12th July 2023 (cloudy and hot) 12km

I woke four times last night because it was just so hot in the room, even with the fan going.  We've had it on continuously since we requested it, as we can't have the window open because we are on the main thoroughfare in and out of town and it's just too noisy.  Ju woke at 6am, I slept til 7am.  Both had showers and then downstairs for breakfast.

Pleased to say that breakfast this morning was more to my liking, with more enjoyable options.
Began with : ( remember this is cycle touring breakfast )

One glass orange juice
One very large bowl of:
Toasted muesli
Norwegian muesli
Sesame seeds
Corn flakes
Water melon
Prunes
Nuts
Yoghurt
Milk

That gave me a nice intro.
Plenty of time to Savour the food before :

One more glass of orange juice
Bacon
Scrambled Eggs
Curried sausage balls
Baked beans
Toast

Was very tasty and we had no rush to leave so :

A repeat of the bacon etc

Fruit and cereal done and dusted. Round one cooked breakfast down and onto Round Two.

By now I was feeling adequately satiated.

So...to conclude:

One cup of our own coffee
( not the muck they serve here)
One piece of small cake taster
One piece of a very nice, but small muesli slice.

Back up to our room, where we had to go through the motions of dealing with a Scandanavian airlines rep. to book a flight, after doing it online wouldn't let us confirm.

Yesterday, we had an English girl who helped us called Maria.
Well, you know the story.
You can never get the person you've dealt with.
Consequently,  we get a pidgin-English speaker, who we had to listen to so hard to understand and spell everything so slowly to confirm it was all correct.  Ju spelling out her middle name, Kathleen. It comes through on confirmation as Kathliin, so she laboriously spells it out again,  e, e as in elephant. Not i,i, as in captain, I mean idiot, i mean indigo.   He says back "e, e as in elephant,  not e, e as in India?" Oh dear God.  When she first got put through to him after pushing 1 to get English, she actually hung up as she didn't think he was speaking English.


After an hour at least, we've got a flight out of Tromso (so we better bloody well get there now) and confirmed a hotel in Tromso and in Stockholm Airport for our last night in Europe.

Finally at 11am, we began getting our gear together for our very short riding stint today, before we catch the ferry tomorrow.  The annoying part of this next piece is that there are no camp grounds for 120kms, so if the weather packs in badly, you're literally out in the wilderness.
Hopefully, we can time it right.  It's supposed to start raining at 3pm today.

It's 4pm and no sign of rain yet. Had a very nice ride out to Flakk where we will catch the ferry tomorrow morning.  We left Trondheim at 11.30am, cruised through a very pleasant part of town, stopping briefly at a supermarket to pick up supplies. 

An interesting mural.

The ride to Flakk was mostly flat which was much appreciated,  as even walking up the stairs at the hotel, we could feel our tired, aching muscles.  The road was busier than we'd anticipated, but the drivers were courteous.  Although it was pleasant,  there was nothing too photo worthy so we just cruised along to the camp, which was well situated at the side of the fjord, right next to the ferry terminal.   And we didn't even have to climb a hill to get to it.

After our mammoth12km cycle, we put up the tent and had some lunch and then went in the tent for a lie down.  Both of us fell asleep for an hour until the heat woke us up.  The tent area was filling up and as the afternoon passed, various people returned from their day trips to Trondheim.   This is the most tents we've seen at a camp the whole trip.  There are 15 here, with two other lots of bikepackers.

It was nice to be back on the bikes but we felt we could do with a bit more rest, so here for the night and about 45km planned for tomorrow.  We went for a little walk, exploring any swim options but with the tide out and lots of kelp about, it didn't look too appealing at the moment.

In Trondheim we counted up the kms we've done so far, and it's 1900km.  We're really pleased with the bikes, all our gear and our bodies.  Everything has coped well so far.

It's always interesting sitting in a campsite when you have time to kill, which, usually we do not.
It gives you the opportunity to people watch and that is always fun.

So....opposite us we have a man and wife.  By their age and actions, they have been married a long time as they hardly say a word to each other and have spent the afternoon on their phones.  They are Dutch. Their tent probably contains everything a camper requires including a small fridge, to keep the tub of ice cream cold, before they brought it out to flaunt it in front of us.
It is a tent with plenty of headroom, so no need to bend down, so they will just sit in their comfortable Dutch recliners tonight, watching Holland play in the Under 19 UEFA Champs on a 45 inch screen television.

We are surrounded on both sides by bikers.  The two German males on our right are out for a few weeks touring, before catching the ferry from Kristiansand to Denmark and riding home.  The two on the left are into heavy metal (nothing wrong with that). One is male and the other possibly doesn't identify.  Country of origin, Germany.

There are two other cyclists further down. Probably in their twenties.  Picking that they went hiking today.  Even though it must have been 26C, they were clad in long pants, long sleeved shirts and it looked like she was glad that it was over.

Also opposite us is a girl, once again twenties, who pulled up in her car, with her dog in a cage on the back seat.  Now, I'm not sure what the containment laws are for dogs travelling in cars in Norway,  but she didn't have one window open on her vehicle and she pottered around for a good ten minutes after she arrived, without removing the dog.  Poor dog.

Then we have the usual family campers, Mum, Dad and two kids. Both kids look bored stiff and are of the age that they would rather shed ma and pa and head off to meet their mates and have some fun, instead of playing camping games with the olds.

It has been a long afternoon and we are over sitting around now.  We were that bored we even dragged out the playing cards.  Found out that this ferry that we are catching tomorrow from just outside the camp, begins at 1am.  From that we gauge that the other side of this fjord is popular with people "getting away to the wilderness" and that a lot of people who live over there, work in Trondheim.  We have been monitoring the ferries all afternoon and it's extremely busy, so this next day or twos cycling, will be interesting.

Dinner done and dusted, dishes washed and blog updated. It's 8.30pm and we're getting ready for bed.