that way.
It was raining hard in Tromsø, and the snow melt was making the rivers rise and roar. The cafes were all closed and it was freezing cold. Large trucks swished by, spraying me with freezing water as I tried to make out where I was on the map, through my steamed up visor. Eventually I tracked down Eide Motor, a bike sales and maintenance outlet. The news was mixed; they had the right tyre but had promised to fit it for another customer just hours ago.
I must have looked gutted because Lotte, the kind lady behind the desk, said she would do a ring around to check if anybody else had something suitable. Luck was with me — wholesaler Vianor had just one left in their warehouse — and could fit it tomorrow as long as I helped, so they wouldn’t be liable if I crashed and died on the road north.
Relieved, I rode around in the darkening rain to find a campsite. There was only one, and it was almost full because, bizarrely, Tromsø was having an Arctic Circle dog show that weekend. Sporadic barking filled the gloom. I was shown one of the last spots, squeezed in under a tree, next to the river. It was in a slightly less boggy spot than the rest, so I pitched my tent. The river roared ominously in my left ear as I crept into my sleeping bag.
To add to the air of general bleakness, some idiot with a dog walked into my tent ropes in the dark, got tangled up and started swearing at me for being too near the path. This made the dog bark frantically and jump about, getting itself totally tangled in my tent as well — and almost dragging the tent and everything into the river. I decided I hated dog owners.
Next morning after warming up in the breakfast lounge (where I scowled satisfyingly at the dog owner) I rode across town to Vianor’s warehouse. There I spent a happy hour with salesman Leije, another bike rider too, fitting the new tyre, albeit with cold and stiff fingers. I decided I loved Norwegian bike riders.
Now feeling confident of my new tyre, and of making Nordkapp as well, I pointed up the E6 into truly wild country. The road got bleaker, the bare rock tunnels (some were kilometres long) got narrower, darker and damper and the snow piled up ever deeper next to ice-covered lakes.
I decided to pace myself and stay at the campsite at Olderfjord, just down the road from my ultimate destination. I splashed out big-time and rented a little wooden hut.
A couple of German guys at the campsite told me the best time to visit the site was about 2–3am in the morning, “… because the visitor centre will be closed and ja, for sure — you can ride right in without at all paying!” Sound advice; it was a salty €28 to get to the actual headland otherwise. I bought a Nordkapp fridge magnet instead, got an early night and set the alarm for 3am.
I woke to the alarm and bright sunshine. Nobody was about, and the day looked perfect. I started the Tuono up and headed for Nordkapp, some 3,500km from where I’d started in London.
The road was totally empty, the surface was mostly clean and dry and I assumed the chances of speed traps at that hour were slim, so I gave the Tuono a heavy dose of throttle. The 120-odd kilometres blurred by in a little over an hour, including twisty headland jinks and diving more than 200m below the seabed through the dark and slimy Nordkapp Tunnel. It was a fabulous, memorable, life-affirming ride that even included reindeer and a beautiful wooden church for location atmosphere.
I arrived at the Nordkapp headland, with its famous steel globe, totally alone apart from a few gulls. The sun was breaking through the clouds, but it was still freezing. I rode right up to the plinth, posed, snapped a couple of photos and watched the midnight sun glisten on the Arctic Sea. And I grinned like an idiot behind my mask, even though there was no iceberg.
Me and the Tuono had made it. Now all I had to do was get back.
