We awoke this morning at our beautiful campsite, where a river meets the ocean. We identified the river as such by noting that it did not taste salty. Our new batch muesli contains a new blend of our free sample protein powders – espresso and chocolate – quite an exciting beginning to the day for us!
The ride began with a long hill (humongous uphill, says Viki). We descended that one, stayed flat for a while and came to a fork in the road. Our gps route was the 10km longer fork that followed the coast and we suspected would be flatter. The alternative was more direct, but ventured into the unknown, likely over a mountain range. We chose the latter. And a mountain range we did find (see our elevation profile on Strava).
On rejoining the coast, the rode took us across a chain of islands, linked by bridges. It was very pretty. This continued for quite some time until we made it to lunch. We searched for the ferry schedule from Tommervag to Selvika and realized that if we cut our lunch short, we could likely just squeak into an earlier ferry rather than have to wait. So, we enjoyed, as an experimental lunch, tomatoed mackerel on bread – not bad – we’ll be having it again.
Making a two hour dash to the ferry, we arrived 20 minutes faster than necessary after many ups and downs (it wasn’t until this evening that we realized that this contributed to our highest elevation gain of the trip so far!) 10km from the ferry brought us to the beautiful town of Kristiansund which unfortunately possesses a tunnel impassable to bikes. We were forced to take a bus through the tunnel, but we had known this in advance.
We are now camped in the town of Bruhagen in not our best campsite. We’re in a patch of grass that we think is behind the town hall hunkered down in the rain. There’s a continuous buzzing sound from a transformer that Viki says takes electricity from 132 kilovolts to 400 volts. We cooked our dinner in metal stairwell that’s sheltered – an experimental concoction of rice, tinned tomatoes, curry powder, and a massive tin of fish balls. We won’t be re-experimenting down this avenue.