I am happy to report that patching the Thermarest was successful! After two weeks of sleeping on the hard ground, a working air mattress was a welcome delight last night.
We awoke on our patch of land behind the city hall of Bruhagen to a light sprinkling of rain. We went back to the stairwell where we had dinner the night before to cook breakfast. Every now and then a person would walk past, dressed up for work, look at us, and after a very brief strange look (at the two hobos sitting on the pavement over a camp stove in the corner of the stairwell) smile and say hello. One lady even told us that the front was open with a bathroom and that we were welcome. We were quite impressed by such hospitality and kindness from everyone!
We continued on our cycle around the islands, through the small roads of Eurovelo 1. The weather began quite beautifully – we had sun shine, had to apply sun screen, and wore our sunglasses for the first time in many days. At one point by the coast, a mother and two baby deer sprang along beside us and then disappeared into the forest.
Viki was particularly excited about today as we had to cycle the “Atlantic Road” – a very scenic 8km section of road with bridges linking quite a few tiny islands. The weather just held through our crossing of the islands until closing in and becoming quite windy and ominous cloudy for most of the rest of the day.
Coming up, we’ve calculated that if we can sustain 100km a day (this may be hard, as the route gets hillier, especially as we get closer to Bergen), we have about six days to reach Bergen. This may leave us a few extra days to continue our ride from Bergen, needing to be back for our flight first thing August 28th.
For now we are camped on an overgrown farm with a creek running into the ocean. The ground looks like it could get very swampy if it rains, so we’re hoping for a dry night!