REPOUR REPOUR
LAPLAND SUMMER Subhead Here story and photos by Pierre Bouchard
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PEDAL Fashion 2015
I rode 200 kilometres today and I am going to reach Nordkapp exactly on my 2,000th kilometre! See you there! » I had been exchanging quick pleasantries with a young man from Holland on his loaded bicycle, all of us were on our way to road E69's northern terminus at North Cape. The legitimacy of its designation as “the northernmost point of Europe” is up for debate, but with a location above the 71st parallel it is the furthest north we would ???????????? ever reach on a bicycle! www.pedalmag.com
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Reine, the local hotel rents rorbuer, cabins on stilts over water formerly used by fishermen. Some cyclists removed panniers to check-in at the $260 a night red cottages before relocating to the restaurant to enjoy a $24 fish soup and a $32 whale sandwich, washed down by no less extravagantly priced pints of beer. Apparently we are not all on the same budget scale! In Ramberg we slept among slick rocks with a view on the sandy half-moon beach and the milky turquoise waters of the sea. Stealth camping is easy, legal and mandatory in Norway but is not conducing to bathing frequently. When the attendant at Leknes StateOil gas station invited us to use the truckers' shower for free, I wept a little. It had been close to ten days! Bridges and tunnels link the islands seamlessly and there were more ahead, actually a 4 and a 6 kilometre long tunnels
quitoes and deserted Sami villages—and a spot of wine shopping in euros! On Norway's 300-metre high Finnmark Plateau trees became stunted and eventually disappeared. The sun started to dip down over the horizon for an hour every night, a first in two months. In Kautokeino, an important Sami settlement, we learned that herders and animals—100,000 heads—have travelled north to the coast around Hammerfest, escaping pests and sultriness. The owner of a cafО who served us two cups of coffee for ten dollars—but we passed on the nine-dollar doughnut...yes, we are back in Norway!—explained that the people we have seen wearing red and blue Sami traditional tunics are attending a family reunion. A long time coming after being scattered to all corners of North America starting in 1890. Experiencing a Norway awash with oil money, used smartly by the government to build prime
and only control migrants and visitors on the perimeter of the zone. It basically works as one country for immigration purposes. The problem is that non-Schengen visitors—us—receive permission to travel there for 90 days at a time! For us it meant that upon disembarking in Stavanger, in south Norway, the clock had started ticking. Forget about a long ride through the Baltic Republics, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary, we would need to use motorized transports to make it in time to the nearest logical exit point for us: the border between Poland and Ukraine. In the mean time, we would do our best to cycle out of northern Europe, to Helsinki if we could. We had already been travelling at a quicker pace than we are accustomed to and we kept it up after leaving Nordkapp on the Hurtigruten ship to Havњysund in order to head south on the quiet and enchanti-
on busy E10 and we decided to escape to Hadselњya on the Fiskbњl to Melbu ferry. The road passed over Sortland Strait, from Lagњya to Honnњya Islands, by a steep cantilever bridge, a challenge with a side wind. Sheep farms followed fishing villages and strawberry fields. Who could think this is the 69th parallel? The Harstad tourist information centre employee, while dodging the verbal onslaught from a frustrated couple of young Finns—« another toll road, really? »—, informed us that the local ski station did not open in 2014...not enough snow. « And how cold does it get here? », I asked as entertainment. « We have had -15 degrees in the past. », he answered. 69th parallel! More twists and turns on the magnificently engineered road network lead us back on the mainland, a stone's throw away from the Swedish border. Road E10 climbs and transports from agricultural Norway to Sweden's backwoods. Things are a bit rougher here, less polished. Road and railway line follow the cobalt waters of TornetrКsk Lake and dip south to Kiruna, a pleasant mining town and seat of the Swedish Sami Parliament. Fifteen kilometres to the east, in JukkarsjКrvi, a siida—a reindeer pastoral cooperative community—has a camp. Over some smoked reindeer meat, lingonberry jam and flat bread we were told that, basically, we had come in the wrong season. In summertime reindeer travel to higher grounds to the west, some of them crossing the border into Norway's ѓvre Dividal National Park, very close to where we have just cycled from! North of Еvre Soppero, a young mother watching over her five children having a fishing/swimming break at the lake where we were eating mouthfuls of black flies, while waiting for a proper dinner, told us that the calving season was postponed to September. The yearly event of marking new calves, basically taking a sharp knife to their ears to engrave the family's distinct pattern, is incompatible with the extraordinary glorious summer the north has been enjoying. Just our luck! A thick birch and pine forest surrounded clear lakes and rivers as we exited Sweden in Karesuando and entered Finland for 48 hours of mos-
infrastructures and assure that every Norwegian is safe and cared for, it is hard to imagine this used to be Europe's most impoverished country. Waves of economic emigration have taken place well into the 20th century. Some of the Gaul family members had turned up from Alaska and Canada to attend the one hundred strong gathering. After the coastal urban zone in Alta—71st parallel, January's average lows: -12 degrees!—reindeer started to appear by the roadside, hundreds of them! The Sami we met talked about the 8 seasons of their seminomadic lives, divided by tasks, transhumance, summer and winter camps, mating, birthing and calving of the reindeer. ATVs, mobile phones, GPS, chainsaws, and sometimes, motor boats and helicopters, have replaced traditional tools but the lifestyle is still rigorous, requiring hard work, impeccable skills and respect for the stubborn animals. Dollops of golden-yellow cloudberries on chocolate chips cookies powered our pedal strokes along Porsanger Fjord, to the dreaded tunnel linking mainland and Magerњy Island. The 7-kilometre long underwater tunnel is a topic in itself among cyclists riding to Nordkapp, but we have no choice in the matter as it is the only way to the the sought-after headland. A bone-chilling abrupt plunge to 212 metres below sea level is followed by a steep sweaty climb up the other side. Alive and grateful to be out of the dark corridor we pushed harder on the pedals, mostly fighting a jagged topography and muscular wind, but also sensing an urgency to reach this legendary destination. For centuries, explorers, adventurers and kings have been drawn to this cliff at 71° 10′ 21″ N— now there is a fence, a gate and an entrance fee but let's not spoil the moment, shall we? Looking over the Barents Sea under the evening sun we paused, turned around from the famous cul-de-sac and started a new chapter : the southward journey to Cape Agulhas in South Africa. Now, there was a time, before the creation of the Schengen Area, when Canadian travellers came to Europe with a Eurail Pass or a bicycle—or their thumbs out—and wandered around almost unencumbered by time limits. Those days have gone. Schengen is the agglomeration of 26 European countries that have abolished borders within themselves
ng Havњysund National Tourist Route. Where it reconnected with road E6 along Porsanger Fjord, oak trees, cows and sheep reappeared by the warming waters, but vanished again once we climbed up again on the Finnmark Plateau to Karasjok, home of the Norwegian Sami parliament. Twenty kilometres further came the border with Finland at Karigasniemi and the beginning of an even faster ride through pine forests and along huge lakes on road E75. Finnish Sami keep their reindeer in fenced areas and have not maintained a nomadic lifestyle. The Sami parliament is in Inari, around which tourists can visit the Sami Museum and discover the nordic culture of the only indigenous people in Europe. Tourists are also invited to do some gold panning or to visit Santa's Hotel. The old bearded guy is well exploited in the Finnish North, culminating at Santapark and Santa Claus Village, set directly at the Arctic Circle, near Rovaniemi. As we continued from Ivalo to the Gulf of Bothnia, our wheels tickled the expansive fell highland's smooth topography. At the beginning of September leaves were turning yellow and we marched on south. Blueberries and mushrooms lined the road. While we stayed leery of the latter, the former found its way into every meal, and every snack. A strong headwind and the premature death of my rear rim hardly slowed us down. After Simo, on the Gulf of Bothnia, we stopped at a campground with a washing machine, a wi-fi connection and a fridge full of beer. It was the first time in 3 months that we payed to camp but the situation had turned critical. Our Schengen visitor's permits were set to expire in 7 days and we needed to make a move. The salty fine and « Illegal Alien » stamp that would be inked in our passports for overstaying were not worth it. So, we visited the VR.fi website and purchased 4 tickets—2 for us, 2 for the Surlys—from Oulu, the end of the ride in Northern Europe, to Helsinki. It was the first step to our escape from the Schengen Area. To be continued...
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ince the Norwegian coastal city of Alta, the cyclists funnel had steadily narrowed to this last stretch on Magerњy Island. Some have parked their cars and cycled from just 500 kilometres away, but most are young European men finishing a summer tour at the top of the continent—with the Dutch seemingly the most excited of them all! The Gulf Stream—a warm water current that starts in the Caribbeans and makes its way north, rubbing against Nova Scotia and Newfoundland's south coasts, before crossing the Atlantic—caresses Norway's coast and stretches its North Atlantic Drift tentacle to North Cape, making these upper reaches of Europe ice-free year-round. Since sailing over the Arctic Circle on the northbound ferry from Killbognhamm to Jektvik—where the polar heat made me succumb to the 25 Norwegian Kroner (NOK) frozen treat, a $5 popsicle!—I have taken pleasure in asking locals how low can the mercury fall to in winter time and how much snow can fall in a season. I do it for my own shock and surprise because the answers usually are « around -10 degrees » and « less than a meter ». This is above the Polar Circle! Coastal Norway is truly unique and moving North no sense of remoteness sets in as you would get in a country like, let's say, Canada! Inland is a different world. Winter is cold and long, fjordland is replaced by Arctic taХga and tundra, home to bears, partially domesticated reindeer and mosquitoes. Norway calls it Finnmark, Sweden and Finland have named it Lapland—land of the Laps. The top of these three countries, and the attached Kola Peninsula in Russia, is the traditional home of the Sami. This is how they prefer to be called, not Laps, and their land they call SИpmi. The indigenous nomads have lived here since prehistoric times, fishing, trapping and herding sheep. With the advance of the Scandinavians and loss of land in the coastal regions, the Sami have been left with the semi nomadic reindeer herding. Actually, nowadays this is largely what they are known for. It is wanting to learn about reindeer husbandry that we ventured on our mountain bikes into a territory many cyclists avoid—often opting to remain on the broken up coastline of Norway—but not before we had gone to the most famous of all Norwegian islands: the Lofotens. The ferry from the city of Bodњ to Moskenes, on the southernmost island of the Lofoten Archipelago, was filled to the brim with recreational vehicles, motorbikes and bicycles. Sailing into port one feels like coming to dock at the tip of the Rocky Mountains after a biblical flood, the jagged ridges shooting straight up from the Norwegian Sea. In
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PEDAL Fashion 2015
www.pedalmag.com
www.pedalmag.com
Fashion 2015 PEDAL
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