Richard Newland
… moving on the Nordic highway looking like a streak of lightin’. Or 2085 miles on the world’s best biking roads…
This month: Amazing rides don’t have to head south, and don’t have to focus on dirt. Richard’s week-long adventure over the length of Norway on a Honda Africa Twin reveals that for the very best riding we should head north...
We’re all guilty of a shameful lack of imagination at times. The trip of a lifetime beckons, the world is your lobster, and so you sink hours into planning the fastest way to despatch the dull flatlands of France to arrive at the foothills of the Alps. Famous Cols and passes stretching out before you like the playground of the riding gods. France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria – concentrated bursts of adrenaline, linked together like a string of time-trials. Or we book fly-rides to the States, New Zealand, Australia, or South Africa, where the landscapes will change your perception of scale forever. But there is another way – somewhere where you can ride for 2000 miles in one direction without ever touching a motorway, seeing a traffic jam, or discovering a poorly surfaced road. Somewhere the vistas are so enormous, so dramatic, and so alien that you feel you’ve slipped into CGI. You need to go North to find it. The best riding on Earth is in Norway. The proof is in the riding, so I embarked on an epic adventure from Oslo to Nordkapp – clinging to the west coast all the way. Bring on eight days, 2084.8 miles, 40 fully-laden Honda Africa Twins, and a total disregard for sleeping.
Day 1: Oslo to Fosnavag 330 miles
Snaking out of Oslo, there is tension. Warnings of strictly enforced speed limits have made us jittery, and the outskirts of a major city seem a likely place to be ensnared. It occurs to me that I don’t even know what their speed cameras look like. But within minutes the landscape opens out like an enormous 3D map. Fjords and forests pass in a patchwork of rise and fall on roads that shun straight lines in a way the Romans would never understand. Then we’re climbing, scything through graceful curves into an increasingly vertical landscape – the temperature abandoning us. Oslo’s 19º has slipped to 13, and there’s snow on the peaks as we navigate the Beitostolen Pass to our lunch stop above lake Vinstre. It’s even colder here, but with hot broth, coffee and chocolate pushing against our ribs we crack on. There are 330 miles on the roadbook today.
Descending from the pass reveals another world. The vegetation changes to Pine forests and cyan lakes, the smell of freshly cut hay filling our nostrils, as warmth seeps back into our extremities. Then we’re climbing again, and rain morphs into a full-frontal blizzard, clarting us with a comical arctic layer. The final climb to Geiranger Skywalk is abandoned in the white-out. Instead we flea for Geiranger on an insane descent of switchbacks. The hairpin switchbacks are so severe our noses fill with the scent of hot brake pads and roasting clutches. An hour later we’re on a ferry chugging down the fjord between vertical cliffs and innumerable waterfalls, before the final rollercoaster ride through the mountains to the coast. A last push and we’re in Fosnavag, 330 miles after leaving Oslo. A blur of assertions that it can’t get much better will prove to be very wrong…
Day 2: Fosnavag to Trondheim 278 miles
Sporadic sleep revealed that the sun sets for barely an hour this far north, the night gloom provided more by cloud than lack of sunlight. We’re promised amazing roads today, as we cling to the Atlantic coast, heading for a series of islands and bridges that have long been on my ‘to ride’ list. A quick blast to the first of the day’s three ferries saw us dodging showers through a monochrome landscape of islands and inlets on undulating roads that remind me of the Scottish Highlands. We’re already a long way north. Effortlessly flowing roads suddenly expose us to the deep blue Atlantic, and myriad rocky islands linked by a single strip of tarmac. In the distance there’s a launch ramp that looks like a forgotten Evel Knievel stunt prop. My pulse is racing. I can’t quite believe I’m here, two decades after I first saw a picture of the crazy curving arch bridge that peaks a dizzying 75ft above the crashing Atlantic. Spanning 850ft, there’s a pronounced crest and left hook as we summit the Storseisundet bridge, revealing more island-hopping links and an increasingly cinematic landscape beyond. It’s too good to let pass, so we retrace our steps and do it again. And again, before reluctantly pushing on towards Trondheim. The clouds recede, and as we drop down into Trondheim in the early evening, sunlight bounces off the brightly painted riverside buildings of the historic old town. After two days and nearly 650 miles of riding I’m suddenly conscious there’s not been a single leg-stretching moment of cramp or discomfort. The Africa Twin is proving an effortless mile-muncher.
Day 3: Trondheim to Bronnoysund 276 miles
‘Now the roads start to get good,’ says our guide, Erick Courly. With Trondheim disappearing behind us, we hop on the only ferry of the day, before disembarking for over 248 miles more of increasingly beautiful riding. Our Africa Twins feel overloaded as the fear of speeding fines is replaced by an insatiable urge to enjoy the metronomic flow of the bends. It feels like we’ve switched countries again, each day unfurling like a progressive world tour of the greatest roads on Earth. Now the E6’s light tarmac, yellow centre line, and flowing curves that cut a groove through endless pine forests past crashing rivers reminds me of California. This is Norway’s main road, but you’d never guess. It doesn’t even widen to a dual carriageway, and traffic fluctuates between non-existent and light. Gone are the shifting mizzle and cloud, and we’re baking in 23º heat under clear blue skies as we pass mirror-flat lakes through the most extreme landscape yet. A garish archway over the E6 declares we’ve reached Nord Norge, the gateway to North Norway. We’ve ridden the equivalent of Land’s End to John O’groats, and haven’t found a bad road yet. Norway’s relentless, unbroken assault of superb asphalt leaves us euphoric at the quality and variety of fast sweepers and technical hairpins, open coastal beauty and dense forested climbs. I’ve never ridden anywhere better, but Erick just laughs with the confidence only a Frenchman can muster, and says: ‘You’ve seen nothing yet – wait for tomorrow…’
Day 4: Bronnoysund to Glomfjord 167 miles
Five ferry crossings link coastal peninsulas and a route littered with ice blue fjords and unimaginably large landscapes. Sunburn is suddenly a real risk on every ferry, as temperatures hit 28º, making the roads sticky even for the Africa Twin’s mediocre Dunlops. The pace is now being determined by the roads rather than any fear of the invisible police. The only
‘We’ve ridden the equivalent of Land’s End to John O’groats, and haven’t found a bad road yet’
thing slowing us down is the relentlessly incredible geographical tapestry we were passing through. We pass the globe marker that denotes entry into the Arctic Circle basking on a ferry deck in T-shirts. It all feels surreal. We were warned that the stretch from Foroy to Glomjord would be an impressive climax to the end of the day, the Fv17 clinging to the twisted volcanic vista, while glaciers reach with prehistoric fingers down to cyan fjords that looked painted with a vivid lack of regard for reality. Cold damp tunnels cut through impassable mountain ranges – the longest over 7km long, and so steeply cut into the earth that our ears popped and the burden of rock above weighed heavy on even the least claustrophobic minds. Then we burst into the light and a different world, and often different weather, before plunging into another tunnel to repeat the hop. The final leg into Glomfjord saw caution abandoned for a ride that more resembled a public time trial. Buzzing and exhausted on arrival, we headed out by coach to jump on a boat to Svartisen Gard, where dinner was served in a cabin under the gaze of Norway’s second largest glacier, ending the best day I’ve ever had riding a motorcycle.
‘Sleeping in a tent seemed like a waste, so we pulled camp beds onto the beach’
Day 5: Glomfjord to Camp Lofoten 157 miles
The morning is dominated by amazing bridges, disorientating mirrored lakes and fjords, and coasthugging endlessly arcing roads. But after an early start to reach our last ferry of the trip in good time, we fall foul of numerical bureaucracy. With a ferry limit of 36 bikes, and well over 40 in the queue – the inevitable leaves nine of us stranded at Bodo for seven hours waiting for the afternoon sailing. Eventually on Lofoten island, we pulled the pin, riding in a tight group of three to make light work of the insane route to Sun Kiss Camp. If Mordor were coastal and beautiful, this place is the embodiment of its ethereal drama. Mountains rise from the sea with the most beautiful violence. Tiny clusters of red and white timber houses cling like limpets to the shore, and acres of drying racks hold stinking fish. If I ever win the lottery I’ll spend the rest of my days riding the roads on Lofoten. At just gone 10pm we roll into camp, and mop up the remains of the beach barbeque the rest of the group had enjoyed hours earlier. It’s still broad daylight and the Caribbean would struggle to offer a better beach. Then, as the sun got to fist height above kissing the ocean, it just moved horizontally right, never touching down. Then it rose again. Sleeping in a tent in such an incredible spot seemed like a waste, so we pulled camp beds onto the beach, dragged reindeer skins from the main tent, and slept on the sand under the never-setting sun.
Day 6: Camp Lofoten to Malangen 288 miles
Morning arrived with no discernible change from night, the general hubbub and smell of breakfast wafting down to the beach the only giveaways. Back on the road, anyone who’s ridden the best that the Alps has to offer would feel well at home on Lofoten. The roads are fast, wide, curvaceous, perfectly surfaced and (with only 5.2 million people in Norway – two million fewer souls than live in London) deserted, too. The dramatic mountainous incisors that poke skyward from the ocean at Lofoten soften to a rolling carpet of densely forested mountains, peaked by snowy caps as we swoop along the E6 heading ever-northward. And then there’s another change. The lush Alpine landscape is suddenly peppered with oppressive black mountains…
A section of fast and wide off-road on the approach to the Malangen Brygger Resort spits us out on an even faster mountain descent to our fjord-side rest point. Our motion-addled brains find it hard to compute that we’re now well north of Iceland – and most of the rest of the globe, too.
Day 7: Malangen to Alta 283 miles
The morning is marred by drizzle as we thread our way between the menacing mountains of the north. Winter’s coming. The fjords seem to last forever, the E6 now feeling like a muchmagnified version of Scotland’s A9 from Glen Morangie to Thurso as we plunge towards Alta. Suddenly we’re climbing from sea-level switchbacks to a little over 1300ft for a snow-filled view over the islands of Skopa and
Noklan. Some impromptu off-road sees us cracking icy puddles of meltwater as snowdrifts tower above our heads. We re-join the E6 and start the long descent to Alta, dodging herds of reindeer. Still the heat is with us, the Africa Twin’s clocks showing an extraordinary 30º. This feels like frontier country, until we finally drift in to the outskirts of Alta, civilisation a shock after days of sparse human contact. There’s no urban normality though, Alta being fringed by black snow-capped mountains and the sense that it’s on the edge of the world.
Day 8: Alta to Nordkapp to Alta 301 miles
After a week of riding our destination feels disappointingly close. Just 149 miles of road separates us from Nordkapp – mainland Europe’s most northerly tip. The weather matches our mood. The sunny 30º of yesterday has become 14º beneath low cloud and light rain. A sinuous climb out of Alta is rewarded by a desolate plateau. Stark tundra peppered with huts so remote it’s impossible to conceive of their use. This is about as good as the weather ever gets up here and snow will soon bury them to their roofs. Finally, the E6 runs out. The E69 carries us for the final coastal run to the cape. Naked rock towers to our left, flat blue sea to the right as we speed on through cove after cove, sporadically diving into freezing tunnels where the mountains won’t allow us to go around them. With each exit there’s a new view, postcard-pretty coastal getaways perched on islands and beaches. After 1935 miles of views you’d pay an artist to paint onto the walls of every room in your house, it’s – well – unspectacular. The North Pole is 1300 miles away. I’d keep going if anyone had thought to build a road.
We’re outta here
Elated and deflated in equal measure, we crawl back to Alta, grab some kip and a morning flight south to Oslo, where we transfer to another for the shorter flight to Heathrow. It’s been extraordinary. Relentlessly euphoric roads that beat anything I’ve experienced in the last quarter century of riding all over the world.
Post script
It won’t have escaped your attention that we rode one way only. This was a pilot event run by Honda Europe – an exploratory run for their Adventure Roads concept, which they hope to roll out to customers in the future.
‘The North Pole is 1300 miles away. I’d keep going if anyone had thought to build a road’