Day 11 – Gail force wind

This morning was miserable. We were in bed late and hardly slept a wink because of the storm all around us. The tent creaked and groaned and the wind howled, unrelentingly. By 5am we decided that we’d had enough and so packed everything up, and dragged the tent over to the ferry shack through the howling wind and lashing rain. We had to shout in order to hear one another. It was certainly more action packed than our typical 5am hour!

In the shack we read that the first ferry would be at 7:05am, so we packed everything up, boiled a pot of water, and Viki stood waiting in the tempest by the ferry platform while I kept the water warm. I thought there was a big possibility that the ferry would be cancelled due to the high swells. Fortunately, the Norwegians appear to be used to this and the ferry did depart, just 10 minutes late.

On arrival at the other side, gail force winds continued. The first many kilomtres were a big struggle. We had to walk our bikes across bridges because the winds were so fierce that we would have been blown over had we ridden. Even walking, our heads were down, our teeth gritted, and our whole bodies tensed against the force of the wind.

We pushed on to kilometre 25, the point at which we decided we’d have a snack break. There were no towns for ages, but fortunately there was a fisherman’s loading platform with a covered picnic table, where we glumly ate our granola bars.

Continuing on at a snail’s pace, we finally arrived in Namsos, at kilometre 53, where we dried off in the supermarket and treated ourselves to our impression of the Norwegian shrimp on rye bread sandwich.

From 3pm or so the rain became more intermittent and our pace improved somewhat. With a snack of cinnamon buns at kilometre 80, we pushed on to end our day, just as the rains abated at kilometre 92. We are now camped on some farm, hoping that the farmer doesn’t kick us out!