Svolvaer – Stokmarnes

Day 3

90km / 705m climb

Video from today by `Declan O’Brien

Hard, hard, hard!

We have yet again been blessed with atypically beautiful sunshine for this time of year and it is certainly showing this beautiful country off at its very best. We have the priveledge of cycling with locals, the Norwegian team who organised this trip for us. Evidently one of the happiest nations in the world and we can see why.

Scenery beyond beautiful, a calm, peace and serenity prevails in all of the places we cycled through today. Beaches dotted around the coastline, ours to enjoy briefly to cool down. Curteous drivers who are respectful of cyclists, sunshine and good company. There is a lot to be grateful for.

The route, although beautiful, was again hard today. The climbs almost twice as much as we had anticipated meant that any of our pacing strategies were well off the mark and those hills, although not huge, in the latter part of our route took us longer and longer to conquer as our stamina and enthusiasm waned. from my perspective, the hills on offer throughout the route, were more than enough of a challenge, however a few of our group opted to take on a significant extra hill in the afternoon heat! I cannot begin to understand why!

An Optional Extra Hill!

One of our Norwegian hosts had organised for a group of us to go sea kayaking. It was beautiful but such hard work, having started it immediately after arriving back from six hours hilly cycling in the heat. Dinner at our hotel was a slightly subdued affair by our usual standard as exhaustion started to consume us.

It is our longest day tomorrow at 104km. I can’t bring myself to think about it before trying to snatch some sleep…….