FJORD FIESTA NORWAY
Thousands of miles of epic riding in Europe’s most dramatic scenery
A sky so deep blue you want to strip off and dive in, air so pure you could drink it, and silence so eerily profound it’s deafening — Norway has exactly this kind of confounding, confusing effect on the senses. There’s almost too much scenery for a human brain to appreciate in one go — we can’t fit it all in our heads. It’s disorientating and dizzying, giddy on grandeur and drunk on its own dramatic dimension.
Countless vast slabs of striated granite bulge like Thor’s biceps from the forested landscape; bottomless glacial lakes, deep beyond comprehension, run like slate grey arteries deep into the landscape; boundless desolate plains drift towards a 360° snow-flecked vanishing point. Norway’s natural majesty is on a scale and scope unmatched anywhere in Europe; Glen Coe in Scotland is a mere trifle, the Alps an aperitif before the towering splendour of Norway’s famous fjords. Your soul and, at the opposite end, your Instagram feed, will thank you for making the effort to get there.
With around 18,000 miles of mainland Norwegian coastline, sublime riding routes thread loosely along much of it. It’s top-class tarmac for the most part; smooth, grippy A and B-road-style roads flow in and around the countless islands and inlets — Norway has hardly any motorways, or even dual carriageways. As you head north, even straight roads are uncommon — and those there are run across boundless plateaus, affording a spectacular contrast. Norway simply doesn’t do boring. Every sweeping corner leads to another; every astonishing view, of forests and mountains and lakes and rivers in any combination, gives way to another panorama. There are more than 100 islandhopping local ferries that run like buses, or tall, arching bridges visiting remote towns with vibrant communities and where you can enjoy the disorienting effect of the midnight sun — when the light on the mountain tops dims daily, but never fades. It’s easy to lose track of time and fall into a surreal dream-like state where your default setting is bemused wonder.
Norway’s roads aren’t exactly busy either; for the most part, they aren’t plagued by trundling motorhomes like, say, the NC500 often is. A population of just over five million people live in 149,000 square miles (the UK has 66 million in 94,000), and most of them live in the cities, so there’s plenty of room to roam out in the sticks (the Norwegian for ‘congestion’ is ‘opphopning’, which is a bad hand at Scrabble, not an actual word). You can ride for mile after mile and not see another vehicle.