Final day: Enontikiö (Finland) to Tromsø (Norway)

And then, suddenly, it is here: the last day of this fantastic North Cape Adventure tour! All saddled up in the morning even before 9 o' clock (always on time!!), we took off for our last track through Lapland , said goodbye to the numerous reindeer along the road, took a coffee in Sweden, and found ourselves back in Norway around noon with it's beautiful fjord and mountain views. Three countries in one day, where do you find that!.

A last stop just before entering the bridge over to Tromsø visiting the beautiful cathedral which reminds a little bit of the opera house in Sidney, Australia

And there it came to an end. Thank you all for this great two weeks riding  on the top of the European continent. Weeks of great riding, amazing views in an unforgettable environment!

Thanks Udo, Barbara, Theodor, Ursula, Walter, Christoph, Nikolaus, Bill, Peter, Tom and Gilad. You are a great group of riders and persons! We had a lot fo fun! Hope to see you all on a next tour sometime!

Ted and Uwe

Lakselv to Enontikiö (Finland)

With still yesterday's memories in our minds of riding up to the North cape along the amazing coastal area's of the most northern pieces of the European continent, we had to grab ourselves together this morning for the last two parts of this great tour through Norway and today, also a piece of Finland!

The landscape is completely different from the ones we were used to the last 10 days: going more into tundra landscape, we followed the road to Karasjok, where we visited a very nice and informative museum of the Sami people. Although the guys behind the reception was working alone, he gave us nevertheless a short guided tour through the museum. After coffee and a nice cake we got on the road again and fouind our way to a very interesting place of a silversmith. A great place to get some authentic gifts for the home front!

Arriving at our hotel with a nice warm sun in the back, we enjoyed our boot beer at the hotel. Tomorrow a short coffestop in Sweden and then for our final track back to Tromsø!

Alta to Lakselv via the North Cape

This day will stay in all our minds for a long time. We took of in Alta for a 400+ km riding day in thick fog. No mountains, no sky, no view, just grey. But as soon, as we reached our first mountain plateau the fog was gone, blue sky above us and bright sunshine. This weather stayed with us, with some changes the whole day. It was a wonderful riding day with unbelievable views. We had reindeer again, empty roads, dark tunnels, breathtaking bridges and the Nordkapp. Our most northern destination, as this is the most northern point on the European continent, that can be reached by motorbike. After our lunch there, we took another great ride down to our hotel in Lakselv to end this perfect day with a nice dinner.

Day 11 - Storslett to Alta

With a bit of sadness we left our hotel with one of the best views ever! Dramatic clouds and skies accompanied by a midnight summer sun is just something!

Today we had a fairly short ride in order to save our energy for th long ride tomorrow to our main highlight: the North Cape. Nevertheless we had a quite interesting day. A nice coffestop and right away a nice souvir stop at some Sami tents. Those original inhabitant of this northern part of Norway are some fine craftsman making everything out of reindeer and elks. Concluding the short shopping with a nice coffe and a waffle, we followed our way to Alta. First sightseeing of today was the small but very nice utilized Tirpitz museum. This huge German battleship  was sunk by the allies at 12 nov 1944 and divers have collected a lot of stuff from the ships wrech throughout the years. Also a very interesting foto exhibition was part of this museum. Next cultural highlight was the Alta museum. This is build around an area with beautiful and interesting rock carvings. Accompanied by a nice sun we walked for some time throught this "cradle of humanity".

Already close to our hotel we stepped off the bikes around 3.30pm which gave us some time off. Great day!!

Harstad to Storslett

This day we started with sunshine and a smooth ride to the Polar Park. Bears, Wolves, Moose, Reindeers and Lynx were waiting for us to visit them. After we took our lunch next to a Fossen (waterfall), we went on over curvy and sometimes bumpy roads towards north. Today, we did 400+ km on our way to the North Cape. Riding in sunshine, next to the Fjords looking at some Glaciers, thats Norway.

Henningsvaer to Harstad

Very hard to get up this morning....nice and cool outside...very quiet...but rise and shine, we'll have to go again!. We left the very scenic and pitoresque village of Henningsvaer to leave the beautiful Lofoten island. Another ferry ride took us to Vesterålen. It was very pleasant to ride also because it was dry and even the sun came out now and then. After a couple of nice phostops we made our first sightseeing stop at the Hurtigruten museum. This old ship line nowadays has 11 ships which do 34 harbbour visits in 12 days along the Norwegina coast from south to north. A nice lunch next door with great views over the water, completed this visit. A really pleasant afternoon ride brought us to Harstad, but before going to our hotel, we visited the impressive Adolf canon. This huge canon was used in the second worldwar as a part of Hitlers Atlantic Wall. That concludes this beatiful day and ended up in Harstad again with a well earned beer at the terrrace!

Bodø to Henningsvaer

This day started with a 3 hour ferry ride to Moskones on the Lofoten. Once there we visited the Town with the shortest name in Norway "Å". We had a look at the fishery museum and enjoyed some nice cinnamon rolls at the local bakery, which is run by an italian family. Than 3 beaches where waiting for us. All of them beautiful, breathtaking and nice sand. After our beach stops, we took the coastal road to Henningsvaer. Our hotel served fantastic dinner and we had some World Tourer Awards to be handed over.

Sandnessjøen to Bodø

A long riding day ahead , we took off for an important milestone in our tour: crossing the Arctic circle. Riding in beautiful scenery takes us everyday a bit more north to our final goal : the North Cape. But before that happens, we have some fantastic highlights to do. Today around noon we crossed the polar circle and immediately the landscape changes: cold wind teasing the barren rocks and vegetation. But that made the experience right away more interesting. Some of us even tried the reineer on the menu!. After crossing the arctic circle we had to go antoher 170 km begore we reached the second highlight of today: the Saltstraumen (or Maehlstrom). This impressive tidal wave urrents swirls with speeds up to almost 60km per hour  in and out the fjord and can reach up widths of 10m wide and 3m deep. We had a great view to see this from a high bridge right on top of it. We concluded the day with a nice warm shower and a good buffet

Day 4 - Overhalla to Sandnessjøen

A great riding day started with sunshine and a lonely road. No traffic and very nice scenery through the forests and lakes of this region. After 120 km we reached the first ferry of the day. 2 more to come. After the ferry, we went to our lunch place, which was a very small an nice place, which offered Pizza for lunch. One type. But it was a delicious one with herbs from their own garden on it.

After lunch we went on to our second ferry, which brought us directly into some bad weather. Off the ferry we had some 18 km of rain in front of us until we reached the third and last ferry of the day.

We finally arrived in Sandnessjøen together with a heavy rain shower. So our bikes are perfectly clean again.

Day 3 -  Trondheim to Overhalla

What a tremendous day!. We left in the morning with our heads full of impressions of the city of Trondheim. First destination was the ferry ride  from Flakka. After a half hour sailing trip to the other side of the fjord we followed our way up in northern direction. A very charming and relaxing scenery lying ahead of us, so everyone enjoyed it very much.

The morning coffestop we spend at a nice small terrace on the top floor of a tiny shopping mall in Åfjord. A good coffee and a refreshing piece of cheese cake was only levelling up the atmosphere!

Another hour and a half later we reached the Atlantic coast and found our hidden secret somewhere at a gravel road: a very authentic Norwegian fish restauarant with probably the best fish soup everyone ever had.

Last part of the track took us again land inwards and after a short break and the daily fuel up, we reached the one and only hotel in town. A nice cool beer and some nice video footage of Tom took us in no time to the final part of the day: the evening dinner.

Day 2 - Sunndalsøra to Trondheim

Today we started in Sunndalsøra and rode through nice curvy roads to Trondheim. During the day, we enjoyed every kind of weather from dry to heavy rain.

Nevertheless this was another great day towards the Adventure "North Cape" and our lunch as well as our walk through Trondheim in the afternoon, when it was blue sky, sun shining and approximately 20 C made the day perfect.

Arriving in Trondheim on a nice small road, with no traffic cruising next to the Fjord was the perfect completion of this short riding day. On arrival the sun came out, perfect time to do the city walk around this beautiful, historical town. A great dinner followed.

Day 1 - Ålesund to Sunndalsøra

After a couple of days of hard maintenance work on the bikes in a hot garage (Thank you, Jens!) the bikes were again in tip-top condition to do their next job: the adventure North Cape to the top of the European continent in Norway.

After a good night sleep everybody was up early and eager to go. After the first morning brief the group took of in direction west for the first riding day. Nice riding weather: not too warm, not too cold! 

Perfect for a first day in Norway! 

Our first coffeestop was at the famous Jordbaerstova, which seems to have the best strawberry cake in Norway...well, they have!. At a nice outside terrace everyone enjoyed the beatiful scenery up here!

Next stop was the lunch stop at the top of the Trollstigen, one of the best known roads among motorcyclist...and unfortunately also under camper car drivers!

After the spectaculair scenery during the downhill ride on the Trollstigen we went to the other side of the mountain where we could admire the biggest vertical rock wall in Europe: the Trollveggen.

After this we took the last part of the day among some beautiful fjords and headed for Sunndalsøra. A very nice Italian dinner and some beers did the rest!