As the midnight sun blazed, my cycle odyssey had now become a reality. I looked South from Norway’s Nordkapp and saw a road of adventure, fear, and 5,000 miles of the unknown until I got to Tarifa in Spain. Me, my bike and I. What on earth had possessed me to think of cycling from the most Northern to the most Southern point of Europe and was wild camping as a lone female a good idea?


In the first couple of days Norway’s fjords had sparkled in 24 hour daylight like the finest coat of jewels, and spotting whales from the coastal road had been a daily joy. Then the slow realisation that I’d made only a small dent in that limitless tarmac snake began to seep into my consciousness, along with the rain dripping down my neck. I sat in a bus stop and started to cry. The only sound I could hear was the rustle of my waterproofs and a lone gull screeching overhead. Through the rain I could see low grey clouds hovering ominously hiding the jagged teeth of mountains that were my daily nemesis. I was only a week in and I felt engulfed by the enormity of what I’d taken on. I resolved I’d get to the next big city Tromso, a few cycle days away, pack my bike up along with my mid life crisis and fly home to safety, security and a nice cup of tea.


But over the course of the next few days something surprising happened. As the road unfurled, my two wheeled life took hold of me and I started to relax into this new and unfamiliar routine. Get up,


pack up, eat, cycle, sleep. And repeat. The unfamiliar was becoming familiar. The simplicity and liberation of being totally self sufficient with nothing else to think about other than food, water and where to pitch my green bubble of a tent, took on a new dimension.


“UK, Euro, out” were the simple three words uttered by a Sami man in a


roadside shack selling reindeer skins.


But where the tumult of Brexit was playing out in every living room in the UK, my daily broadcast contained only Norway’s panorama of towering dark grey mountains against glittering fjords in glorious high definition technicolour. Days were peppered with spotting wildlife - curious seals, mysterious whales and timid Arctic foxes. Thoughts meandered like the road in front of me, weaving from the aesthetic to the existential to the practical and before I knew it another ten kilometres had been clocked.


Both on and off the road I encountered the incredible kindness of strangers willing to salvage a lone female cycling straggler. A German policeman with no English on a Vespa escorted me through Norway’s dark deep tunnels; an octogenarian on a bike in jeans, hoodie and wellies bought me lunch; I was driven round French chateaus on my ‘day off’. Each time I felt adopted like a new family relative, with my hosts willing me to succeed in my goal to get to Tarifa.


38


Cycling Odyssey


As the farming calendar unfolded in front of me I witnessed the subtle change of nature’s produce. I had started with bleak and scrubby mountains, followed by the dark green forests and verdant swaying green of Scandinavia, with red and yellow roof barns like scattered lego. Denmark and Germany’s enormous golden wheat fields stretched interminably to the horizon and were punctuated by droning wind turbines. Scorched earth dust was kicked up by harvesting tractors in the Flanders fields of Belgium and France, interspersed with occasional and sobering First World War cemeteries. The heatwave of deep Summer silenced rural villages and I cycled through, imagining life behind those blue shutters. Bar Tabac hosted gossiping overweight men drinking wine at ten in the morning.


Countries dripped into each other like paint with a slow transition of language, architecture and culture seeping across borders until I got to Spain where the natural division of the Pyrenees created a division so stark that I arrived in Pamplona shell shocked and awestruck by Spanish exuberance. It felt like where as Norway was the reliable friend with a life plan, Spain was the friend who may not turn up but if they did, you know you would have a good time.


...I OVERCAME MY FEARS AND


LONELINESS AND CHALLENGED MYSELF


EMOTIONALLY AND MENTALLY.


The Old Cornelian SUMMER 2017


PHYSICALLY,


“ ”


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