On the Lofoten Islands…
On the ferry to Moskenes, the motorcyclists were told, right as they parked their bikes, to secure them well, because there was heavy swell today. I’d had good experiences using my crash bars as an anchor point on the bike. That worked well this time too! Next to me parked two older gentlemen with choppers. Somewhat helplessly, they were trying to secure their bikes with the tie-down straps. After a short chat it turned out that the two were medical technicians and had never really used tie-down straps in their lives… Since the bikes were right next to mine, I then lashed their bikes down for them… better safe than sorry… The ferry was filled to the last seat! In the lounges it was pretty warm and still smelled of hot dogs. There are hot dogs on pretty much every ferry here! I found a spot by a window with a power socket. Since I hadn’t pre-booked any accommodation on the Lofoten, I wanted to charge my power bank again and used the four-hour crossing for that. I also researched somewhere to stay near the harbour from which, in a week, I’d be taken to the island of Litloya. On Bunk-a-Biker I found Venke. After two or three texts she welcomed me warmly. After about 30 minutes at sea the ferry started rocking more and more. The first people left the lounge straight after and went outside. I too now had to look up from the laptop more and more often and out of the window towards the horizon. After two hours, when the ferry had covered half the distance but was now really on the open sea, I too had to go and sit outside with the others. Backpacks, bottles, pens and other bits and pieces were by now constantly flying back and forth. But that made for a good general mood, because some people kept handing each other’s things back to one another. Out on deck there were people sitting in the sun relaxing, then those staring quite focused into the distance and trying, as when surfing, to counter the ferry’s sway, and then those with plastic bags in their hands. After another hour and a half you could now see the breathtaking mountains of the Lofoten in the distance. By now it was already 8 p.m. and the sun was nearing the horizon, so the mountains looked slightly golden. Coming into the harbour was really beautiful! Getting ever closer to the island groups was unique! From Moskenes you could go either left or right. I decided to ride to „Å“, so to the left. To see the southernmost point of the Lofoten.
About 1 kilometre further on it’s the end. After that there’s only a car park. So back again! Since it was 9 p.m. by now, I set about looking for a spot for my tent at the same time. The campsite in Moskenes, I’d been told on the ferry, is always very overcrowded and, logically, very expensive too. After riding back and forth a few times, I decided to just take a road that runs alongside a tunnel. I don’t know exactly what purpose these roads have, but you come across them now and then. I suspect this was either the route before the tunnel existed, or that the road is a plan B in case the tunnel is ever impassable. Often you can’t ride the roads either, because they’re blocked. But I was lucky and there was only a big stone in the middle of the road, so I easily fit past it. After a few metres I then found a great spot too. With a view of the sea!
In the morning I got an early start to the day, because I wanted to hike up to Reinebringen. That’s where you get the classic view of the Lofoten when you type Lofoten into Google. 1,566 stone steps lead up the mountain. Not built to European standards, of course. So very strenuous! But all laid by hand up to 666 metres of altitude! The ascent went up through a cloud all the way to the top. At the viewpoint, though, the sun luckily shone!
The wind came from the north side and thus held the clouds back at the summit.
But then I walked a bit further…
In the afternoon I set off a bit further north. Since there’s only one main road, the route was set.
Rain had unfortunately been forecast for the next day. So I prepared to spend the day in the tent. Now and then it’s also good to do „nothing“ for a day and process the experiences. I’ve even read that you can get travel-sick if too many experiences in different places pile up on you. Since I don’t have time for that sort of thing, I’d rather take a day’s break. The forecast proved right and it rained all day. I used the time to keep writing the blog and to edit the photos I’d taken so far. The next morning the weather was a bit better and I moved my tent to a nearby campsite. It was laundry day again. The campsite was fairly full but, inconveniently, only had one washing machine and one dryer. I’d actually wanted to hike to Kvalvika Beach the next day, but decided to move it to today so I could wash my clothes tonight and have a chance at the free washing machine. The sun came out as I set off. The hike goes up over a mountain and, to reach the beach, back down again, of course. The ascent was great, but once at the top a big rain cloud moved in. It was foggy and raining hard, and because of the wind from the side too. Luckily the path was marked by a boardwalk that led to the descent over the mountain. The descent, though, was sadly still very slippery and muddy. It goes very steeply downhill and over some large rocks.
Kvalvika Beach is definitely worth a hike! Back at the campsite the washing machine was actually free. Kindly, a Dutch woman lent me some of her detergent. Well, she gave it to me. You can’t really give detergent back… She and her husband are driving up to Tromsø in their VW bus. But they don’t want to drive the way back and are therefore flying. Their daughter then flies to Tromsø and drives the route back. After washing, everything went into the dryer. The dryer was supposed to be done around half past midnight. When I checked again around 12 to see whether everything was still running, I had to realise the thing was off and wouldn’t turn back on. After a brief search I then found a sign that Google translated for me as: „Washing not permitted after 11 p.m.“ So I had to take my clothes out of the dryer half wet and store them in the tent until morning. Early the next day I wanted to make another attempt… but the dryer was already taken. Luckily, though, the sun came out half an hour later and I created a spider’s web of paracord rope between the tent and the bike to hang everything up. In the afternoon I carried on with an open visor to Nusfjord. Nusfjord is one of the oldest and best-preserved fishing villages in Norway. With several small museums, a traditional bakery and a restaurant, you can get a good sense of life in the old days here.
You’re actually supposed to pay admission for the walk around Nusfjord harbour. But you can also do the walk backwards, and then it’s supposed to be free, I was told… In the afternoon I set off further to Haukland Beach. That’s where I wanted to pitch my tent for the next night. Haukland Beach has been named the most beautiful beach in Norway. I could only confirm that! There was even the option of camping with a sea view:
Apart from light rain pattering on the tent, the sound of the sea is also always a very good background noise for falling asleep! Early the next morning there was nothing going on at the beach except for two lunatics jumping into the sea while breathing loudly! It was actually very cold, since the sun only comes over the mountains around early afternoon and warms the beach. But since I pretty much always already wear my motorcycle suit when packing up the tent (especially in Norway), because by now I go outside on the assumption that it could always rain, I was dressed warmly enough and, above all, protected from the wind! Apart from falling asleep to the sound of the sea, breakfast to the sound of the sea is just as good! I stayed sitting in the sand for quite a while longer and looked out at the sea. You forget the time doing that. Which is very liberating, especially when you have no appointments! But you also have to make sure you don’t fritter the day away and just laze around the whole time. That, for example, was also one of the reasons why I gave myself the task of writing this blog. At least to have a fixed task and always the option of doing something meaningful — and, besides, of travelling, making use of the day and making progress. Past Unnstad Beach I carried on to the famous Henningsvær Stadium. The Henningsvær Stadium is described as the „most beautiful football stadium in the world“. However, the word stadium is used very controversially, since there are no stands. Most photos of the stadium are drone shots where you see from above how the football pitch is integrated into the rocks and really lies right by the sea. As someone not interested in football, I just wondered how regularly balls get fished out of the sea here. From „below“ it actually looks relatively unspectacular too.
Before I set off for the next Workaway, I’d picked out another hike. Torunn from the hostel Workaway had recommended it to me after we hadn’t found the Kjeragbolten… At the Djevelporten you can also stand on a rock wedged in a rock crevice. Said and planned, I wanted to start the hike around 12. In the morning I’d concluded my prepaid contract, after being cancelled overnight from my old contract as planned. It all sounded so simple in the email — but not when phone providers are involved! To switch your prepaid contract, or to take out a new one, you need credit. How do you get credit onto a prepaid card: either you buy a top-up card in the supermarket (there’s no Vodafone in Norway), you have someone else transfer the credit to you, or the app recommended by Vodafone to top up credit. Since I had no credit on the card, I couldn’t tell anyone to send me credit. So the only option left was the app one. But that only works, of course, if you’re connected to the internet. Since I had no credit on the card, I couldn’t use mobile data, so I needed Wi-Fi. After a while I found a petrol station with free Wi-Fi and started the attempt to load credit onto my prepaid card. That worked, but the tariff switch didn’t. So I tried to reach Vodafone customer service, where you actually really do pay by the minute while waiting for the „next available agent“. So I had to point out, right after the next available agent had taken my call, that I was calling from abroad to Germany without a tariff. Luckily he reacted quickly, ended the call and kindly called me back. The five euros I’d loaded, however, were gone. He also explained to me then that getting out of a contract like that can happily take up to 24 hours too. So I broke off the whole operation to set off for the starting point of the hike. Just before the car park, a small queue was already forming of vans, motorhomes and hikers, some of whom were discussing, annoyed and shaking their heads, with a man in a hi-vis vest. It turned out that the car park was being used as an interim store for stones and other materials for a construction site on the hiking trail to the Djevelporten. The whole time I’d been at the petrol station, I’d kept hearing a helicopter flying back and forth. Now I knew why! So I couldn’t get to the Djevelporten. Maybe it was meant to be that twice I couldn’t climb onto a rock in a rock crevice. The car park, and thus the starting point for the ascent, was closed for about another two hours, until the helicopter had delivered everything up top. After that I began the ascent — not to the Djevelporten, but to further mountains next to it, which also offered a lovely view!
The view was amazing! The weather good, not really windy, and warm! But honestly, it’s true — and by now I’ve been able to notice this myself — that you always strive for more and always want the ever-better view. (That’s perhaps also one reason why many tourists fall to their deaths taking selfies.) At some point you’re saturated with the views, the beautiful nature and the mountains. But since, luckily, everything in nature is organic and therefore everything is unique, you always find something new. And yet, as I said, at some point you’re over-saturated and focus more on the hike than on taking photos or simply enjoying the view. In the evening I then found a little side path, a bit further north of Svolvær, set up camp for the night and dropped onto the sleeping mat. It was Wednesday and a week ago I’d got in touch with Venke from Bunk-a-Biker. It was still 115 km to her place. Around midday I arrived! She has a small house, a bit outside Sortland, and lives there with her son. He was at his father’s at the time, though. She welcomed me and invited me to lunch straight away! She’d prepared salmon for us! Over the meal we talked about travelling by motorbike. She told me that in her whole life she’d never once left Norway! But that she’d now firmly resolved to do so next year! I was the second person to stay over at her place through Bunk a Biker! The first motorcyclist had told her that she was far too reserved, given that she’d actually signed up to Bunk a Biker to get more in contact with travellers. That’s why she’d planned an outing for the evening to Nyksund, an old fishing village in the north of Vesterålen, with her friend John for me. Towards evening we met and set off! „The village of Nyksund has been abandoned several times in the past. The main reason was that the natural harbour was no longer sufficient for the ever-larger fishing boats, the fishermen no longer saw an adequate basis for making a living and moved to other places.“ In 1985 the village was then restored by a Berlin research assistant from the TU Berlin in a project with many students. Today there’s a café, a restaurant and workshops there, as well as concerts.
We took a lovely walk and afterwards I was also invited for tea and cake. On the way back we passed a memorial: the Torstein Reinholdtsen memorial. It was erected for a rescue of 40 sailors. The exciting thing was that Venke’s grandfather was involved in the rescue and helped!
The next morning we had breakfast together and I said a warm goodbye to Venke! She offered to let me pay her another visit on the way back from Litløy. I’ll definitely do that! I’d arranged to meet Elena from the Workaway at the harbour at 12. Right on time I rolled onto the gravel and she greeted me, waving! Since my bike now had to stand there at the harbour for two and a half weeks, I covered it with my good old hardware-store tarp to keep it at least a little warm!
I packed all my luggage, including the metal cases, onto the boat. That way everything was protected and packed watertight. We rode out of the harbour, out to sea…
