30th May 2023

After checking the weather in Tromso over the past few days and for the coming weeks, we have made the decision to abandon our initial plan of cycling from the arctic, in favour of an about face. We will now fly into Oslo, but rather than catching the flight two hours north to Tromso, we will start in Oslo and cycle southwest to Kristiansand and gradually make our way north. 

Tromso will now be our leaving point at the end of August and we will transit through Stockholm on our way back to New Zealand. This has not been altered lightly, but with fresh snow falling in Tromso this week and freezing temperatures in the upcoming weeks, we will head south in search of more moderate climes. We always expected bad weather during this adventure, but weren't quite expecting this in June.

Packed my bike this afternoon and it all went very well. If the weather is good tomorrow, we'll get one more longer distance ride before packing Julia's bike. We have other bikes we can ride in the meantime.

Julia managed to get through to Scandanavian Airlines to cancel the initial flight to Tromso and we lost a little over half the cost. The bonus is that packing the bikes in Tromso and securing bike boxes, getting a hotel centrally located with shuttles to the airport, is so much easier than our options in Stockholm.
As we prepare for another day closer to take off, we are currently checking out hotels for our last three days in Norway with my only stipulation being that they have a bloody big breakfast.