ON THE ROAD 138
Way off the beaten track, the Faroe Islands offer mesmerising cycling on an operatic scale
While Britain bathed in June’s heatwave, we headed to one of the coldest places in Europe at that time - indeed, at any time - the Faroe Islands. Once we got over the ignominy of being back in winter kit, we were treated to some of the most sublime scenery on the continent.
There are more hospitable environments to sleep in than the top bunk of my hostel. A narrow, spongy mattress in close proximity to the ceiling left me with little doubt as to what sleeping in a drawer feels like. Still, it was bliss compared to another resident, whose lodgings, it appeared, amounted to nothing more than a sloping grass verge between the hostel’s entrance and car park.
That’s where I found him, unmoving, encased in a sleeping bag that was flapping like a sail in the gusting wind, apparently exposed to the meteorological violence of a night under the stars – or at least the near ever-present cloud - on the Faroe Islands.
Was this person alive? Should I poke him/her with a stick? Was that poor form? More importantly, could it wait until after I’d had breakfast over the road in the hotel? Because I was ravenous.
On my return, half an hour later, there were, thankfully, signs of life, the man offering a muted thumbs up in response to mine. “Are… you… okay?” I asked. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, in what was an unexpectedly familiar English accent. “Why are you sleeping outside?” “I prefer it,” he replied, very matter of factly. “When did you come out here?” “I haven’t, I’m from London, I’m here on a walking holiday,” he said.
“No, I mean what time of the night did you come out here?”
“Err… All night,” he said, before putting his head back down on his pillow/tuft of grass and settling back in for a snooze.
As I headed back to my dorm, a room that now felt extravagantly opulent, I questioned whether I was in possession of the sort of constitution to last long as a cyclist on the Faroe Islands.
Situated about midway between Norway and Iceland, and forever in the grip of the cold North Atlantic, Mother Nature isn’t shy about putting this tiny country, made up of 18 islands, over her knee and giving it a good hiding. With 210 days a year of rain or snow, close to 1.5m of rain annually, average summer highs of just 12 degrees and the shortest winter days – barely long enough for a brisk century ride before night
kicks in – it certainly takes a fullthrottle character to thrive as an outdoor enthusiast here.
Other worldly
The Faroe Islands have a beguiling edge-of-the-world feel to them – and that world not necessarily being our own. Like Iceland has done on many occasions for Hollywood, this archipelago of tightly bound islands would make a handy CGI-free stand-in for an alien planet or fantasy land, a brooding, imposing, mountain-filled sea world, where you’re never more than 5km from the ocean. There was a rumour two years ago that Steven Spielberg was going to film The BFG here. It turned out to be just that, even though the giant’s green, rocky land in the film, which was released last year, bears an uncanny likeness to the islands.
The population size of just 49,235 is on a par with Torquay or Clactonon-Sea and contributes in part to the glacial pace of life here. Their laidback attitude is one of the islanders’ defining characteristics. My guide, Høgni Rúnason Øster, told me: “If it’s not today, it’s maybe tomorrow,” describing the speed at which things tend to get done.
We flew out in June, during midsummer, leaving a country in Great Britain at risk of making the first part of its name ironic, gripped as it was by Brexit negotiations, the instability of a minority government and the horrors of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, all threatening to spin the country out of control. We’d have to sacrifice a heat wave for temperatures scarcely in double figures, but it was the sort of heat that makes Britain come to a standstill, so it was a trade-off we happily made.
Despite touching down in Vágar to scenes that looked weirdly like an abrupt landing in the South Pennines, the Faroe Islands would prove a soothing antidote, a spectacular off-the-beaten-track, remote European outpost in stark contrast to the chaos on much of the rest of the continent right now.
From Vágar it’s around an hour’s drive to the capital, Tórshavn, where we were staying, on the largest and most populated island of Streymoy. The two islands are connected by a near 5km sub-sea tunnel (the country’s second largest), one of several in the country, along with bridges, ferries and mountain-bored tunnels that now connect once disparate and isolated communities throughout the Faroes. All are rideable, though you need to keep your wits about you.
The roads are quiet and the speed limit is 80kph, but the sub-sea tunnels require powerful bike lights, have some surprisingly vicious gradients and are home to Victorian London levels of pollution. Let’s hope the extraction fans do a better job on the new and proposed tunnels under construction, which will dwarf the current ones. Construction will soon begin on a 10.9km tunnel
It certainly takes a full-throttle character to thrive as an outdoor enthusiast here
connecting Streymoy and Sandoy, and there’s a monster 20km tunnel planned between Sandoy and Su uroy, the southernmost island, which is the most isolated but best for road cycling, according to Høgni. You’d have to weigh it up and decide whether sampling it is worth the hassle of riding nearly the equivalent of half the length of the Channel Tunnel.
All-day sunshine
The morning of our ride began with the close to pointless task of opening our paper-thin curtains – not, I imagine, a common decoration in a country that has 20-hour days around the summer solstice. What we found was no different to what had come before or what would come later: deep-set leaden skies above a fog rolling down from the Húsareyn mountain into Tórshavn’s harbour. Heading up this mountain pass dissects Streymoy in two and leads to a seaside village, Nor radalur, at the foot of some gorgeous switchbacks that we tried to reach all week. And if it wasn’t for that pesky mist we would’ve done. The kind of thick, chilling, eerie mist that, to negotiate on a bike, would probably see me become the story rather than report it.
Conditions were set fair for our 103km ride and were much better in Gjógv, some 60km away in the north of Eysturoy, where we’d begin our ride, even if the icy wind coming up from the southeast was strong enough to keep knocking our photographer Russell’s tripod over. Weather is highly unpredictable and can change dramatically over the course of a mountain pass. Like many of the best roads on the three islands we spent all of our time on (Vágar and Streymoy, the others), Gjógv is where the road ends and getting out means retracing your tyre tracks.
From here to Ei i is one of the best stretches for road cycling in the country, with its constant, dramatic rises and falls set against a backdrop that’s hard to take your eyes off. You’re likely to encounter more
sheep in the road than vehicles. But don’t disturb them – they might well be at work. Several of the ovine population, who, at 80,000, well outnumber the humans on the Faroe Islands, are earning their keep before likely slaughter with Sheep View 360 ( visitfaroeislands.com/ sheep view 360), a project to map the islands on camera in the absence of Google having not done its thing yet. These sheep, with cameras strapped to their backs, are unwitting participants in a bid by the tourist office to put this little-known land on the map.
The Faroe Islands are a fearsome place for any cyclist, road or mountain – something Høgni knows as well as anyone. Being in the dirt is his true passion but he uses the road to stay fit through the short summers and the turbo through the winter when the weather really turns. He was less than a week out from racing mountain bikes at the biennial Island Games – essentially the Olympics for islands of less than 100,000 people, first held on the Isle of Man and which the Faroe Islands have hosted before, in 1987. It was, in fact, the stage for an early glimpse of a raw Mark Cavendish, who took his first senior international success in the 2003 Games in Guernsey in the criterium. It would have been silver, had it not been for a blunder by Jersey’s Sam Firby, whose hubristic winning salute cost him the win by a tyre width.
From Gjógv the road winds through Slættaratindur, the highest mountain in the country at 882m, though the road tops out at about half of this. Just before Ei i we stopped at the viewing point of one of the most unique rock formations in a country defined by its unique rock formations. Legend has it that these two freestanding rocks, Risin and Kellingin (the Giant and the Witch), are fossils of an old woman and a giant who tried to drag the Faroe Islands back home to Iceland. The rising sun caught them out and turned them to stone.
There are worthwhile diversions on Streymoy to Tjørnuvík, one of the oldest villages in the country and where we ate some delightful waffles, and also Saksun, which is linked to Tjørnuvík by a three-hour hike, though sadly no road. It was that familiar out-and-back problem, but when the villages are this pretty it’s a price worth paying. A gravel/ adventure bike would’ve been a better choice and would have allowed us to head off-piste and join the dots a bit faster. Getting to our ultimate destination of Gásadalur, over on the western edge of Vágar, involved a fair chunk of flatter trunk road – even if a Faroe trunk road is more like a British B-road – and exposed the struggles of plotting a properly scenic route here.
Tunnel vision
Vágar is a less dramatic island than Streymoy but it’s smaller and less populated, so the cycling is more serene, even if the wind did fling us from pillar to post – gusts are known
to reach a hair-raising 100mph. Gásadalur possesses one of the country’s crown jewels. Up until 2004, when the islanders put their wellhoned craft for tunnel building to further use, this tiny village of what was then just 16 people had been almost completely cut off from the rest of the country. To access it you had two, equally unappealing, choices, which brought literal meaning to the phrase stuck between a rock and a hard place. You could either arrive by boat and clamber up a staircase chiseled into the cliff face or take the route the long-suffering postman used to and climb over the 400m-high mountains that surround the village. Fortunately for us the 1.5km tunnel dropped us back into daylight with a superb, twisting descent into the village. After a much-needed and warming shower, where we were kindly welcomed into the holiday home of two tourists, we ate at a newly opened restaurant, Gasadalsgardur, the only one in town (it’s also a B&B). The setting was dreamy and the food top notch. It had just one thing going against it. Late in the meal, our attention drawn to the tell-tale signs of grates in the floor, curtain rails in the corner and a wipe-clean floor, the horror dawned on us that we were dining in a room that serves as an abattoir by day.
It had been a tough but exhilarating ride, spent in what the islanders nominally call ‘summer’. And it confirmed what I’d suspected before: I’m too much of a sun lizard to do this day in, day out. Høgni had my respect, he’s one of the hardiest cyclists I’ve met. Still, this is a magnificent place, one that by exploring on two wheels gives you the best chance to fully absorb its overwhelming scale. My advice? Leave the race bike at home and load up the panniers. Set your bike up for an adventure. Pack heavy. Pack warm. And prepare to plead to the weather gods.
The horror dawned on us that we were dining in a room that serves as an abattoir by day