Cycling the Land of the Midnight Sun

Woke to our last full day in Tromso to clear skies. The temperature outside was supposedly a cool 8 C. By 10am it was 11 C and expected to reach 18 C by 4pm. Very cruisy today, nothing to do other than tape the boxes shut. We would have liked to have weighed them, but it's going to be so close, it's just not worth thinking about...even though I did. Going to check on any available cover around by the bus stop, as from 7am tomorrow, it's supposed to rain. Also got to have correct change to pay on the bus....really... no card payment...?? Will look for dinner out tonight to keep things hassle free and that will be the end of our tour. Just the travel home after that and nobody wants to read about that. Got a call from brother Dave, just to chat and organise some stuff for our arrival home on Friday. A walk through town followed that to pick up a few things. Whilst we were out we looked at some property/ real estate advertised in the windows. I'd been reading t

  Awake at 6.46am after the best sleep we've had here. I found that one  window in the bedroom wasn't shut properly, so once I closed it fully, it would have cut some of the noise out. Either that, or we were knackered from yesterday's walk. Tele on straight away as World Championship Marathon on. Made Ju a cuppa, but she was still sleeping. I love the marathon. Such a tactical race. There's always one favourite, but on the day, probably five or six of the top twenty runners could surprise. Seeing the subtle changes in pace or the overtaking manoevres, which at the right moment can totally demoralize a fellow competitor, to the extent that they lose ground quickly. Julia joined me and half way through we took a load of washing down to the laundry, along with the extra cardboard from the bike boxes and some rubbish we were throwing out. Marathon over, expected result, but good race, we took washing and put in the dryer, which we were rapt to be able to use for

I love the whole process of going on a bike trip.  The planning, the doing and the reflection are all enjoyable to me and this trip perhaps most of all. Initial planning started five years ago when we got back from our last trip.  We love Europe and thought we'd like to investigate some countries we've never been to and initially hatched a plan to cycle around the Baltic Sea, taking in Estonia,  Latvia,  Lithuania and Poland.  Then we heard about the Rallarvegen in Norway, one of the most beautiful offroad trails in the world. We thought we could include this in the same trip by landing in Oslo and cycling east through Sweden and catching a ferry to Estonia,  possibly even St Petersburg. From there we would cycle the Baltic states down to Poland, across the top of Germany,  up through Denmark and catch the ferry to Bergen and finish with the rallarvegen back to Oslo. This was all supposed to happen in 2020 but luckily we hadn't got to the stage of booking flights when Covi