Day 6 – The easy day that wasn’t

Today was supposed to be a more restful day after the Surge to “A”. It wasn’t. While we only did 84km, rather than our daily goal of 100, they were very mountainous and we’re feeling pretty beat up in the tent now at the end of the day.

We started out very early, waking up at 5:30am, getting out by 6:10am, and having breakfast while waiting for the longest ferry of the trip, the 3h15m A-Bodo ferry. We made the most of the opportunity and charged many of our devices (this is proving to be one of the big challenges of the trip!)

Bodo was a big city (by Norway standards), so departing the ferry through the main highway wasn’t very fun. We soon found the bike path, however, and this was much nicer.

We were hoping that we’d be done with much of the elevation after leaving the Lofoten Islands, but we were very wrong. Today was a roller coaster of slowly crawling up the side of a mountain, followed by shooting down the far side. We tried Svolvaer pate at lunch, a typical Norwegian spread, made from cod eggs and liver. It sounded rather gross – Viki took some convincing to get it at the supermarket – but it was pretty nice actually.

We’ve set up camp just at the far side of a tunnel as we’re too tired to make another kilometre. There’s a lake here, so we managed to wash off. The highlight of the day was allowing ourselves to each have a row and a half of chocolate after dinner, rather than the normal one row ration. Now we’re ready for sleep!