Beauty and the Beast: Hiking the GR20 in Corsica (Retrospective from September, 2015)

Cerro Castillo, Chile, November 28, 2015

When I was planning my farewell tour of Europe for the summer of 2015, one of the things that I knew had to be on the itinerary was hiking the famed GR20 trekking route in Corsica.  I’d heard it being talked about for years by hikers, often in hushed tones, and I thought it would make a fitting finale after several weeks of warming up for it by hiking in the Pyrenees. 

As detailed in the previous post, the best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley (as Robbie Burns said).  After Terri received the news of her unexpected (and very un-Swiss) last-minute rescheduling of her Swiss citizenship ceremony, originally scheduled for September 16^th but now postponed until September 30^th, we frantically rescheduled and rebooked and by the evening of September 3^rd we were in another 2-euro 2-hour bus from Gavarnie (where we had received the e-mail that put us into motion) to the nearest railhead at Tarbes and a cheap motel opposite the station. 

The next morning, September 4^th, we jumped on a morning train to Toulouse.  After leaving my big hiking backpack in a left-luggage office of Byzantine complexity and incompetence at the station, we headed into town on foot.  One major objective was to buy myself a new camera lens to replace my much-loved, much-used and now completely broken Nikon 18-200 lens that had seized up as we left Cauterets a few days before.  We tried a slick professional shop that didn’t have the 18-200, but had an even more impressive 18-300 mm lens.  I was sorely tempted, but the prospect of having to buy all new filters (the 18-300 had a different diameter) made me hesistate.

We strolled further into the lovely historic centre of Toulouse, past the impressive Romanesque Church of St. Sernin and past hordes of university students undergoing a frosh week treasure hunt/ritual humiliation.  The main pedestrian drag, rue du Taur (named after a gruesome martyrdom involving a bull), was a buzzing, lively spot and we had an unexpected Asian lunch that went down well.  I made a fruitless sortie to another camera shop, then walked with Terri down to the Garonne River.  I was struck by the bilingual street signs, written in both French and Languedoc (Occitan), the language of a civilization in southern France destroyed by northern knights in the Albigensian crusade.  Toulouse was an important Roman city (Tolosa) before becoming a major centre of troubadour culture and the capital of the Languedoc region.  It’s nice to see that heritage being promoted today in the city.

On our way back to the first camera shop, we blundered into an electronics megastore, FNAC.  They had a sale going on, and had the 18-200 mm lens in stock.  I bought it, got the VAT back and ended up saving a fair bit of money.  Satisfied with my new purchase, we collected my bag from the station and took the subway, tram and city bus out to our hotel near the airport.

Modern Toulouse revolves around Airbus, which has its main factory beside the airport.  Outside our hotel, hundreds of Airbus employees in high-visibility vests were cycling home from work.  We dined on pate, wine, cheese and baguettes in our hotel room and threw ourselves into bed early.

The next morning we caught the bus and tram out to the airport and got on our Volotea flight to Bastia.  I had never heard of the airline, a Spanish-based budget carrier, and it marked the first time that I had ever flown on (or even heard of) a Boeing 717; another money-saving feature was that most of the flight crew were mainland Chinese.  At Bastia airport, we tried futilely to hitchhike to Calvi before finally giving up and taking a long, slow bus-train combination.  During our three-hour wait in Bastia town, we bought a map and guidebook (to replace the ones left behind in Leysin for Terri to bring back from her citizenship ceremony trip), had lunch and then took a leisurely, spectacular train ride to Calvi, only slightly delayed by a large forest fire whipped up by the gale-force mistral wind.  We got to Calvi after dark, found a campground and went to bed.

Early the next morning, September 6^th, we crawled out of the tent, packed up rapidly and shared a truly exorbitant taxi with a Canadian couple, Maike and Brendan, to the trailhead at Calenzana.  For a 14 km ride that took about 12 minutes, the fare came to 50 euros.  In Corsica, as in much of the world, there are no poor cabdrivers.

The start of the trek was relatively straightforward, a 900-metre climb up a broad trail through typical lowland maquis vegetation to the Bocca u Saltu, a broad pass.  We had sweeping views down to the northwest coast, with Calvi a far-off citadel and the Mediterranean a still azure blue, yesterday’s gales completely gone. 

Terri on the first day, high above Calvi

After a lunch of sardines and bread, we set off on a long traverse and climb up through pine forests and over granite boulders to another pass, the Bocca a u Bazzuchellu.  There were sections of tricky scrambling and even a fixed chain at one part, making for some challenging manoeuvring while carrying a heavy pack. We took another break there before a final traverse, partly through a long stretch of burnt-out forsts, to the day’s refuge, l’Ortu di up Piobbu.  We were unpleasantly surprised to find almost every available tent site taken; September is supposed to be the off-season for the GR20, but apparently not this year.  As well, we learned that the previous day’s fires and winds had seen the first section of the trail officially closed, so there were two days’ worth of hikers setting out that day.  We eventually found a site quite far downhill from the hut, put up the tent, wandered uphill to the hut to sample some great cake, and then headed back to the tent for a great meal of roesti and sausage.  I was carrying more weight than almost any other hiker on the GR20, but at least it meant that we were eating better than most people.  We had a post-prandial taste of whiskey watching fog roll in, enveloping the granite peaks as the sun set.

First-night sunset

The second leg of the GR20 is where it starts to get serious.  The GR20 is often described as the most challenging long-distance hike in Europe, and it’s not because of horizontal distances covered, or vertical metres climbed.  Instead, it’s because of the relentless technical scrambling on several of the days, and this started right out of camp that day.  We rock-hopped and angled our way up big slabs of exposed rock all morning through a lovely birch forest.  Terri found it hard going, and I didn’t much enjoy having a heavy pack on my back for some of the trickier moves.  We topped out for the day at 2020m, lunched on sausage and peanuts and then headed into the mist for a long, tiring series of short, steep climbs.  We were almost alone, as we were more or less the last people out of camp in the morning after a leisurely breakfast of pancakes.  A party of Belgian students and a lone Israeli medical student caught up to us over the course of the afternoon, trekkers whom we would see over and over again during the coming days.  Finally, with Terri despairing of ever arriving, we slogged our unsteady way down an endless scree slope, rocks rolling underfoot constantly.

Seriously steep terrain on day two

We arrived to a scene reminiscent of this summer’s footage of Syrian refugees arriving in Europe.  The refuge, Carozzu, is located at a spot lacking in flat land, and every likely tent-sized spot was already taken. Just before dark, a young man dragged himself into camp, his knee cut to the kneecap and his wrist broken by a six-metre fall; he was evacuated the next morning after being stitched up by a doctor among the hikers.  We ended up staking out a narrow spot, too small to put up our tent, and sleeping out under the stars on our air mattresses.  Our sleeping bags were soon soaked with dew, although the moisture evaporated by the time we woke up the next morning.  The views of the stars, watching the Milky Way rotate slowly over our heads, were compensation for the lack of space. 

Light coming to the Spasimata gorge

We made a much more timely getaway the next morning, setting off before 8 o’clock thanks to Terri having mixed up some muesli the night before.  We knew that day three was supposed to be quite challenging, and we wanted to give ourselves enough daylight hours to complete it.  The fun and games began immediately, with a swaying suspension bridge, the Passerelle de Spasimata, to cross before we climbed steeply up a long box canyon, a route that involved lots of precarious scrambling on huge steeply inclined slabs of pink granite.  We were in a landscape of pure rock, almost unadulterated by the green of vegetation, tempered only by the crustal clear waters of the pools of water far below us in the bottom of the valley.  It was challenging going, with lots of hands-and-feet scrambling up very steep pitches.  Eventually we reached a tiny lake, near which I watched two moufflon (wild sheep) grazing on the opposite bank, looking for all the world like a pair of Thomson gazelle transplanted from Tanzania.  By the time I reached for my camera, the moufflon had slipped quietly into an adjoining patch of bush from which they did not reappear.

Really?  This is a trekking route?  Day three

We eventually, after almost four hours, made our way to the Bocca Muvrella, a pass with breathtaking views down both sides.  From there on, although we had little net vertical gain left, the day only got harder, with a tough downclimb followed by a rugged traverse to the last pass of the day, another Bocca whose name escapes me now.  At times we had to take off our backpacks and pass them down before climbing down gingerly.  Any misstep, while not necessarily fatal, would have meant a helicopter ride and lots of pain.  It was physically and mentally draining, and even the final downhill to the ski resort of Haut Asco was a long series of careful short steps on sliding scree.  It was a profound relief to walk into the pine forests of Asco and finally swing our legs freely and stride forward at a normal walking pace.  We camped in a beautiful spot that evening under pine trees, and slept the sleep of the dead.

On the way between passes, day three

The fabled fourth stage of the GR20, through the Cirque de Solitude, used to be the toughest stretch of the whole route.  However, in June this year a big landslide killed 6 hikers in the Cirque, leading the authorities to close this route.  The alternatives are a bus ride down and around the Cirque (and the next day’s stage too), or a long climb almost over the highest peak in Corsica, the Monte Cinto.  Shellshocked by the previous two days, we opted for the soft option, and at 9:00 the next morning we boarded a bus for a slightly hair-raising ride down the valley into the lowland town of Ponte Leccio, through which we had passed four days previously in the train.  A brief stop there allowed us to buy steak and eggs for a slap-up dinner, before a remarkable road led us up through the Scala de Santa Regina (“the staircase of Santa Regina), one narrow lane pushed thorugh a precipitous gorge.  It was slightly white-knuckle stuff, with our driver aggressively forcing her way past befuddled German tourists, but we suddenly emerged into an inland highland basin, the Niolo, and hopped off the bus in Albertacce at 11:30 ready to walk.  The other hikers—Celine (one of the Belgian students), Alban (a middle-aged Frenchman from Grenoble) with his 71-year-old father and 68-year-old uncle, and a Swiss student—soon left us behind, but Terri and I didn’t mind.  We were revelling in the walk, through pine forests and open, rocky chaparral reminiscent of Montana.  It was a joy to be able to stride along without constantly looking at our feet.  We barely noticed the 600 metres of climbing, and got to Castellu di Vergio, another ski resort, in enough time to take steaming hot showers and do laundry.  It felt like trekking the way we were both used to.

Terri enjoying the easier walking on day four near Albertacce

The one thing that continued not to feel like trekking was my left hip.  Every night my hip locked up completely, and I could barely get to my feet.  Getting out of the tent was an inelegant affair, as I crawled like a commando through the door, rolled onto my side and slowly got my right foot under me.  Finally, with agonizing slowly, I would straighten my left leg, wincing in pain and hobble around.  After half an hour, I would be able to walk, and during the day my mobility wasn’t too badly impaired, but rock climbing the toughest parts of the route was slow and painful.  I was at a loss what to do; I took ibuprofen and aspirin, but this did little to make whatever was wrong get better, and the next morning I would be doing my imitation of a 90-year-old once again.

A distant view of Ajaccio and its coastline

Col de San Pietru, above Castellu Vergio

The feeling continued the next day as we covered more distance on the map than ever before on wide, easy trails leading to a lovely alpine tarn, the Lac de Ninu.  It was surrounded by pozzini, the flat grasslands so prized by Corsican herdsmen (perhaps because they’re so rare!).

Terri and tiny equine friend, Lac de Ninu

The horses grazing beside the lake reminded me forcefully of a wonderful trip through Mongolia back in 2007.  A sun-soaked picnic beside the lake and we were off for an afternoon of quick walking through a landscape of amazing dead trees looking very Ansel Adams-esque, finally climbing to a cheerful (but still overcrowded) campsite at Mangannu, where we met a number of groups who had walked over the Cirque de Solitude and then done a double stage to catch up to us. 

Day five scenery

Strangely, although it was by far the easiest walking of the route so far, Terri complained that evening of a sore left ankle and shin.  We knew that the next day was going to be our last stage of tough scrambling, so we studied the map for alternative routes, but they involved enormously long marches around the mountains, so Terri decided to tough it out for another day.

It was, as advertised, a long hard slog form Mangannu to Pietra Piana.  We climbed steeply out of camp, up, up, up to a narrow gap in a steep arête.  So far the footing had been fine, but the subsequent series of traverses and short up-and-down pitches was really hard, with lots of scrambling on all fours, hopping across boulderfields and occasionally lowering our packs down in front of us.  With her sore leg, this was a painful day for Terri, reducing her to tears at one point.

The scenery was stunning, looking down on a series of tiny jewel-like lakes surrounded by a chaos of rock faces and rockfalls.  Eventually we made one final traverse, climbed past a tiny hidden meadow, over a final ridge and saw the refuge directly below us.  The clouds, mist and threat of rain that had dogged us all day dissipated and we arrived in bright sunshine at the best campsite of the hike.  Our tent site was below and away from the main cluster, perched on the edge of a cliff giving epic views down the valley and over the next day’s route.  It was a wonderful place to watch the setting sun light distant peaks aflame while sipping some of the local wine sold by the hutkeeper.

Last evening of camping, Pietra Piana

The view from Pietra Piana

Terri’s foot was now much worse, with either tendinitis or a sprain the likeliest culprits.  We decided to avoid the long two-stages-in-one-day march that most of our fellow hikers were planning, and instead follow the river valley all the way down to a roadhead.  It was a good choice, both for the relative ease of walking and for the stunning river.  We hiked past a series of perfect swimming holes, each more perfect than the previous one, and finally took the plunge in a secluded pool.  It was chilly water, but it felt wonderful on our unwashed skin, and the granite boulders lining the pool made it easy to bask in the sun afterwards and warm up. 

Lovely swimming pools on the last day

Eventually we passed a small bergerie where we shared a beer and tasted the local sheep’s cheese before an endless plod past more bathing spots brought us finally to the road at the tiny hamlet of Caniglia.  By now Terri could hardly walk because of the pain in her leg, and a French couple in a camper van took pity on us and gave us a lift to the main highway at Vivariu.  It was a long hobble to the train station, but by 6:30 we were in the old inland capital Corte.  We planned to take a day off to recover and to celebrate my 47^th birthday on September 13^th, but after a visit to the hospital the next day, punctuated by a dramatic encounter with a histrionic shouting nurse, we were both ordered to cease and desist from hiking for at least a week.  My sciatica, which had been with me all trip, suddenly took a big turn for the worse on that last day, and I was hobbling as badly as Terri.  Our GR20 was over at the halfway mark.  At least we had completed the harder half of the route before quitting.

My overall take on the GR20 is that it lives up to its mystique, but not in the way I expected.  The toughness of the walk is not in its vertical metres climbed, or its horizontal kilometres covered.  It’s in the technical challenges of scrambling and semi-rock climbing with a full backpack, and in the very real physical risk of a slip or a tumble, as well as the mental stress of doing this on every step for hours on end.  The three non-technical days we did (Albertacce-Castellu Vergio on day 4, Castellu Vergio-Mangannu on day 5 and our walk out on day 7) were joys:  easy walking with great views.  I suspect that the southern half of the walk would have been like this too.  The legendary technical stages, origin of the GR20’s hair-raising reputation, are a do-able challenge, with stunning views, but the mental grind of having to choose every foothold and handhold with care detracts a bit from the fun of walking in the mountains.  I greatly preferred the walking we did in the Pyrenees.

The other part of the GR20 that is sub-par is accommodation, with overcrowded refuges that charge very high prices for everything and have dubious sanitation and not enough space (in most cases) for tents.  The GR20 is a victim of its own popularity in this respect. 

Would I come back to finish the GR20 in the future?  Maybe, although it’s not at the top of my to-do list.

An All-Too-Brief Taste of Trekking in the Pyrenees (Retrospective: August-September 2015)

Cerro Castillo, Chile, November 28, 2015

After a couple of weeks of recharging, both mentally and physically, at my father’s house in Thunder Bay, I returned to Leysin in late August.  One thing that didn’t recharge at all was the condition of my left leg, where sciatic pain had only gotten worse, rather than improving.  I had hoped that rest and relaxation would let the problem heal itself, but this proved not to be the case.  I woke up in the morning, or even in the middle of the night, with my left hip so sore and tight that I could hardly get out of bed.  Hardly the best preparation for six weeks of hiking in the Pyrenees and Corsica!

I had wanted to hike the Pyrenees for many years, ever since my late uncle Piet told me stories of hiking the length of the entire range back in the early 1990s.  The Pyrenees sounded much less full of hikers and climbers and cars than the Alps, and somewhat wilder.  I realized that Terri and I didn’t have time to walk the entire length, but the central part, from the Col de Pourtalet to Andorra, looked like a doable three-week project.  We bought Ton Joosten’s guidebook, The Pyrenean Haute Route, and picked a segment of the route that looked like being the right length and difficulty.  I liked the fact that Joosten’s route went back and forth across the Spanish-French frontier, staying away from the lowlands and more-trafficked routes like the GR10 and GR 11.  Terri finally found out about the date of her naturalization ceremony to become a Swiss citizen in August, and we planned our trip around that.  We would hike for nineteen days from August 26^th to September 13^th, then Terri would fly back to Switzerland from Toulouse, I would stay to do a few days of hiking, and then we would reunite in Nice on September 16^th to catch a ferry to Corsica to hike the GR20 for two weeks. 

It sounded like a good plan, and we were excited as we took a day-long train trip from Leysin, via Lausanne, Lyon and Montpellier, to the town of Pau.  We sat in the sun outside Lyon Port-Dieu train station while waiting for a connection, eating sandwiches and soaking up rays, enjoying the sensation of both of us being free (Terri had just finished her final term of teaching) and talking about our upcoming hike.  

Henri IV's palace in Pau

We got to Pau around 8:30 pm, put our heavy packs into our “apart-hotel” and scoured the town for restaurants that were still open.  We found a great little Mexican restaurant run by two Sri Lankans (as you do in a small city in France), then blundered into the sound and light show at the old palace of Henry IV.  We learned a lot about the life and times of one of France’s more exceptional kings, a Protestant king of a largely Catholic country racked by horrific inter-religious strife oddly reminiscent of present-day Iraq or Syria.  Pau looked like the sort of city that might repay a bit more exploration one day.

The next morning, Wednesday August 26^th, we were up early and off to catch a bus.  By 8:00 we were on a local bus to the Col de Pourtalet, an absolute steal at two euros for a two-stage trip up the beautiful Val d’Ossau that took almost two hours.  We missed our jumping-off point, and had to wait for the bus to turn around at the top of the pass and start its return trip to get to our trailhead.  We hopped off, shouldered packs and were off, heading steadily uphill up a green, beautiful valley.  Looking back, we could see the steep grey mass of the Pic du Midi d’Ossau rising behind us.  The Pyrenean Haute Route stage we were following started up near the summit in a mountain refuge, and by starting at the road, we were saving over an hour, resulting in a day that was supposed to be 6:45 in length, according to the Joostens guide.  It was supposed to be challenging but doable trekking, with spectacular scenery.  We were quite keen to get going and we stormed off uphill, through a pleasant stretch of forest before the trail levelled off a bit to ascend a valley.  We passed a shepherd’s hut surrounded by sheep.  As we continued climbing, we looked back to see twenty or so griffon vultures circling in the sky, then dropping down near the hut to feast on something dead, presumably a sheep.  The Pyrenees are home to 90% of Europe’s population of griffon vultures, the largest birds in Europe.

Terri heading off on our first morning

Our route continued uphill to our first pass, the Col d'Arrious at 2259 metres, some 900 metres above our starting point.  We sat and ate sandwiches looking back towards the Val d’Ossau before advancing a bit to a pretty lake where we had another snack and turned our attention to the first of the “challenging sections” mentioned in the guidebook, the Passage d’Orteig.  

Reservoir near the Passage d'Orteig

It looked frankly terrifying, a traverse of a vertiginous cliff, equipped with chains.  We set off, missing the path the first time, and while it was uncomfortable at times because of our big packs, almost borderline rock-climbing, it was far less impossible than it had looked from afar.  We breathed a sigh of relief once we had struggled up the last steep section and looked down on the Refuge de Arremoulit.  It was easy walking down to the refuge, built next to a pretty lake (the area was dotted with tiny lakes, filling small depressions in the granite), and we treated ourselves to beer and omelettes there.  It was relatively late, almost 4:00 pm, by the time we got going.  We weren’t too worried, as it was supposed to be about two and a half hours to the next refuge and we had almost five hours of daylight left.

As it turned out, we should have been worried.  Our path led us around the lake and then steeply up a tortured landscape of gigantic shattered boulders.  There was no path markers, and finding the best way up was no easy task, as many of the boulders were loose and threatened to tip sideways under our weight and send us sprawling.  As we made our way up slowly, a pair of women accompanied by a twelve-year-old boy appeared, coming downhill.  They looked concerned that we were heading uphill so late, although they told us that once we were over the pass, the path markers would resume, making navigation simpler.

Path?  We don't need no stinking path!

This turned out to be a bit of an untruth.  We came over the top of the pass, the Col de Palas (2517 m) and looked down into Spain, where a reservoir sparkled blue against the shattered red and black rocky landscape.  We found a few reassuring splashes of red and white paint marking the way, and followed them diagonally downward to the left, towards an immense rockslide.  We could see where the next pass, the Porte du Loveda (2600 m) must be, but it wasn’t clear where the path would lead from the rockslide to the pass.  As we picked our way painstakingly onto the rockslide, we completely lost the paint markers.  It took a lot of time to find a decent way across, constantly searching in vain for the next marker.  A lightly-laden trekker came up behind us, moving quickly, and crossed the rockfall above us.  We tried to follow his route, but it was never clear that we were following a real path.  Across the rockslide, we walked approximately along the path of the other hiker, now rapidly approaching the pass, and tried to keep him in sight to get a feeling for the path. 

It was slow going, and it took forever to find the paint marks again.  We followed them upwards towards the Porte du Loveda, all the while watching the other hiker bound uphill like a mountain goat and disappear out of sight.  He seemed to be following a different route than that indicated by the paint markers, and so when we once again lost the path, after searching in all directions for more markers, we decided to follow the other man as he seemed to know where he was going.  The climbing got more and more precipitous, and eventually Terri decided that we must have made a wrong turn.  I left my pack with her and went ahead to scout.  I found a way up to where the other man had vanished from sight, but the descent on the other side was more or less impossible without a rope, harness and bolts.  On the bright side, though, I could see a well-trodden path descending from further right along the ridge. I came back down and we considered our options.  I thought we should retreat downhill to the lake to camp and try again in the morning, but Terri was all for pushing on and getting to the hut. 

We cast around again, rather like Hash House Harriers, and finally came up with the paint flashes.  They led uphill further to our right and we followed, grateful to have found the right route.  The route grew more and more vertical, to the point where we were more or less rock-climbing with no rope and carrying huge packs.  While working my way up a vertical chimney, the fuel bottle that I had attached to the outside of my pack came loose and fell against a rock, breaking the fuel pump which was projecting from the top of the bottle.  This was a major loss, as it meant that we could not cook.  We had other, more pressing concerns, though, as Terri was barely able to get up the steep slope, even after passing her backpack up to me.  Finally, though, with about an hour of daylight left, we were across the pass and had only the downhill (an hour, according to the book) between us and the refuge.

We set off downhill into French territory again, following paint markings, and began traversing to our right.  Everything went well until we got to another rockslide with no markers to be found.  We cast around again and found nothing, but the only practicable path seemed to lead downhill.  It was a slow, hard descent requiring big vertical drops on each step and treacherous footing on the loose rocks.  All the time it was getting darker, and once we realized that the ground in front of us was heading towards a cliff, we were in trouble.  At this point I was finally able to convince Terri that we wouldn’t make it to the refuge, and that we had to find someplace to bivouac.  I scouted ahead and found a small area that was less steep (I won’t say flat) where we could spend the night.  Terri was just about done, and I had to do a few trips up and down a pretty steep fifty metres of trail to shuttle our bags down.

Our tilted bivouac spot on the first night

It was an uncomfortable night, with both of us exhausted and yet worried about sliding downhill and over a cliff in our sleep.  We forced down a few nuts and raisins, laid down our ground sheets and mattresses and fell asleep.  It was a majestic setting, with a sky full of stars and the moon lighting up the massive rock ramparts on the other side of our little valley.  I awoke a few times in the night from big gusts of wind, looked around to admire the views, and fell asleep again.   If we weren’t lost and tired and worried about sliding downhill (which didn’t happen), it would have been a perfect, memorable night.

In the morning, we ate a few nuts and raisins, drank some water and began the tortuous ascent back up towards the path.  After 40 tough minutes, we were back where we had lost the path previously.  We knew, from observations made as we climbed, that the real path had to stay high and traverse to avoid the cliffs.  It took a lot of wandering in circles to find a distant cairn that led to paint markers.  It was still challenging walking, but at least we knew we were on the right path again.  We circled a long way to the right before starting to descend through another valley that looked like the aftermath of a giants’ rockfight.  Inexplicably, we chose to wander off the path again as two ascending hikers seemed to be following a more direct route down to a large lake.  Needless to say we got lost again when the cairns ran out, but by now we were determined not to backtrack, and managed to find a route to the lake, where we picked up paint markers again.  It was still a good hour and a half of walking to get to the hut, with several ups and downs to avoid cliffs, but now we were back in well-trodden territory, and there were no major difficulties in reaching the Refuge de Larribet, although it took us a total of three and a half hours from our bivouac spot.  The timings in the Joosten book seemed to be highly optimistic, and (at least for us) not a reliable guide to real time taken.

At the hut we demolished more omelettes and beer, chatting to a local hiker, before starting the long trudge down to the roadhead at Plan d’Aste.  We needed to find a place to replace the broken fuel pump, and we had also decided that it was time to reassess our route plans.  It was a beautiful hike along a wide, easy path, past green forests and burbling brooks, and by 4:15 we were at the end of the road, wondering how easy it would be to hitch a lift down to Lourdes.  As it turned out, it was simple; the second car that went by picked us up, bought us a beer in a local café, took us by a hiking shop in Arzeles-Gazost (no luck with finding an MSR pump) and then went out of their way to drop us in downtown Lourdes.  We ended up doing well with hitchhiking in the Pyrenees, which is just as well as there is minimal public transport in a lot of the smaller valleys.

Lourdes was a surprisingly rewarding spot to spend the night.  I knew very little about Lourdes except that the Virgin Mary was supposed to have appeared there.  I didn’t realize what a huge tourism centre it is, rather like (in my friend Mark’s phrase) “Ibiza for Catholics”.  We found a cheapish hotel (having hundreds of hotels brings competition), staggered there with our packs, and then went out to explore.  We passed by the grotto where St. Bernadette had her visions in the mid-1800s.  Thousands of votive candles were blazing in dozens of stands outside, while wheelchairs carried those unable to walk and hoping for a miracle. Food was plentiful and relatively cheap (11 euros for a big steak with chips), catering to the pilgrims from every corner of the world.  We identified tourists from Poland, Italy, Spain, Sri Lanka, India, Nigeria and Samoa, among many other countries.  After dark, we headed to the huge church to watch the candlelit procession.  It was a really moving experience, even for a non-religious person like me.  The sheer number of pilgrims, the heartfelt Ave Maria being sung en masse, the hundreds of wheelchairs in the front rows, the thousands of candles lighting up the square, made for a spectacle to equal Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, the Barkhor in Lhasa, Mt. Kailash in Tibet or the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.

Candlelit procession in Lourdes

The next morning, after sleeping for 10 solid hours and waking up to aching muscles, backs and (in my case) my left hip, we made use of the urban facilities available.  We bought new maps and hiking guides, having decided that the GR10 was more our speed.  I looked around, realized that MSR fuel pumps were thin on the ground, and took to the internet to find a solution.  A French online shop, monrechaud.fr, had pumps in stock and would deliver Poste Restante to any French post office.  I bought the pump and had it shipped to Les Cauterets, where we should arrive in three days’ time.  I was glad to solve that problem, and we headed out to have a picnic in the huge park across the river from the grotto.  We wanted to restart our hiking from Arrens, and there was no public transport leading there.  We caught a bus in the late afternoon from Lourdes to Arzeles-Gazost and then trudged a long way through town, trying to find a spot to hitchhike.  It wasn’t easy to find a spot along a busy, narrow road leading to the Col d’Aubisque, but eventually a thirty-something sawyer driving a cargo van stopped and drove us a long way out of his way to deliver us to Arrens, another very positive hitching experience.  We found a beautiful riverside campground and went out for delicious burgers in the village.  That night was a full moon, and we watched it rise over the mountains, with trees silhouetted against its face.

Full moon in Arrens seen through the trees

We woke to a tent absolutely soaking with dew.  It was our first night in the new ultralight three-man tent that Terri had recently bought, the Big Agnes Copper Spur 3.  Summer was definitely thinking of leaving town, and there was an autumnal nip in the air as we packed up the campsite.  Leaving Arrens, we felt as though we were re-launching our Pyrenees trip.  The GR10, the long-distance path leading from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, was broad and well-marked, leading through hardwood forests.  Sadly a big landslide had wiped out a section of the path, meaning that we had to backtrack, take a detour and walk along a road for longer than I would have liked.  Within an hour, we had crossed the Col des Borderes (a lovely short cycling route that looked appealing) and were headed back down into the adjacent valley and the village of Estaing.  We dropped down to its pretty church and headed upstream along a small river which made for a perfect picnic spot, complete with ripe blackberries growing on the bank.  We weren’t very far from the road that runs up the valley, but traffic was light and the noise of the rushing water drowned out most traffic sounds.  We eventually pulled away from the road and climbed up and down over a couple of small ridges, startling a small snake, a toad and several lizards which were sunning themselves on the path.  

At Lac d'Estaing

We sweated our way up the final slope leading to Lac d’Estaing, where we had a well-earned beer in a small restaurant and chatted with a couple of retired Cognac producers; when we went to pay our bill, we discovered that the other couple had paid for our beers.  We walked for another half an hour around Lac d’Estaing, a shallow body of water surrounded by steep mountains on two sides and a gently sloping basin on the other two.  Since it was a beautiful Saturday afternoon, lots of daytrippers had driven up to the lake, but it didn’t feel too crowded.  We put up our tent in a small campground and then wandered down to have a delicious (but expensive) meal at the lakeside restaurant beside the campground.  After dinner we sat out beside the lake, watching the sunset, drinking wine and feeling at peace with the world.

Lac d'Estaing makes Terri pensive

We got up at 7:00 the next morning, but only started walking at 9:40, a typically lazy start to our day.  My hip, which had been getting sorer by the day, was almost completely seized up with sciatic pain the next morning and I almost fell over as I tried to get out of the tent and stand up.  Luckily walking seemed to loosen things up, so by the end of the day I was much more mobile (although I still couldn’t swing my left leg with the knee straight, meaning that I had to limp slightly throughout the day).  We took our time over a couple of coffees to give Terri her morning caffeine fix before heading uphill along the GR10, climbing steeply uphill away from the lake.  As we walked along, a few groups of mountain bikers came racing past downhill.  Just as we left the forest and passed a shepherd’s hut, my beloved 18-200 mm camera lens, which had been showing signs of not working optimally for a few weeks, suddenly locked up completely, no longer zooming or focussing.  I tried to coax it back into zooming, but my efforts were rewarded by an audible crunch and the cessation of all movement.  After more than eight years of work and many thousands of photos, the lens was no more.  That left me with only my telephoto lens working, which was great for wildlife and birds and details, but not for landscape.  My smartphone has a camera, but it’s hardly the same thing as a digital SLR.  Until I could replace it, my photography was going to be severely curtailed, which didn’t make me very happy.

Terri storming up the Col d'Illheou

We continued steaming ahead toward the 2242-metre-high Col d’Illheou, until just below the top, when our legs got a bit tired and we stopped for a picnic.  The top of the pass was a beautiful grassy meadow, full of well-tended horses, with steep rocky peaks looming above.  Under a cloudless sky, the scenery was perfect and I mourned the loss of my lens.  We meandered around on a long traverse to the Refuge d’Illheou, where we had our obligatory omelettes and beers, before starting a very long trudge down a steep-sided valley towards Les Cauterets.  A spectacular waterfall erupted into the valley partway down, and up above we could see the lifts of a small ski area, Lys.  We eventually passed the bottom of the lift system, where more mountain bikers were barrelling down towards town.  It was a surprisingly long descent into Cauterets, down at 850 metres, and it took us a while longer to find a campground.  We put up our tent under trees on lush grass and then went into town to find cheap eats; burgers and fries and beers did the trick, and we wandered back to our well-earned sleep.

We took the next day off, as the weather forecast called for severe storms.  Our first order of business was to pick up the fuel pump at the post office.  We wandered around the town, a Belle Epoque spa town that now has an appealing atmosphere of slightly faded gentility, then retreated to our campground with a roast chicken and salad feast for lunch.  Afterwards, I wrestled with the stove; the new pump worked perfectly, but the methylated spirits I had bought in the grocery store did not work as a fuel.  A bit of internet searching on the smartphone revealed that MSR stoves run on kerosene, gasoline or white fuel, but not methylated spirits, so we eventually headed back into town and bought some expensive white fuel.  At 7 euros a litre, it’s the cleanest and hottest-burning fuel, but at five times the price of gasoline, I find it hard to justify buying it too often.  I bought the fuel at a wonderful mountaineering and trekking shop called Sherpa, run by a Nepalese guy; it reminded me forcefully of the shops in Thamel where I have outfitted myself for a few treks over the years.  It began raining as we walked back to the campground, and we huddled under an awning and ate bread and pate and leftover chicken from lunch.  It continued raining all night, sometimes torrentially, not making for a restful night.

We began the next day lazily, not even popping our heads out of the tent until 9, when the rain finally showed signs of stopping.  We celebrated having a working stove by cooking up some bacon and eggs.  Around noon we walked into town, where we found we had a couple of hours to wait for the next bus up the road to Pont d’Espagne.  We stuck our thumbs out instead, and quite quickly got a lift with a couple of sixty-something women who crammed us and our backpacks into the back seat of a very small Renault for the twenty-minute drive up a steep escarpment to the trailhead at Pont d’Espagne.  

Lac d'Aube

We thanked them and then headed off uphill through a wonderful Canadian Shield landscape of tumbling streams, granite boulders and pine trees.  We reached a tiny lake, the Lac d’Aube, where we sampled the local speciality, gateau Basque, before heading further uphill, through an enchanting valley of amazing waterfalls, picturesque granite slabs and expansive views out towards higher peaks.  We stopped to picnic on bacon and egg sandwiches in the midst of this idyllic area, then continued climbing into the gathering mist until we reached the Refuge des Oulettes de Gaube at 2150 metres.  We put up our tent, then wandered over to the refuge to escape the cold and damp and have a beer.  When we got back, the mist had parted slightly and afforded us our first glimpse of the massive north face of the Vignemale, the highest peak in the French Pyrenees at 3298 metres, before the mist curtain closed again.  As we cooked dinner, we could hear the intimidating sound of a falling serac and its attendant rockfall; it was too far away to affect us, but it sounded very, very close indeed in the fog.

Vignemale

We had a great night’s sleep, and the next morning we didn’t start to stir until almost 8:00, as it was too cold to want to get up before then.  We cooked pancakes, cleaned up and then started walking around 10:00.  Our day’s stage was going to lead us over the highest pass on the entire GR10, and Terri wanted to get over it before the predicted bad weather appeared.  We climbed steeply up the valley wall, staring out at the Vignemale, now fully visible under clear skies.  We got to the top of the Hourquette d’Ossons (2734 m) by 12:30, and then dropped down into a greener but steeper world on the other side.  We descended to the Refuge de Baysellance for cake and a chat with two young British university students.  We could look across towards Gavarnie and the dramatic peaks behind it, including the well-known Breche de Rolland.  They dropped out of sight as we lost height quickly in a landscape of spectacular waterfalls on all sides, some descending from the glaciers that cloaked the south side of Vignemale.  It seemed as though every five minutes another high waterfall cascaded into view, splitting a forbidding grey rock face with a glittering spout of water.  

Waterfalls below Baysellance

The slopes were alive with marmots, whistling in alarm at our approach  We eventually got down to a dam, the Barrage d’Ossoue, and had another snack beside the water before ambling further down the valley.  We traversed high above the river, cutting through big meadows grazed by herds of cows, although the bucolic peace was shattered by a helicopter shuttling construction materials to a tiny dam.  We passed the Cabane de Lourdes, marked on our map as a possible spot to shelter, but it looked absolutely grim inside so we kept on going.  The next little cabane, the Cabane de Sausse Dessus, was much better, so we moved in, putting our air mattresses in one tiny room and cooking in the kitchen.  We knew that storms were likely that evening, so sleeping indoors sounded like a good idea.  We had the place to ourselves, and it was a lovely location, surrounded by cows and grassy meadows and steep rock faces.  We sat outside, sipping a sundowner dram of whisky before moving inside to cook up miso soup, hash browns, sausages and mushrooms, a veritable feast.  It felt good to sleep under a solid roof that night.

At about 3 am the heavens opened in a Biblical downpour, accompanied by deafening thunderclaps and dazzling lightning.  It made us even more glad to be indoors, although we didn’t sleep as well as we might have.  The next morning we woke to find that the rain had flooded down the chimney in the kitchen, soaking the floor; luckily we hadn’t put anything important on the floor in the kitchen!  We boiled up some oatmeal for breakfast before setting off towards Gavarnie.  It took us longer than expected, two and a half hours, to get to Gavarnie, through a landscape that would have been impressive if it hadn’t been wreathed in dense fog.  We arrived in town hoping to find a computer to use to fill out an application form that we needed for our upcoming Antarctic trip, and ended up in a café with wi-fi trying to type on our tiny smartphone screens.  As we nursed expensive fries and beers, we caught up on e-mail, which brought important and unwelcome news.  Terri’s citizenship ceremony had been changed from the 16^th to the 30^th of September, which meant that we had to re-schedule everything in our trip.  We had to leave the Pyrenees and head straight to Corsica to do the GR20 before Terri flew back to Leysin, and that meant we had just finished our Pyrenees walk after 7 days of walking, instead of the planned 20 days.  I was annoyed at the Swiss government for being so disorganized, but Terri was more annoyed since it cost her a small fortune in missed flights, new flights and missed hotel reservations. 

I loved the Pyrenees, even if our time was drastically curtailed.  I found it wilder than most of the Alps, and not very busy with hikers.  I would gladly come back to work my way east from Gavarnie to Andorra or beyond, as I felt that no sooner had we gotten into the rhythm of walking than we were torn away.  I also would love to base myself somewhere in the Pyrenees for a week or two of road cycling on the classic passes like the Col de Tourmalet and the Col d’Aubisque.  Two thumbs up to the area, and I hope to be back some day to see more dramatic landscapes!

Shivering My Way Across Finland and Norway (July-August 2015)

October 22, 2015

The cycling half of my Nordic peregrinations began on July 20, 2015 when I tumbled off a very comfortable sleeper train from Helsinki to Rovaniemi.  Rovaniemi is the biggest city in Finnish Lappland and the end of the line for the passenger train.  I rode into town and waited for the tourist information office to open since I needed to figure out where to replace the camping gear that had just been stolen in Helsinki.  I also needed to make a police report of the theft in the hope (which ultimately proved futile) of getting my travel insurance to pay up.  The tourist info folks sent me around to several camping gear stores that had an absolutely underwhelming selection of tents, sleeping bags, sleeping mats and hiking backpacks.  I eventually decided to buy cheap stuff that would last for three weeks and then buy better gear when I got back to Canada.  It took me until about 2:30 to to deal with the very professional police and to buy what I needed, with the final bill coming to less than 220 euros for a functional but small backpack, a functional but very heavy tent, a heavy and not very warm sleeping bag and a fairly terrible sleeping mattress.  I was surprised at the lack of quality gear, given Rovaniemi’s reputation as the centre of outdoor adventure activities for Finnish Lappland. 

Sadly, all the shopping left me with not enough time to visit the official Santa Claus village, one of the biggest tourist attractions in town.  Rovaniemi is located right on the Arctic Circle, and has lots of reindeer around, so I guess it’s as good a spot as any for Santa to set up shop.  Leaving at 3 pm, I was happy that I had essentially 24 hours of daylight so that I could ride as late in the evening as I wanted.  That first day I rode steadily north and then west until 9 pm through recurrent drizzle and cold.  The scenery was gently undulating, with birch forests and stands of pine trees, neither of them terribly high, surrounding a series of small lakes.  It reminded me of the scenery around Thompson, Manitoba, where I once spent a month planting trees.  From time to time I came across reindeer beside the road, although I wasn’t fast enough to draw my camera before they bolted for the woods.  It was cold and bleak and hard to motivate myself to ride, and I had difficulty finding a good spot to put up my tent, finally finding a clearing in the woods after 84 km.

Nice river junction on day two, on the Swedish border

Reindeer

I slept solidly for 10 hours, as my body was a bit unused to cycling after a couple of weeks off the bike.  I awoke to even colder weather, with the maximum temperature for the day not getting above 11 degrees and little sunshine to warm me up.  I rolled 20 kilometres westward into the junction town of Pello before a futile 12-km round trip expedition to the police station to pick up a copy of my police report; the station wasn’t open that afternoon turning more due north along the river that forms the border between Finland and Sweden.  I kept rolling north through dreary weather until finally, around 4 pm, I found a beautiful spot overlooking the junction of two big rivers, the Tornealven and the Muoninjoki, and shivered my way through a picnic lunch.  The landscape reminded me a great deal of the Kaministiquia River outside Thunder Bay.  According to a fisherman I met there, this river provides some of the finest fly fishing in Finland, with 30 kg salmon, great trout and tasty Arctic char.  Sure enough, from this point north I saw a lot of fishermen in boats out on the water.  At the 120-km mark for the day, I contemplated camping in a roadside picnic area but was put off by the number of people who had used it as an outdoor latrine.  Instead I took a side road around a lake and found a secluded clearing in the forest to put up my tent, cook my pasta and fall asleep, tired and sore and cold.

July 22^nd, my third day on my slog through Finnish Lappland, was another 120 km day.  I awoke in the night to recurring heavy rain, and the morning was cold, wet and very grey.  It was a bleak 60 km to the city of Muonio, with my feet getting so cold in the biting headwind cutting through my sandals that I lost all feeling under my right foot.  It definitely wasn’t a fun day in the saddle, so when I found a roadside truck stop serving reindeer burger, I lingered indoors, reluctant to leave the warmth.  I set off again at 4 and was rewarded by the headwind shifting into a tailwind and the sun finally reappearing. 

Looking like a real bike vacation!

My pretty campsite at the end of day three

I suddenly loved the look of the landscape and made much better time and was in a much more positive mood.  I camped a bit earlier than I had planned when I found an absolutely idyllic camping spot about 13 km north of Palojoensuu on a bluff overlooking the border river, surrounded by pine trees and out of earshot of the road.  It was by far the prettiest spot I had seen since I left Rovaniemi, and I needed the positive vibes of camping there.  I had a stiff left knee and both my Achilles tendons were sore; the persistent cold didn’t help my muscles and tendons get warmed up.

The highest road pass in Finland, outside Kilpisjarvi

July 23^rd was the best day of cycling I had in Finland.  I woke up after 9 pm and then dawdled over breakfast, as I had bought some delicious smoked fish from the tourist shop just down the road.  I fixed small things on the bike that needed adjusting, washed some laundry and finally set off at the fashionably late hour of 12:30.  I moved slowly for the first 20 km to a road junction, where I bought ice cream and cookies to fuel my body.  Then the wind shifted to a brisk tailwind and the skies cleared, and I began to fly along.  The next 60 km went by quickly as the trees thinned out and barren fells got closer to the road as I climbed steadily.  It was distinctly chilly at the top of the 550 metre high pass that separated me from Kilpisjarvi, and I dropped to the lakeshore in bitterly cold headwinds.  It took me forever to crawl the last 5 km to the campground with my legs feeling empty and heavy.  I had a sauna to warm up, cooked dinner and was in bed at 1 am, with the sky still pretty light.

Lovely flowers on the way up Saana Fell

Atop Saana Fell

I took the next day off from cycling, hoping to let my body and my motivation recharge.  Kilpisjarvi is the extreme northwest corner of Finland, and is a major tourist centre.  I paid 10 euros for a massive breakfast buffet (I made sure I got my money’s worth), lazed around using the campground’s wi-fi and reading as I waited for the morning’s fog to break.  Finally at 12:30 the sun came out and I hiked up Saana Fell (1100 m above sea level), one of the barren fells towering over the lake.  Finland doesn’t have the big peaks that Norway and Sweden have, so these are among the higher peaks in the country.  There were lots of hikers on the trail, and the scenery was wonderful, with expansive views to Sweden’s mountains to the south and to endless fells to the north.  The tree line was about 200 metres above the lake, so most of the hike was across treeless terrain.  The woods were full of birds that were hard to see and identify, although a passing birder told me that they were bramblings.  I strolled back down to the campsite, rode into town to buy groceries and change my euros into Norwegian kronor, then went back to the campsite to sauna, read and cook up a big meal of steak and veggies in the campground kitchen.

The view towards Sweden from Saana Fell

In the campground car park, Kilpisjarvi

Pointy peaks in northern Norway

My first Norwegian fjord

Lovely Norwegian scenery

July 25^th was my last day in Finland.  I cooked up a small mountain of pancakes in the kitchen while outside the weather continued cold, grey and bleak.  Eventually I could delay no longer and saddled up to climb over the low pass into Norway.  The scenery was pretty, although the tops of the fells were shrouded in clouds.  On the downhill to the Norwegian coast, I passed a series of very pretty waterfalls and the previously spindly birch trees got bigger and bigger.  I was on a newly paved road and I made good time despite the cold and the wet pavement.  I reached the shore of the fjord (Storfjorden), turned left, picked up a tailwind and raced along through very pretty scenery, with sunshine lighting up the waves on the fjord and the peaks of the mountains.  I stopped for a late lunch at a camper parking lot and had to shelter behind a camper to eat as the wind was gusting at about 80 km/h.  I climbed over a 90-metre-high pass between one fjord and the next, flew downhill and took an old sideroad along the shore looking for a good place to camp.  There were too many farms and summer cottages to camp along the shore, so eventually I turned inland along the main road and found a lovely spot to camp, well off the road in a mossy clearing.  I was glad that I had better weather and nicer scenery than I had had in Lappland.

On the way into Tromso

The next day was a great day for cycling and sightseeing.  I woke up at 7 (Norway is an hour behind Finland), left at 9 and was in the city of Tromso by 11:30.  Tromso is a big town (70,000 inhabitants) in an absolutely amazing setting, surrounded by mountains and fjords and beauty.  I rode across a high bridge with a very narrow bike and pedestrian shared lane that was almost impossible to navigate because of the number of elderly Italian cruise ship passengers clogging the lane.  I headed first to the Polar Museum where I learned about Amundssen and Nansen and other figures of the 19^th century and early 20^th century exploration of the Arctic, most of whom passed through Tromso.  I lazed outside in the sunshine, out of the wind, using their wi-fi and then bought some groceries. 

The Ice Cathedral in Tromso, looking like Sydney Opera House

As I ate lunch in a small park, I had to fight off the depredations of big seagulls who were utterly fearless in their attempts to eat my sandwich.  The climb out of town was steep and led across the island to another steep bridge leading to the large island of Langoya.  The light on the water and on the snowy peaks was magical, and I climbed steeply over lovely interior moorland down to Kattfjord, eyeing up some juicy-looking ski touring possibilities.  I cruised along the fjord, through my first road tunnel (the bane of Norwegian cycling touring!) to Bremshomen ferry dock, where I had to wait only 15 minutes for a boat to the next big island, Senja, where I found a great spot to camp beside a stream. 

Typical interisland bridge, Norway

Typical tiny fishing village

Beautiful scenery on the outside coast of Senja

The next day’s riding didn’t start until after 12:00, as it poured rain from 3 am until then.  I stayed in my tent reading and eating breakfast, and then had a bit of time pressure to make the 7 pm ferry on the other side of Senja.  The riding was through brilliant scenery all day, with dramatic granite sea cliffs, picturesque fishing villages, wild moorland and a series of intimidating road tunnels.

Another ferry ride

Wild Norwegian scenery

The view from Andenes campground

Campground views, Andenes

The gale force winds were mostly at my back, although at times I had to crawl through headwinds to get into tunnels.  My face was painfully windburnt by the end of the day.  I had a brief lunch stop of peanut butter on rye bread, then kept riding.  I took a brand new tunnel and equally new bridge to the ferry port at Gryllefjord; the bridge was resonating in the wind with an eerie, echoing “song” that alarmed me as I rode over it.  I made it to the ferry with 40 minutes to spare, bought groceries and scarfed down food as I waited.  I met my first-ever Chinese bicycle tourists outside China, a couple on some neat folding bikes with a good pannier system.  We communicated in my terrible Chinese, as they spoke essentially no English.  I was impressed by their fearlessness in setting off with essentially no ability to communicate with people.  The ferry crossing was beautiful, with striking light on the shore, on distant mountains and on the rolling sea.  On the other side, in the city of Andenes, I broke down and stayed in a commercial campground so that I could enjoy the perfect location on the outer shore of the island.  It was a very pretty spot on grass-covered sand dunes, looking out to the open North Sea.

Midnight sun over Norway

More late-night light

I had hoped to make an earlier-than-usual getaway the next morning, but instead I was awakened by torrential rain in the night.  I woke up at a decent hour but instead of rushing off on the bicycle, I went for a swim in the chilly ocean, shaved, trued my back wheel, had a leisurely breakfast and finally rolled off at 11:30.  All day long as I rode along the outer coast of the island of Andoya, headwinds slowed my progress to a crawl.  I listened to podcasts, hoping to get some sort of mental inspiration, but the scenery faded from the sculpted peaks of the past few days to humdrum undulations.  After 30 km of battling the wind, I had lunch on a windy white sand beach that apparently is an up and coming surfing spot.  Nobody was out in the howling gale that day, but it was still pretty.  There were more and more people living on the land as I headed south, but almost no surface water to be had, a complete contrast to the gushing waterfalls of a few days previously.  When I got to the town of Sortland, I still couldn’t for the life of me find a place to camp wild.  I pushed on and on, through densely packed farms, and finally, 10 km south of Sortland, where the busy road went over a small hill, I found an abandoned field and camped in the long grass, tired and jaded after 118 km that had been tougher than they should have been.

Surfing beach on Andoya

July 30^th was a better day of cycling.  I was up and on the road in less than 90 minutes (about an hour less than usual) and raced into Stokmarnes with a brisk tailwind at 20 km/h.  I had a hot dog, checked e-mail, went to the post office to mail postcards, did some shopping and was out of town again before noon.  I made great time to the ferry terminal at Malbu, but missed a ferry by 20 minutes and had over an hour to wait for the next one.  This was my penultimate ferry, crossing to the Lofoten Islands, about which I had heard so much.  As I waited, munching sandwiches, I talked to a Norwegian family (mom, dad and two teenage kids) on a two-week cycling trip, and to Joris, a Dutch motorcyclist.  The ferry ride to the Lofoten islands was quick, and as the islands approached, I could see a number of appealingly pointy peaks rising up.  I disembarked in Fiskebol and rode through very pretty, wild scenery, with expanses of bare granite, little inlets and steep peaks still streaked with last winter’s snow. 

Lofoten scenery

The capital city, Svolvaer, left me cold, a functional expanse of concrete buildings with a surprising number of African migrants on the streets.  I pushed on through suburbia, looking in vain for a place to camp.  For an island out in the North Atlantic above the Arctic Circle, Lofoten is surprisingly densely populated!  I finally pitched my tent in a commercial campground in Kabelvag, cooked up a slap-up meal in their fancy kitchen and slept for a long time, listening to rain come down on the tent.

The next morning it was pouring rain so I had breakfast in my tent and lay there sipping tea and reading until 1:30 when the rain finally let up.  I got up, made myself lunch and rolled out at the ridiculously late hour of 3:30. I still managed to ride 46 km under leaden, cold skies along roads surprisingly choked with traffic.  I was relieved to make it across the inter-island bridge onto Vestvagoy and turn off onto a back road to lose the vehicular traffic.  It looked pretty (although cold) as I gazed back over the water towards the fishing village of Henningsvaer, alone on its long peninsula.  I was glad to see more open space and a wilder shoreline, but it just got colder and colder as I rode along, so I was relieved to find another commercial campground at Kongsjorda, ate a lot of pasta and a nice piece of chocolate cake for dessert.  I was pretty chilled, and my cheap sleeping bag didn’t do a great job of warming me up in the night.  I woke up with a distinctly stiff lower back.

Headed toward Moskenes

Inland lake near Moskenes

The next day was the last day of July, and the last real day of cycling of the trip.  I set off by 10:20, surprised not to wake up to rain, and rode 15 km to the town of Leknes.  I bought groceries, ten sheltered on a church porch to wait out another rain squall and eat some peanut butter sandwiches.  When the rain stopped, I rode on towards the western end of the Lofoten archipelago, and the traffic finally began to lessen a bit.  I rode through a long, dark interisland tunnel, then over another bridge after a spectacularly scenic ride along a pretty fjord.  I pushed along the inland coast of the island, along old roads around the new road tunnels, under steep granite cliffs.  I rode through the intricate harbour shared by Ramnoy, Kvalvik and Reine and, by 6:30 I was setting up my tent in my favourite campground of the trip at Moskenes, a huge expanse of grass and hills with lots of secluded spots to camp.  I feasted on smoked salmon (bought in Kvalvik) and rehydrated some fish soup, talked to Terri on Viber and then retired to my tent, cold and tired.  I was getting tired of never being warm, and my back was getting stiffer by the day.

Harbour in A

I had one day off the bike in Moskenes the next day.  I replaced my worn-out bike chain, rode to A (the absolute end of the road for the Lofoten islands) past racks of drying cod heads (Lofoten’s economy runs on dried cod—stokfisk—and has done so for centuries; the fish heads are apparently shipped to Nigeria to be turned into pungent fish sauce) to the renowned stokfisk museum, which was unexpectedly closed.  I biked back, noticing that my gear cable housing had split and broken, making it impossible to shift gears accurately; I didn’t have any spare cable housing, so I was going to need to find a bike shop in Bodo.

Fish heads drying in A, ready to be sent to Nigeria

The next morning I was in line for the ferry by 7 am.  It took almost 4 hours to get to Bodo, a modern city even bigger than Tromso.  I got off the ferry in (inevitably) drizzle, and headed to the airport to find out the rules for bringing bicycles on the flight.  I stayed there for a while, enjoying the warmth and dryness, listening to a live jazz band and using the free airport wi-fi.  Eventually I couldn’t put it off any longer, got onto my bike and rode out through the drizzle to the municipal campground.  I put up my tent, chatted to some Swiss university students who were carving soapstone statues out in the rain, ate sandwiches and then got to bed early for a long, rain-disturbed night.

August 3^rd began with yet more rain.  It was the coldest, rainiest summer in Finland since 1962, and apparently Norway had had a similarly miserable summer.  My back, tired of being cold and tired of sleeping on a cheap, cold mattress, was even more sore than it had been, and now my left hip and thigh were distinctly sore, making cycling a miserable experience.  As it turned out, it was the start of two and a half months of piriformis syndrome, a sciatica-like condition that blighted my life and made it hard to walk or cycle or do any sort of exercise.  Only now, after going to a really top-notch physiotherapist, am I finally improving, just in time for my upcoming trip to Antarctica and South America.  I went to the local bike shop to get my gear cable housing fixed and to get a bike box for the flight, then went to the expensive hotel that I had treated myself to for the last night.  I packed up the bike, went out for a kebab at a take-out joint run by an Iranian guy, and then got to bed early, sad that my bike trip was over but glad to be escaping from a solid month of cold, rain and grey skies.

I flew out the next morning, August 4^th, to Geneva, glad to have had 10 days of cycling, happy to have seen the spectacular coastal scenery of Norway and ready for the next stage of my farewell tour of Europe.