For our 25th wedding anniversary my wife and I took the Hurtigruten post ship from Bergen to Kirkenes Norway last week. It was an amazing experience, and as it happened allowed me to do some scouting of the start point for my next long ride, Nordkapp.
The ferry stops in the town of Honningsvåg which is about 35 km from Nordkapp. We took the excursion bus which took the same roads I’ll be riding at the start of my trip. It was super helpful to see what I’d be riding this next June!
The starting point…the globe at the North Cape.
The road I’ll be traveling at the start…
The current plan is to start the ride at 24:00 on the 21st of June. To make this possible, I’ll be flying into Honningsvåg airport (after a 4 stop flight from London) and then get a taxi to the Cape. At 24:00 I’ll ride from the Cape to a camping cottage not far from the ferry terminal, get some sleep, then wake up the next day to take the ferry from Honningsvåg to Kjøllefjord. There’s only one ferry eastbound each day, and it leaves at 14:45. I’m taking this route to avoid traveling through the unlit and very steep tunnels that connect the island of Magerøya to the mainland.
The ferry arrives in Kjøllefjord at 17:00. (My wife and I just traveled the same route so I now have a pretty good understanding of the ins and outs of Norwegian ferry travel.) I’ll then ride roughly 100 km to my first stop on the mainland.