Day 11

Steinkjer to Molde via the Atlantic road

267 miles.


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Today started damp, then wet. I left the hotel at 8 in light drizzle, and quickly had to stop at a garage for a large can of red bull and to put on the heated vest as it was 12 degrees.  This transformed my spirits and I was quickly heading down the E6 with the music on in my headset and feet on the engine bars singing along.  

The E6 is a pretty dull road, short sections of dual carriageway followed by long sections of single with barriers either side.  At one point I noticed that I was riding through the Hell tunnel so quickly doubled back to the town of Hell to get a picture. Temperature outside the tunnel 14.5, inside 21. Most tunnels are cold so far. 
I did notice that Hell is smaller than you'd think. 

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Obviously now I've been to Hell and back!



The weather was getting steadily better but at one point I went through a series of short tunnels with small open areas between them and got a different season in each.  After what felt like an eternity I turned off onto smaller roads headed for the Atlantic road, then a familiar rider passed me going the other way, it was Tommy! 
I called him and we agreed to meet up, thus was followed by about 20 miles of missing each other and texts.  

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Ever wonder if you're in the wrong line?



We eventually ended up in the same place and got onto the ferry towards the Atlantic road.  

We headed up the sweeping roads towards the 64 Atlantic road, eventually coming to an amazing looking bridge where we did a little greenlaning to get a better photo while being watched by bemused fishermen.  



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We had to pay a toll to go onto the Atlantic road, and we could see other bikes at the front of the long line. We rode past all the cars and campers and asked them where to pay, it turned out they had parked the bikes beside the booth then walked in front of the cars. 
We quickly did the same while being stared at by quite a lot of annoyed people. 

The Atlantic road is less amazing than the roads leading to it, and we both felt a bit disappointed. Apparently it looks amazing from the air. We both agreed that we had ridden on far more spectacular roads that didn't have tolls on the way to the Atlantic road.

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As we headed towards Molde the weather got worse and we got soaked.   I decided to stay in Molde and Tommy headed further as he needed to be in Stockholm in two days and it's 550 miles away.  I got a room in the Thon hotel but there was some sort of market in town and the main street was closed. After a bit of riding around it became obvious that the hotel was inside the pedestrian area so I rode in slowly and parked the bike on the pavement outside before heading out to dinner in another quiet restaurant. 

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