August23: "Useless kms?"
The day starts with a long but rather progressive 45 km climb reaching an altitude of 540 meters. Then an equally gradual descent. The view from at the top of the pass was a beautiful reward for our efforts: a panorama of the long fjord and the sea behind and in front, a mountain and it's ice cap from which flowed a glacier in our direction. What delight to able to avoid braking going down hill. Cloudy sky but with many sunny spells. Ideal weather for cycling if it weren't for the wind in our face, 5 km/h in the morning and 10 in the afternoon. We nonetheless managed good progress.
The campsite at Varmaland
was normally at the end of 98 km of pedalling but it turns out that we had
to do an extra 5 km off our n° 1 road. Dilemma: should we continue another
21 km to Borgarnes to avoid 10 km of "useless" detour or should
we make the sacrifice and get into that very enticing bed as quickly as possible?
The service station attendant reassured us that the road towards Borgarnes
was all flat apart from a short up hill very near here. But our exhaustion
had come to the point where we couldn't imagine doing so many more km. We
therefore opted for Varmaland which turned out to be a very wise choice since
the following day we discovered that there was not one small up hill but several
and that afterwards it was far from being flat. As we pitched our tent, the
first drops of rain began falling, gradually turning into a deluge that lasted
all night.
Near Borgarnes