With a short day ahead of us, we took our time making breakfast and taking down camp. Sunday night was significantly less crowded in the campground than Saturday (which makes sense) and so there were no bike tourers staying with us last night, but it was nice to have a quiet night and slow morning.

Most of the ride today was gloomy and overcast unfortunately. This is especially a bummer, because it means we don’t have a lot of good photos from today. Hope y’all enjoy our writing :).

The major town we went through was Sortland. Sortland was a very industrial town, which was odd in comparison to everywhere else we’ve been. All the restaurants and cafes were in malls, and almost all the stores were as well. It was if someone had dropped midsized town America strip malls in Norway, and told the town they could only build stores in them.

However, I was looking for some Norwegian style pants, and so went shopping. I first started with the outlet store in town, but nothing really fit well. I did manage to pick up a nice camping pillow for Darragh, for a very good price there. We then went over to Sports1, where I found a shirt and pants that I like! I don’t think they work well together, but I’m a fan, especially of the pants.

New model for Norrøna

I love that I could wear these pants into a restaurant, and no one would even think twice about it.

Darragh patiently waited for me as I tried on a few round of clothes, but I’m happy with these! We’ll see how they with out in Bellingham.

After a lovely lunch in Sortland, (see pictures below) we took off for our afternoon of biking. The skies started to clear a little and we got beautiful views of the fjords and surrounding areas.

We didn’t get one of these, but they looked nice! Making sure our bikes are safe and sound during lunch!

The ride to our dinner location was uneventful. We were on a busier road, so just cranked out miles. (Not that any mile isn’t beautiful here. Just that this was just the standard fjords + mountains that we’ve been well acquainted with).

Our dinner stop was supposed to be this lovely restaurant called ”Andøy Friluftssenter”, but they were closed on Monday’s. Luckily, the owner was there, and had some sandwiches out. He was very nice to us and we bought the 3 remaining sandwiches he had. (Hopefully no other hungry bikers come through!)

View from where we are dinner

The owner chatted with us for a bit, and told us his family owned the property for 150 years. He started a restaurant + campground there 27 years ago as a family business. We were glad we stopped! And even more glad for the food! As you can see, there’s not a lot of other restaurants around here, and eating just bars/snacks wouldn’t have been fun.

We pulled off and found a campsite just 20 minutes down the road for dinner. And when I say found a campground, we looked at 3 different spots for them:

Spot 1, too far away from the road, and hard to push the bikes Spot 2, looked good from Google Earth, but waaayy to dense of brush Spot 3, just right!

We got into camp around 6:30, probably the earliest we got in all trip! So we got the drone out and played around with it some. Here’s some photos of us, and around the campground.

After a bit of planning for tomorrow and some blogging, it’s already 10pm! (I know I sound like a broken record, but it’s amazing how bright it is. It makes it really hard to keep track of time. I’m wondering if this will help with jet lag as we go back to the states!)

Tomorrow we’re headed to Andenes. Our plan is to stay there for two days just make sure we can do some whale watching! (Which Darragh is only a little excited about 🤓). We’ll likely do laundry again, and take showers! From there, we only have two days of biking to Tromsø, and four days to do it, so we’re figuring out what we’ll do in that time! We’ll let y’all know when we figure it out!

A night time photo at 10:45pm.

It’s now 11 and still looks like this I don’t know what type of material we’re on, but it’s squishy and really nice on your feet!

Today was a lovely rest day in the city of Stokmarknes. We learned  yesterday that a "rest day" means different things to different people, as a very friendly French couple said yesterday was their rest day, but they still did 40km! With a child in a trailer!! For us, a rest day is 0km. We did not move our tent at all.

The town of Stomarknes is dead on a Sunday. (Our waiter was from Estonia, and in her unfiltered opinion, it's dead everyday. To quote her: "All people do is hike and fish. I even started to hike and fish." However, we managed to have a great day in this museum of a town.

We started the day off in town but sleeping in a bit, which was great, and then having a low breakfast in camp. There were a lot of cyclist here last night, and so we chatted a decent amount with them about where they're going. Most of them are going to Nordkapp,  which (looking now) would also have been a great trip. But that's for next time. What's odd to me is that we're doing one if the shortest trips of anyone here. The french couple was on month 3 of 4. There was a younger Swiss couple that were doing a 5 week trip. We're the only people here for 10 days!

After breakfast, we headed into town to checkout what the local bakery had to offer. Turns out nothing, as it was closed on Sunday. And so was almost everything else. So we walked over to a local myseum about the Norweigan Coastal Express. Where we are biking, there is a ferry that runs that has transported people, goods, and tourists for over 100 years. (It's actually how are bikes got to where we started. The museum went all into the history of the ferry service. I could probably go into paragraphs about it, but just a few fun facts: the boats were first used to transport goods, then people, and then tourists. Today they focus on tourist but also carry supplies. Almost all of the ferries were sunk during WWII by both German and allied forces. The newest version of the fleet have electric batteries for going into and out of ports.

As part of the museum, you could actually walk around the boat! I didn't quite fit Thought this was neat, although seems a bit unnecessary A caption to describe the captain! The whole boat is in this building! I'd love to know how they got it here. I'd bet they floated it in.

The ship is in the big white building in the main photo of this entry.

After the museum we went back to the campsite to do some laundry (yay!) and catch up on some texts/emails. Well, Darragh did, Mark watched a broadcast in Norweigan about the first stage of the Womens Tour de France.

However, the highlight of the day was going to Dypp. It's a sauna that's floating in the harbor of Stokmarknes, and it was beautiful! (And a great time)

Ready to take a Dypp! Cold plunge to start off with! 40 ft view Complete with pedal board

(unfortunately, I cannot load videos right now)

After our wonderful sauna trip, we ran back to our campsite to get our laundry out of the dryer and get changed for dinner. We went to dinner at a local restaurant (where we met the server that hates it here) and then headed off to bed!

We have a shorter day tomorrow! Just 40 miles. And we'll spend some time stopping along the way and maybe getting some norweigan rain pants (which people just wear out and about here which I love.) Our next rest day is in two days and scheduled for Andenes with some whale watching!!  

We started off our day the same as usual... with a hearty breakfast, today's at Granville Hotel's buffet. We were then out the door and all 4 of us drove up to The Happy Pear, where we had arranged to meet Claire and Jerry. It's amazing how quickly you can travel in a car when you're used to struggling on a bike and calculating km to miles in your head, and back again, and you've still hardly made any progress. Claire and Jerry luckily had a safe flight and made it through the airport, on to cell coverage, and driving down to Wicklow with no difficulty.

We had lovely coffees and cakes in The Happy Pear and then headed out to Greystones waterfront. Greystones is a wealthy part of Wicklow, only 45 minutes from Dublin. Unfortunately, the weather was not great so we took a quick walk on the boardwalk and a quick walk on the beach and then headed for Bray.

Greystone's Waterfront Greystone's Beach

We then drove 20 minutes north to Bray. The walk from Greystones to Bray is a famous one. Unfortunately we didn't have time for it and it was also closed off for some reason, maybe repair?

Bray beach

We got checked into our hotel in Bray called The Palm (I highly recommend) and then made our way to the waterfront for a quick lunch and dip in the Irish Sea. Yes, it was cold! But refreshing and it had to be done. Mom, Jerry and I were the only ones mad enough to go in.

Afterwards, we got showered and dressed and had dinner in the restaurant of The Palm. Claire and Jerry stayed awake all day, impressive given the red eye flight and time change, and finally called it a night around 8pm.

The rest of us had one more drink and also went to bed. Bray has a movie night on Wednesdays where they project a kids' movie at 6pm and a teenager movie at 8pm down at the beach. It's a lovely community event with a great turnout. Mark and I enjoyed hearing the 8pm reactions to the original Karate Kid. Amazingly enough, Claire and Jerry slept through all the noise and commotion outside.

Trivia: the above photo is of Mark and Claire on Bray's boardwalk. What recent TV show had a dramatic scene that was filmed at this very spot? Hint: I really enjoyed the show, but it terrified Mark.

We got up at 8 and had breakfast at 9 in a room separate from the dinner dining room. This room is bright, has wall paintings and faces the back garden. We had a few items from the cold buffet such as the honey made from the bees on the grounds, homemade yogurt, homegrown berries, and bread made that morning. We each had a breakfast from the menu. I chose the spinach and mushroom omelette and Mark chose the full Irish (bacon which is called rashers, sausage, white pudding, black pudding, beans, roasted tomato, mushrooms, and a fried egg). I stuck some homemade granola bars and two scones in our bags for our 9hr bike ride. We had a quick swim in the pool, packed up, and headed out at 11am for our full day ride.

Bye Ballymaloe. We love you!

The ride was a constant series of low grade uphill followed by downhill. The roads were beautiful but I was certainly slower on the second day. Mark got a puncture in his tire and the spare tube wasn’t the right one, so it took a little extra maneuvering and wrestling to get it properly situated.

We met my parents in Dungarvan for a late lunch at 4pm at a place called The Moorings. I had one of the best veggie curries I’ve ever had. We had a quick late lunch and then hit the road again.

Mark’s tube was deflated again. He patched the original one and changed the tube. My bum and hands were so sore I wasn’t sure if I was up for another 3hrs of biking. Mark was so hyped to keep going that it motivated me, along with the beautiful blue skies and the inability to give in. We were less than 200m from The Moorings when Waterford’s Greenway started. It’s a rail trail! The path is new, smooth, flat and absolutely gorgeous and 50km long. Our remaining 3hrs were complete bliss. We stopped for a drone shot as the gentle waves of the Atlantic were too good to pass up. There were wild flowers on both sides the whole way. We saw lots of people out for an exercising walk, on the phone, listening to a podcast/music, or on a bike ride. There wasn’t a single cyclist behind us that overtook us, so we didn't have to keep an eye over our shoulder. Mark and I had a constant and fairly quick pace. The others around us were on a gentler routine. We saw another 6,507 cows in the fields on either side. We passed underneath a long and very cool railway tunnel. There were lights on the walls, which were likely installed when the Greenway was created. You could see a pedestrian in the tunnel but only when they were about 10m in front of you. We passed over about a dozen bridges and passed under about 50 bridges. I loved every single second of Waterford’s Greenway.

It took us all the way to Waterford where our hotel was. We met my parents there at half 8 for a pint, onion rings, chips and a Bailey’s cheesecake. Wild Atlantic Way Bikes picked up our bikes and we were in bed by 11pm. The Granville Hotel was lovely. A quintessential hotel with rugs throughout, a sunny dining room in the front, and typical pub in the back. Spiraling staircase in the middle of the building that had two or more floors, each with about 30 rooms. We watched the first episode of the latests season on Jack Ryan. We slept extremely well after such an active day.

Today was another long day.  For those watching our journey on a map, we're  currently in the town of Stokmarknes. We said goodbye to Henningsvær early in the morning (8am, but it's a late country, so no one else is awake) and started our second long day.

There are unfortunately very few photos from today. You'll have to take my word that it was beautiful, and that we were pushing for mileage today, and so did not stop that often for photos. Because of the mileage we did today, we'll be able to take it easy most of the rest of the trip. (I think 40 miles will be our longest day, so we'll be enjoying the sites more as we go, and taking more photos.

Our first stop of the day was at a campground right before we got on the main road. There were tons of people camping there, and we just used the bathroom and filled up water. If you want to see what it looks like, you can look here! https://maps.app.goo.gl/T4FYxy56g91Yhes57?g_st=ic

After that, we did our normal morning stop for tea + hot chocolate + a pastry in Svolvær, the largest town we've been in, and then started our ride.

We biked most of the morning on the E10, which  has a decent amount of traffic (especially motor homes) so we were very happy to turn off at Midnattsolveien (no idea what that is, but it's a road name) and take that north to the town of Straumnes and Grunnfør. Along the way we stopped at Livland Gård for lunch, but they said "lunch doesn't start until 2pm (see what I mean about a late country?) and  so we just got a bowl of ice cream, and continued on our way.

About a half mile down the road, there was another restaurant attached to a campground. We pulled in there and had a lovely lunch. It was served to is by a 12 year old who had impeccable English and was super nice to us.

Back on the road at 2pm after lunch we made time to the Fiskebøl ferry that we  needed to take today. Unfortunately, we missed the 4pm ferry by about 15 minutes, but we got on the 5:30PM no problem.

The ferry took us to Melbu, where we made quick work of the last 10 miles to Stokmarknes.

Tonight we're staying in a real campground, with showers and all! So I'm actually smelling good while i write this!

I'm zonked, so it's bedtime, but we're both having a  blast,  and tomorrow is an off day! There's a local Sauna in town that's on the water, so we can swim than warm up! We'll almost certainly do that!

And we'll post lots tomorrow!