Day 8 – One big hill

Today was tough. We woke up to our beautiful campsite, right by the sea and had breakfast by the beach. In advance we knew the elevation profile for the day. There would be one big hill at kilometre 50, 300 meters high. This compared to our highest hill so far (which was already quite a struggle) of 200 meters.

The first 30km brought us to the village of Flostrand. We were hoping for a supermarket to get a snack, but on googling, we realized that there wouldn’t be a supermarket until the ferry at Nesna, at kilometre 77. So we settled on a break with granola bars.

Even though we were expecting the hill far in advance, and we had the break beforehand, it was hard. At the bottom, it said that it would be 3km, but it ended up being 6km long. It was also very hot and sunny, with hardly a cloud in the sky. Long story short, we made it to the top, but were very worn out.

The rest of the ride to Nesna was uneventful. We had our fastest 5km time ever descending the hill, finishing 5km in 10 minutes! At Nesna, we finally bought our bananas and coconut custard buns (this sounds kind of obscure, but they’re one of the most common pastries we tend to see in stores.) Then it was an hour wait for the 25 minute ferry across the channel.

After the crossing, we were hoping to ride another 23km (to bring our daily total up to 100km), but we had been warned about a thunder storm and we could see lightning flashes directly in the direction we were going. At 94km we hit the ominous looking portion and it started to rain. We very quickly skirted into a farmer’s field for shelter, put up the tent in record time, and jumped in. We’ve just had an absolutely delicious dinner of cheese pasta with a tin of tuna and a tin of peas and carrots and are completely and utterly satisfied (that’s me, Andrew, talking – there’s been kind of a constant feeling of hunger over the past week and this is the first time in a while that it’s been completely satisfied.)

Now we’re sitting in the tent, keeping dry from the rain, about to have a nice and early night to bed!