Two pensioners on a 10 Year old bike to the North Cape

Norway has much to offer and one of the best things is that you can have a proper adventure on a bike without the worry of very bad things happening to you.
Your friends will still say,” Crikey – did you say past the Arctic Circle?” and you still get to places where you see no one on the road for an hour – just you, but you don't have to worry about disease, pirates or flies.
Well you DO have to worry about flies at the very top of Norway. It has millions of them so take your “Jungle Formula” with you.

Any one can get to the Nordcapp and collect a sticker and some reindeer antlers to
proudly display at the next ride-out. All the roads are safe and well maintained except the
ride to Harwich on the M25 which is dangerous and in constant repair. My wife Sharyn and
I choose August to get to Nordcapp which is the end of their summer break. There and
back it is 3,000 miles. We arrived at the Arctic Circle after 5 days ride and reached the
North Cape after 10 days.

Once at Harwich the overnight ferry takes you to Denmark and then you can cross
Denmark in a day taking in a wonderful and scary bridge over the sea until you get to
Copenhagen. When you look at your map you will see that you could spend 4 days riding
to Oslo instead but it is a dull motorway ride and so we elected to have a duty free drink before settling in our cabin for a leisurely overnight cruise to Oslo.

Heading North from Oslo gives you an exciting feeling as you will be the only motorcycle on the road apart from the Norwegians, love affair with the Harley. If you see a millionaire's
yacht in the Oslo harbour it is probably the HD dealer in Norway spending his millions.
They really are popular. Another popular vehicle is any 1950s or 1960 large American car.
They just love to drive these big old barges around.

There is only one road up through Norway, the E6. So everyone goes up the E6 and then
they come down the E6. We came down through Finland and Sweden but it really is not as beautiful as Norway. All the really great fiords and biking roads are in the South of Norway.
This means that you miss them if you want to get to the top – and the top was where we were going.

Another popular detour is the Lofoten Islands. These are just like Bute and Islay and the Western Isles in Scotland which are connected by the excellent CalMac ferry service. The Lofoten are just like that without the whiskey. They too are connected by ferries, tunnels and bridges and you can spend a week on them – maybe on your way back if you have time.

If you fancy a change from the road then try the “Hurtigruten” which means fast ferry. This is a wonderful fleet of ferries, half travel North and the other half travel South. So every town on the coast will have two ferries every day. The Northerly and the Southerly.
You can book online and you can also book in any town on the day or in advance. A
popular pastime is to travel the whole route of 2,000 miles in two weeks.

You can camp anywhere in Norway for free. They have this freedom to roam in their
constitution allemannsrett (meaning: all men's right) . Just don't do it in someone’s garden or on their crops but you can put up your tent anywhere. So we simply took a tent and a Swedish Army Trangia cooker. We filled all the water bottles with duty-free from the ferry as the cost of booze in Scandinavia is sky-high.

After 10 days we arrived at the last tunnel in Norway with only 20 miles to go to the end of Europe when the bike had a catastrophic failure. The whole rear wheel bearing collapsed and gear oil was all over the road. It was 8pm so there was nothing to do but wild-camp on the tundra until morning.

As we were near the tunnel and it's tollbooth I thought I would tell them that we were camping for the night. Knocking on the toll-booth window I mouthed,”D-O Y-O-U S-P-E-A-K E-N-G-L-I-S-H? as we were a long way from Berkshire and all we could see were
reindeer and rocks. The guy in the booth was very patient with this imbecilic Englishman
and mouthed back A-R-E Y-O-U A G-O-O-N-E-R?
He quietly explained that for 3 years he was a professional football coach at Tottenham Hotspur and knew Gazza, Barnes and Lineker very well so of course he spoke English.

The moral of the story is that wherever in the world you are, something will happen to make it all right again. We were soon in a well-equipped garage and had new parts
brought up the next day.

When you get to Nordcapp you might be disappointed as it is a barren rock facing the sea.
There is an expensive visitor centre too if you have any money left but don't expect too much.
We chatted to a couple on a Vespa125 scooter at Nordcapp – they had travelled on it
from Bari in Italy – that is right in the South of Italy. At least that had gears. We met a crazy Italian who had ridden up on a Vespa125 twist-and-go. He did the whole journey at 35mph.
The great thing is the sense of achievement and with it comes the thought that if you can get to Nordcapp, perhaps you could get anywhere at all. Even Ushuaia.